Liverpool City Council has revealed that it has been repeatedly attacked by Russian state-funded cyber hackers for the last two years.
According to a report released before tomorrow’s audit committee meeting, the pro-Russian hacktivist group Noname057(16) has been using bots to try to infiltrate or disable the city’s systems. Cybercriminals from this group usually target Western governments, military organizations, and healthcare systems.
For example, just yesterday, Europol added a Spanish university professor, Enrique Arias Gil, to its Most Wanted list. He is accused of collecting information on Spain’s critical infrastructure and members of its security forces to help Noname057(16) facilitate cyberattacks.
The Liverpool City Council has confirmed that it has been hit with “many attacks” from this group and its allies, which use a large distributed botnet to overwhelm systems. According to LiverpoolEcho, the attacks are DDoS.
To defend against them, the city has put ISP-level anti-DDoS services in place, as well as firewalls, intrusion prevention systems, and traffic management tools to minimize disruption.
The report also noted that other cities in the UK are experiencing the same issue.
Noname057(16) originally focused on Ukraine, but since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, it has expanded its attacks into countries that support Kyiv. The UK is not the first one to speak up about it, with Poland's deputy PM, Krzysztof Gawkowski, mentioning before that Russia is targeting Western countries that openly declare their support for Ukraine. Poland has recently seen its water supply systems and hospitals targeted.
However, since the beginning of the war, not only Noname057(16) but also Europol has become more active.
In July, law enforcement agencies in an operation called Operation Eastwood raided 24 locations, arrested two individuals, issued seven additional warrants, and took down over 100 criminal servers worldwide, disrupting part of Noname’s infrastructure.
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