British Parliaments' email accounts hacked

The Parliament of the United Kingdom

The British Parliament has been hit by a cyber-security attack that has prevented lawmakers from accessing their emails when they are away from the Westminster estate.

The British media and politicians reported on Saturday that lawmakers were not able to access their email accounts when not in Westminster.

According to The Telegraph, the lawmakers were alerted to the hack on Friday. An email was sent to everyone using a parliamentary address and warned about an “unusual activity and evidence of an attempted cyber attack.” 

“The Houses of Parliament have discovered unauthorized attempts to access parliamentary user accounts,” said a House of Commons spokesperson.

Authorities said they were working with the National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) to protect the network and determine the scale of the damage. 

The National Crime Agency also said it was working with the NCSC to resolve the issue. It  said in a message on Twitter that they were “aware of a possible cyber incident affecting Parliament.”

One lawmaker, whose email account was affected, said the system was “vulnerable.”The MP warned that officials were always “one or two steps behind the hackers.” 

A former special forces official, Oz Alashe warned that compromising email accounts can merely be the “first step” in a wider attack. “Email accounts represent a rich source of information for hackers so compromising these accounts would often be the first step in a sophisticated cyber attack."