Conservative vice-chair hacked Harriet Harman's website to spread Tory propaganda
2 min read
Top Labour MP Harriet Harman says she has accepted an apology from Conservative MP Kemi Badenoch for hacking into her website in order to spread Tory propaganda.
It was revealed yesterday that Ms Badenoch had admitted in an interview that she had once tampered with the website of an unnamed Labour MP.
Asked what the naughtiest thing she’d ever done was, the Conservative Vice-Chair for candidates said: “About 10 years ago I hacked into a Labour MP’s website and I changed all the stuff in there to say nice things about the Tories.
"This was a foolish prank over a decade ago, for which I apologise."
Ms Harman revealed on Twitter that she had been the victim of the attack, and had accepted the Tory MP's apology.
A Tory HQ source told the the Mail on Sunday that it was a case of “youthful exuberance” which occurred before Ms Badenoch was a candidate and did not constitute a serious offence.
The paper added that Tory chairman Brandon Lewis is standing full square behind the Saffron Walden MP.
Hacking into websites is a criminal offence which can carry a prison sentence of up to two years - but the Tories insisted guessing a password did not constitute “real hacking”.
But Mustafa al-Bassman, an Information Security Advisor and Computer Science researcher at University College London, has reported the Conservative MP to the UK’s National fraud and cyber reporting center, saying:
“I hope they do take this matter seriously, and apply the law equally to Tory MPs as they do to hacktivists who have gone to jail for less.”
He also linked the timing of Miss Badenoch’s hack with an article on the Guido Fawkes website titled ‘How to Hack Harriet Harman’, where a ‘hacker’ revealed the password details used to access the Labour MPs website.
PoliticsHome Newsletters
PoliticsHome provides the most comprehensive coverage of UK politics anywhere on the web, offering high quality original reporting and analysis: Subscribe
