A cyberattack on the parliamentary email server could have breached government ministers’ email accounts, it has emerged.
On Saturday hackers attacked the email server for Parliament prompting the digital security team to shut down external access to MPs and peers’ email accounts.
While the attack has now been contained, preliminary investigations suggest that there may have been a compromise of a number of parliamentarians’ communications.
The investigation by Parliament’s digital security team is ongoing, but it currently speculates that up to 90 accounts – or less than 1% of the network’s 9,000 users – may have been compromised in the attack.
The 9,000 users include not only senior ministers and other MPs and peers, but also their staffers and many civil servants.
It is not yet known whose accounts may have been compromised.
Government ministers are expected to carry out confidential work from their departmental email accounts.
These are hosted on the gov.uk domain, rather than their parliamentary accounts which are hosted on the parliament.uk domain.
According to a parliamentary spokesperson, Saturday’s attack involved hackers “carrying out a sustained and determined attack on all parliamentary user accounts in an attempt to identify weak passwords”.
Sky sources have confirmed that the attack was not targeted against particular accounts, but rather attempted to probe the email server used by Parliament.
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