In the early hours an IT engineer raced into work through the dark, wintery streets of Redcar in north-east England. The dash was prompted by a worrying alert about the council's computer network, and he was soon hurriedly shutting down servers to try to halt the spread of a virus. It was too late. Hackers had scrambled Redcar and Cleveland Council's IT systems and would soon demand payment to restore it.
Wow, sounds more exciting than the new ‘Mission Impossible’ movie. I suspect it wasn’t quite like that though….
By 11:00 GMT on Saturday, local residents began to notice the council website was offline. "There wasn't a lot we could do," Mrs Lanigan said about efforts to stop the virus. "You had to be practical, so it was actually getting more phones in there so that people could ring us."
News was spreading, but Mrs Lanigan, who lost her position in the 2023 local elections, claims she received pressure from council officials and central government not to speak out. The council declined to be interviewed about the attack but said there had been no pressure or instruction not to speak publicly, either at the time or since.
Hmm, who to believe?
"It was devastating," she said. "Devastating for us, for the staff, for the public and for everybody else." They had lost the ability to share information with police and the NHS, while social services and elderly care services were knocked out, she said. "Even somebody ringing up and saying 'my bin hasn't been emptied' wasn't dealt with."
And…did anyone think that was unusual? Did anyone actually leap to the conclusion the council had been hacked, or did they just shrug and think ‘Same old council service!’..?
