Massive 900% increase in spam attacks

International spammers were behind a 900% increase in cyber attacks on the council’s computer systems, an authority spokesman confirmed last night.

The Press and Journal revealed yesterday there had been more than 40 million “external cyber incident attempts” in the year up to June – potentially risking sensitive data.

The figure came as a huge increase on the year up to last June, when around 18 million attempts were made.

Politicians branded the findings as “worrying” and raised concerns about future digitisation of services.

“There was a 500% increase in a particular intrusion threat in the month of June.”

However, only a dozen attempts were successful – with 10 being “phishing” attempts made by scammers to gain confidential information from council staff.

In January last year a high-profile hacking of the city council’s website occurred.

Activists System DZ posted a cryptic picture of a man in a cowboy hat above the message “security stupidity”.

A council spokesman said: “Aberdeen City Council experienced a 900% increase in spam in September and October, likely attributable to a large dump of 711 million email addresses into the public domain from online spambot on August 28.

“There was a global increase at that time, while there was a 500% increase in a particular intrusion threat in the month of June.”