| Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said the attack on his party’s digital platforms had made him nervous about the rest of the campaign |
Jeremy Corbyn has warned that a cyber attack on Labour’s digital platforms could be a “sign of things to come” in the general election.
The Labour leader said the timing of the attack – which slowed some of the party’s campaign activities – was “suspicious” and had made him “nervous” about what might happen in the rest of the campaign.
The so-called “distributed denial-of-service” (DDoS) attack, which took place on Monday, was described by the party as “sophisticated and large-scale”.
However, a source at the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), which is investigating the incident, said it was relatively “low level” with no evidence of “state-sponsored activity”.
In a DDoS attack, hackers flood a target’s online platforms with traffic from various sources, with the aim of slowing down access or causing websites to crash.
Labour said the attack had failed due to the “robust security systems” it had put in place and that it was confident there had not been any data breach.
While its security procedures had led to a temporary slowdown in it its campaigning activities, they were later back up to “full speed”.
However, speaking at a Labour campaign event in Blackpool, Mr Corbyn expressed concern about the implications for the rest of the election campaign.
“We have a system in place in our office to protect us against these cyber attacks, but it was a very serious attack against us,” he said.
“So far as we’re aware, none of our information was downloaded and the attack was actually repulsed because we have an effective in-house developed system by people within our party.
“But if this is a sign of things to come in this election, I feel very nervous about it all because a cyber attack against a political party in an election is suspicious, something one is very worried about.”
Press Association