MPs Blocked From Email Accounts As Parliament Hit By Cyber Attack

Cyber hackers have launched an attack on Parliament, government security chiefs have disclosed.

MPs were reportedly told they were temporarily blocked from accessing their email accounts following the attempted breach, the Mirror reports.

Liberal Democrat peer, Lord Rennard, confirmed the news after he tweeted his colleagues to text important and urgent messages to each other.

"Cyber security attack on Westminster Parliamentary emails may not work remotely. Text urgent messages @LibDemLords @LabourLordsUK @Torypeers," he said.

Labour MP Ian Austin also posted about the matter, asking people to use separate or personal email accounts to communicate.

He wrote: "There's something wrong with Parliamentary emails so if you did email me, can you send to ian.c.austin@outlook.com instead please? Apologies,"

A Parliamentary spokesman said: "The Houses of Parliament have discovered unauthorised attempts to access parliamentary user accounts.

"We are continuing to investigate this incident and take further measures to secure the computer network, liaising with the National Cyber Security Centre.

"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."

The Daily Mail reports that passwords for MPs and officials were allegedly being sold online, while Crawley MP Henry Smith quipped: "We're under cyber attack from Kim Jong Un, Putin or a kid in his mom's basement or something," before adding that he's off to the pub.

Source: Daily Mail, Mirror

Mark McGowan

Mark is a journalist at LADbible, who joined in 2015 after a year as a freelance writer. In the past he blogged for independent football fan channel Redmen TV, after graduating from Staffordshire University with degrees in journalism and English literature. He has worked on campaigns such as UOKM8? and IIOC.