Wattle Range Council will not meet the ransom demands of cyber criminals who successfully hacked into its data base last month.
Some sensitive stolen personal information has already been released on the dark web by the cyber criminals.
However, Mayor Des Noll said Wattle Range Council did not have the legislated authority to pay a ransom demand by the reported deadline of August 4.
The Cyber Daily news website has reported the cyber criminals have claimed to have stolen 103 gigabytes of Wattle Range Council data in more than 7000 folders, totalling 46,248 files.
The cyber criminals have posted samples of the stolen data online such as credit card numbers, correspondence and invoices and advised council they will be releasing further data in the coming weeks.
Speaking on 5THE FM, acting council chief executive Paul Duka said council had contacted a number of local people on Friday and advised them their relevant personal data had been stolen and released by the cyber criminals.
“It impacted on a couple of residents,” Mr Duka said.
“They are well aware of it and have been very kind in their responses which is nice,” Mr Duka said.
News of the cyber criminals was put into the public domain on Friday afternoon via a statement posted on the Wattle Range Council website.
“Wattle Range Council is investigating a cyber incident involving access to some of our file drives by an unauthorised third party,” the statement read.
“Upon discovery, we immediately commenced an investigation to determine what happened.
“We have taken steps to secure our IT environment with the support of external investigators.
“Our ongoing investigation has confirmed that some Wattle Range Council data has been accessed and taken from our IT environment.
“A priority of our investigation is to determine exactly what information was involved, and who it relates to.
“At this stage, we believe the information largely relates to files taken from a legacy server which primarily contains publicly available information and internal working documents.
“We are also aware that earlier today (Friday), Wattle Range Council has been named on a post on the dark web, alongside a sample of data which we are now reviewing as a priority.
“We have monitoring in place to detect any further developments or publication of our data and will provide further updates as required.
“In line with government guidance, we urge that no one tries to access the post or the stolen data, which only feeds the business model of cyber criminals and can be a criminal offence.
“We are working with the relevant authorities and government agencies in response to this incident to ensure all appropriate steps are taken.
“As a precautionary measure, we remind our community of the need to remain vigilant against the potential risk of receiving phishing or other scam communications, in particular from any parties claiming to be Wattle Range Council.
“Please do not respond to any email, telephone or text messages that seem suspicious.
“We continue to monitor the situation closely and will keep our staff and residents updated as our investigation continues.”
The SE Voice has approached the Australian Federal Police and South Australian Police for comment.