Parliament has been hit by a cyber security attack.
MPs and Peers have been left unable to remotely access their emails as a result of the incident, Parliamentary authorities said.
A House of Commons spokeswoman 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."
The spokeswoman said that the lack of remote access for users was not part of the attack, but due to protection measures dealing with the incident.
She said: "Parliament has disabled remote access to protect the network."
Liberal Democrat peer Baron Rennard tweeted: "Cyber security attack on Westminster, Parliamentary e.mails may not work remotely."
The attack follows reports that passwords for MPs and officials were being sold online by hackers.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel