Dozens of MPs’ emails hacked in ‘state-sponsored’ cyberattack

Dozens of email accounts were hacked in a cyberattack on parliament that intelligence officials fear may have been state-sponsored.

The “brute force” attack, which began on Friday morning, forced officials to shut down remote access to email accounts used by MPs, peers and researchers.

Hackers were able to break into up to 90 accounts and were believed to have accessed significant numbers of emails after the “sustained and determined attack” on all 9,000 users of the system.

Parliamentary email accounts are used mainly by MPs and their staff to handle communications with constituents and deal with other parliamentary business. Ministers also have a parliamentary email address but are expected to handle departmental business from a separate government account hosted on a different server.

Intelligence officials