Wattle Range Council, a local government body serving roughly 11,000 residents in the Limestone Coast region of South Australia, confirmed in July 2024 that data had been accessed and taken from its IT environment. The confirmation followed the appearance of a council listing on the LockBit ransomware group's darknet leak site.
LockBit claimed to hold 103 gigabytes of material. Cyber Daily, which reviewed the listing, reported 46,248 files across more than 7,000 folders and said samples appeared genuine. The documents included rate notices, complaint notices, banking application forms containing card numbers, tax invoices, and cash transaction records naming customers of the Southern Ocean Tourist Park. File metadata indicated the material had been accessed between June 20 and June 24, 2024. The group set a ransom deadline of August 4.
The council said the compromised information related largely to files held on a legacy server that mostly contained publicly available information and internal working documents. Mayor Des Noll told the ABC that the files were things like rate notices and low sensitivity records, and said the council would not consider paying. Insurance Business reproduced those remarks. Reported file counts varied: Insurance Business cited about 43,000 documents against Cyber Daily's figure of 46,248.
The council notified the Australian Cyber Security Centre and urged residents not to seek out the leaked material. It also said it was moving its systems onto a newer and more secure platform as part of its response.