Former cabinet minister Sir David Davis has revealed that his parliamentary website was subjected to a cyberattack traceable to China, which he described as a direct interference with his duties as an MP.
The Conservative MP for Goole and Pocklington told the Commons that the website was hit by a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, with 142 million requests consuming nearly 800GB of data in 24 hours. The attack began last Thursday, initially redirecting users to gambling websites based in south-east Asia.
Sir David stated that the malicious traffic was largely traceable to China, though a small number of hits originated from other countries. His office is working with website hosts to prevent further incidents.
Deputy Speaker Nus Ghani advised MPs to contact the Parliamentary Security Department for personal account security and the Parliamentary Digital Service for parliamentary equipment, but declined to discuss specific preventative measures publicly.
