An apparent phishing attack which compromised a user email account has sparked an internet outage for schools and nurseries in Inverclyde.
The education network for the local council was taken offline on Monday to allow cyber response teams to investigate a fraudulent email sent from a member of education staff.
Parents had been notified a day earlier to reassure them that physical facilities would be open as usual at the start of the week, and that response plans had been ‘activated’.
“We have activated our response plans and as a precautionary step, we have taken our schools temporarily offline while we investigate,” an Inverclyde council spokesperson said.
“Work to determine the cause and impact of this continues and we are liaising with school teams and our suppliers to minimise disruption. We apologise for any inconvenience and thank you for your continued patience.”
The council stressed that schools and early years centres will not be able to access emails, and provided a temporary email address for urgent emails to be sent.
The spokesperson added: “School lunches and breakfast clubs will operate as normal however there may be difficulties accessing the pre-order app in secondary and your child may have to order lunch at the school canteen.”
The incident came as the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) warned on Monday that Russian-aligned hacktivist groups continue to target the UK and global organisations by attempting to disrupt operations, take websites offline and disable services.
In December 2025, the NCSC co-sealed an advisory highlighting that pro-Russian hacktivists groups have been conducting worldwide cyber operations against numerous organisations and critical infrastructure sectors.
In particular, the group NoName057(16) has been active since March 2022, and have been conducting attacks against government and private sector entities in NATO member states and other European countries that are perceived as hostile to Russian geopolitical interests. These attacks have included frequent DDoS attempts against UK local government.
