Labour suffers second cyber attack in 24 hours
Labour has been hit by a second cyber attack in two days, after hackers reportedly targeted the party’s web services this afternoon.
Hackers tried to force its web services offline from around 1pm today, according to a Labour source.
Read more: Labour experiences a ‘sophisticated and very large’ cyber attack
A Labour spokesperson said: “We have ongoing security processes in place to protect our platforms, so users may be experiencing some differences.
“We are dealing with this quickly and efficiently.”
It comes after the party revealed hackers tried to disrupt its digital platforms last night unsuccessfully.
Labour said the attempt slowed down the party’s digital systems momentarily, but was not successful in taking its web services online.
The attack was at first described as “large scale and sophisticated”, however the National Cyber Security Centre has downplayed the seriousness of the attempt, calling it “low level”.
Both attempts are believed to have been distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, which try to take down websites by flooding them with malware.
These attacks are very difficult to trace and are often not particularly sophisticated.
A Labour source told the BBC that the first attack came from computers in Russia and Brazil, however this has been disputed by digital experts.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said the attempt to bring down the party’s web services made him nervous.
“But if this is a sign of things to come in this election, I feel very nervous about it all,” he said.
“Because a cyber attack against a political party in an election is suspicious and something one is very worried about.”
The cyber attacks come as the government is attracting criticism for delaying a report into potential Russian interference in UK politics.
The Intelligence and Security Committee report was finalised in March and sent to Number 10 in October for approval.
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However, the report’s release has been delayed until after the election.
Labour MPs have branded the move as politically motivated, while chancellor Sajid Javid has said the delay is “completely normal” as the report contains sensitive information.