Pro-Russian Hacktivists Launch DDoS Blitz on UK Councils and Agencies—but Impact Remains Limited

Three-Day Campaign Targeted Local Government Sites

A Kremlin-aligned hacktivist collective calling itself NoName057(16) has claimed responsibility for a wave of distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks aimed at dozens of UK websites over the past three days. In posts to the group’s Telegram channel and to X (formerly Twitter), the attackers said the operation was retaliation for Britain’s continued military and financial support for Ukraine.

Claimed Victims Include Police Oversight Body and National Highways

The self-styled cyber “patriots” boasted that they knocked the websites of:

• The Association of Police and Crime Commissioners

• National Highways

• Harwich International Port

• Multiple local authorities, including Arun, Cardiff, Blackburn with Darwen and Exeter

Officials confirm that some sites did experience short-lived outages as traffic volumes spiked, but most were restored within hours. Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council and Exeter City Council both reported “no noticeable disruption,” contradicting the group’s victory posts.

How the Attack Worked

NoName057(16) relied on a classic DDoS playbook:

1. Traffic herding – Botnets and volunteer “patriotic” routers flooded targets with junk packets.

2. Service saturation – Login portals and CMS front ends buckled, returning 502/503 errors to legitimate users.

3. Social amplification – Within minutes, the group published screenshots of error pages on social media to claim success.

The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre reiterated that DDoS “is low-sophistication and rarely compromises data, but can still disrupt essential public services when mitigation isn’t in place.”

Part of a Broader European Pattern

Formed in early 2022, NoName057(16) has carried out hundreds of attacks against government and media outlets in Ukraine, Poland, the Czech Republic and Austria. Analysts describe the collective as a loose federation of pro-Kremlin volunteers who coordinate strikes in chat rooms and share do-it-yourself DDoS scripts.

Rapid Recovery Shows Improved UK Defences

Cyber-resilience teams at affected councils said existing traffic-scrubbing contracts and content-delivery-network failovers limited downtime to between 90 minutes and four hours. Arun District Council, which saw its site go dark just after 07:00 on Tuesday, had full service restored by 11:30. National Highways reported a similar timeline for its public-facing portal.

Rising Threat Level for the Public Sector

Although the latest incident caused only momentary inconvenience, the National Audit Office recently warned that the “cyber threat to UK government is severe and advancing quickly.” Separate research by Bridewell shows 63 % of government-sector organisations were hit by ransomware in the past year—underscoring that DDoS is only one tactic in an expanding arsenal.

What Comes Next?

Security experts expect NoName057(16) to repeat its playbook during high-profile political events, budget statements or major arms-delivery announcements. Councils are urged to:

• Review DDoS mitigation thresholds and failover TTL settings.

• Harden IT help-desk workflows after recent ticket-spoofing incidents against major UK retailers.

• Share indicators of compromise with the NCSC’s Cyber Security Information Sharing Partnership (CiSP).

For now, the hacktivists’ latest offensive illustrates a familiar reality: even low-grade network floods, when wrapped in geopolitical propaganda, can still grab headlines—making cyber disruption a cheap but effective instrument of influence.

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