By Marc Waddington

Copyright bbc

The report said: “Noname057(16) is a state-linked Russian hacktivist group that attacks western targets, mostly government, military, transport and health.

“We have experienced many attacks from this group and their allies using their Distributed Botnet over the last two years.

“Denial of Service attacks for monetary or political reasons is a widespread risk for any company with a web presence or that relies on internet-based systems.”

The report said the council was using a range of systems “to reduce the effect of attack on our web infrastructure”.