A “SOPHISTICATED” cyber-attack on Keighley Town Council knocked out its website and councillors’ e-mails for at least nine weeks.

The company which provides the town council’s web and e-mail services, Parishcouncil.net, has confirmed the intrusion was a so-called “Distributed Denial of Service” (DDOS) attack. This is when a hacker takes over multiple computers to overwhelm a targeted web server with traffic.

The company added: “No encrypted, personal or sensitive data was leaked or available to hackers through the DDOS attack.

“We have been trying to find out who caused it. What we can say with certainty is that the Keighley.gov.uk domain was specifically identified and targeted.

“This is the first such attack against any of our 400 plus websites in over 13 years of trading and hosting, and the first we’ve heard of against a parish or town council.”

Anne Wilson, Keighley Town Council’s locum clerk, said: “This caused us untold problems in terms of getting in touch with councillors.

“The only other way we’ve been able to do so has been via post, which was at a cost to the public purse, and has been very inconvenient.

“The website being down too caused more problems, because that’s how we communicate with the public, and we haven’t been able to upload meeting minutes and agendas.

“We had to use noticeboards instead. As we’re a council that wants to be as transparent as possible that’s not how we want to do things.”

Mrs Wilson said the issue also disrupted communications between councillors and outside agencies, and even affected the Keighley town mayor’s programme of civic engagements.

She pointed out that new General Data Protection Regulations mean councillors are now not allowed to use their personal e-mails for council related business.

When contacted by the Keighley News, town mayor Cllr Fulzar Ahmed said he could not comment on the cyber-attack until it had been thoroughly investigated.

But speaking at the town council’s latest full meeting last Thursday, (Sept 27) deputy town mayor Cllr Peter Corkindale said: “It’s a criminal offence to attack .gov sites like this. Our website is back up now, and we are investigating.”

Cllr Brian Morris assured councillors that the website was now protected, adding that their council e-mails were in the process of being re-activated.

He said he looked forward to seeing whoever was responsible for the attack being prosecuted in future. But responding to a question from Cllr John Kirby, he said he could not yet give any further details on progress to identify the culprit.