Stonnington: Council shut down by international cyber attack

An inner-city Melbourne council paralysed by a cyber attack has started to bring its services back online. This is what you can do.

An inner-city Melbourne council brought to its knees by a cyber attack from an international hacker is close to restoring its online services.

Stonnington Council shut down its online systems last week, including its payments and planning application portals, following ”an IT issue” on Friday, August 27.

Hundreds of staff were also unable to login and work remotely following the incident, which Leader understands occurred while the council was updating Microsoft software.

Chief executive Jacqui Weatherill provided an update at Monday night’s council meeting, saying services were likely to be restored on Wednesday, if not earlier.

Ms Weatherill confirmed ratepayers’ personal data was not breached in the attack and remained safe.

“Today we successfully reactivated our systems, and our website and call centre will be back up on Wednesday,” she told the gallery.

“I’d like to thank our partners in resolving these issues, and thank neighbouring councils who offered support during this time.”

Ms Weatherill said a review on the incident and future preventive measures would be shared with councillors at a later date.

The council drew on assistance from the Australian Cyber Security Centre and the State Government following the attack, and continued operating essential services while it dealt with the outage.

Its website states the planning and online payment portals are now available and other customer services are “being restored progressively”.

Last week, Ms Weatherill said the council faced a “challenging” path to restore services.

“We will still pick up bins, clean our parks, open our childcare centres, immunise children, respond to noise complaints and build roads,” she said.
“We can still receive calls and emails, we may just be a little slower than usual.

“As we are still investigating the incident and don’t know when we will be fully back online, the path out will be challenging.

“We appreciate everyone’s patience as we work to bring our systems back online, however, we will only do so when its safe.”

A screenshot of Stonnington Council's website advising of services being offline on Monday, August 30.

Following the attack, the council’s service centre hotline had an automated message advising of a “critical systems outage” and told residents to use its website instead, or to hold to speak to its service partner.

Ratepayers Stonnington president Dean Hurlston feared the council would be unable to help residents while the incident was being investigated.

Mr Hurlston was also concerned about how much ratepayers money would be spent on staff unable to work.

“Cyber attacks are real and ASIO (Australian Security Intelligence Organisation) has warned councils across Australia of this possibility,” he said.

“The protection of residents’ data is vital, and council must explain what their 650 staff are doing at this time and when services will be restored.

“While we have sympathy for the staff, we have no sympathy for a bloated executive team who are being paid record level salaries to protect the sensitive information which council holds.”

Stonnington is home to 103,900 residents and includes affluent suburbs including Toorak, Malvern, Windsor, Armadale and South Yarra.

A Victoria Police spokeswoman said they were unaware of the incident.