…we need more security and better passwords. You wouldn’t leave your door open at night. (Ian Fox, Her Royal Majesty’s Secretary of State for Industries)

A bold hack attempt discovered on Friday inside the United Kingdom has left parliamentary officials without access to remote email over the weekend. According to sources used in this Newsweek article posted on Sunday, June 25th, 2017, email access was disabled as a precaution but it is believed that at least 90 email accounts have been penetrated.

On ABC’s World News Tonight, cyber security expert Robert Holmes (VP, Cyber Security Strategy, EMEA) explains the potential risk saying that, “blanket targeting of members of parliament, of members of the U.K. Parliament, is serious. If I can get access to your email account then I can get a lot of information.”

One Member of Parliament had this to say on Twitter:

The target and scale of this brute force action narrows the list of suspect organizations greatly and recent reports suggest that leads regarding who might have orchestrated the attack are pointing towards Russia.