Hackers attack Yorkshire council websites

Hackers claiming to be working to free Wikileaks Julian Assange have attacked two Yorkshire council websites.

Yesterday (16 April), Barnsley Council and Bedale Town Council websites went down, with the former being restored by 11:30BST according to the BBC.

Bedale Council however said it was unaware of any website issues, despite the tweets from hacking groups Philippine Cyber Eagles and Anonymous Espana, who claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Barnsley Council experienced a Distributed Denial of Service attack, where an attacker floods the site from multiple sources, making it unavailable to normal users.

A spokesman said: “We became aware of the issue at approximately 08:40.

“Having initially believed the issue was not related to a cyber-attack, while investigating the issue it became clear that the amount of traffic hitting the council website was massively above normal levels.”

He added: “No customer data has been lost, stolen or accessed by the attack against the council’s website and the council remained fully in control of the situation.”

Julian Assange had been ensconced in the Ecuadorean embassy for several years, until 11 April when he was ousted and arrested. He’s currently at Belmarsh prison. It is unclear whether the hackers are in contact with anyone at Wikileaks, or what the connection is with Bedale and Barnsley councils.