According to the latest data, data of more than two-thirds of British politicians has been leaked on the dark web.
68% of British politicians currently sit in the House of Commons. This includes some who are considered to be in charge of UK cyber security.
The new data comes from: a joint investigation Between digital risk firm Constella Intelligence and privacy service Proton. Of the 650 MPs, 443 have had some form of personal data accessed using details exposed on the dark web, mostly collected from third-party services to which MPs have signed up via their parliamentary email addresses.
In comparison, the percentage for EU MPs is just 44%. While this is still less than half, what is worrying is that French MPs and senators have the best protection, with only 18% of the emails discovered appearing in hacker exchanges.
“The fact that these emails, which are publicly available on government websites, are on the dark web is not in itself a security failure,” wrote Proton editor Richie Koch. “Nor is it evidence that the British, European or French parliaments have been hacked.
“Instead, it shows that politicians used their official email addresses to open accounts on third-party websites (which were subsequently hacked or compromised), thereby unnecessarily exposing themselves and the information they were entrusted to protect to risk.”
Which personal data of MPs was hacked?
216 plain text passwords linked to MPs’ accounts were exposed on the dark web, with up to 10 passwords exposed for one MP. However, parliamentary emails were the biggest data breach, exposed 2,110 times. Those targeted most frequently suffered more than 30 breaches.
Although emails may not seem like a big concern, combining them with passwords can open many more doors to access users’ online accounts. Cybercriminals often use the tactic of ‘credential stuffing’ to enter thousands of stolen passwords and emails into different platforms to gain access to different accounts.
In addition, some social media profiles were also affected, including 16 breaches of Instagram profiles, 117 of LinkedIn, 21 of X and 21 of Facebook. This risk to personal information on social media profiles is particularly worrying.
This is not the first time that the UK government has faced a data breach, China accused For hacking the British Ministry of Defense.
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