UK parliament hacked, lawmakers' email targeted

by Sean Higgins | Jun 24, 2017, 12:37 PM

Hackers attempted Friday to break into the servers used by the British Parliament, part of an apparent effort to gain access to the personal email accounts used by politicians and their staff. British security officials closed off outside access to servers in order to head off the hackers.

"The Houses of Parliament have discovered unauthorized attempts to access parliamentary user accounts," said a spokeswoman for the House of Commons, according to the BBC. "We are continuing to investigate this incident and take further measures to secure the computer network."

The spokeswoman added: "We have systems in place to protect member and staff accounts and are taking the necessary steps to protect our systems... Parliament has disabled remote access to protect the network."

Lawmakers first learned of the hack Friday night. It is not clear who is behind it. The U.K.'s National Cyber Security Centre, a branch of the Government Communications Headquarters, is investigating the incident.

A 2015 U.K. government study said that the country faced the threat of cyberattacks from both foreign intelligence agencies and organized crime.

British politicians told constituents to send any communications to them through social media. "Sorry no parliamentary email access today - we're under cyber attack from Kim Jong Un, Putin or a kid in his mom's basement or something...," tweeted Henry Smith, member of Parliament for Crawley.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/uk...rticle/2626999