UK parliament hit by cyber-attack

The UK parliament has been hit by a cyber security attack, according to BBC.

The attack is coming about a month after the world experienced its worst cyber-attack in decades.

Chris Rennard, a member of the Liberal Democrat party in the upper House of Lords, first announced the attack on Saturday via twitter.

“Cyber security attack on Westminster, parliamentary emails may not work remotely, text urgent messages,” he tweeted.

MPs were told of difficulties in accessing their emails, a development parliamentary spokeswoman said was due to “steps being taken to manage the issue.”

“Unauthorised attempts to access accounts of parliamentary networks users were discovered,” she was quoted to have said.

“Parliament has robust measures in place to protect all of our accounts and systems, and we are taking the necessary steps to protect and secure our network.

“As a precaution, we have temporarily restricted remote access to the network.”

She also said they were investigating the incident and liaising with the National Cyber Security Centre concerning it.

Henry Smith, a Tory MP for Crawley, also tweeted about the development.

“Sorry no parliamentary email access today – we’re under cyber attack from Kim Jong Un, (Vladimir) Putin or a kid in his mom’s basement or something…,” he wrote.

Although IT services on the parliamentary estate are said to be working “normally”, some MPs confirmed to the BBC that they were not able to access their parliamentary email accounts remotely.

A message has reportedly been sent to MPs urging them to remain “extra vigilant.”