Former Conservative cabinet minister Sir David Davis has revealed that his parliamentary website was taken down following a suspected cyber attack, with the MP claiming much of the malicious traffic originated from China.
Addressing the House of Commons on Monday evening, the Goole and Pocklington MP said his IPSA-provided website was hit with 142 million requests in just 24 hours, consuming nearly 800 gigabytes of data. Attackers inserted malicious links that redirected visitors to Southeast Asian gambling sites.
"We took it down immediately," Davis told the Commons. "It was restored but then came under sustained distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, traceable to China."
DDoS attacks flood a website with internet traffic to overwhelm it and make it inaccessible. Davis described the incident as "a direct interference with a Member of Parliament carrying out his duties."
The website initially showed a maintenance message but has since been restored. Deputy Speaker Nus Ghani advised MPs to contact the Parliamentary Security Department for guidance on protecting against cyber threats.