Scottish Parliament under cyberattack, no systems breached

Officials at the Scottish Parliament say the legislature's IT systems are under sustained cyberattack but have not been breached.

Parliament chief executive Paul Grice said Wednesday that the system was under "brute force cyberattack," with hackers making repeated attempts to crack passwords.

He said in an email to staff and at the Edinburgh-based that the attack is still underway, but "there is no evidence to suggest that the attack has breached our defenses and our IT systems continue to be fully operational."

Grice said the National Cyber Security Center was helping repel the attack.

He said it is "not uncommon for brute force attacks to be sustained over a period of days."

The British Parliament in London was hit by a similar attack in June.

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Citation: Scottish Parliament under cyberattack, no systems breached (2017, August 16) retrieved 25 June 2024 from https://phys.org/news/2017-08-scottish-parliament-cyberattack-breached.html
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