Metropolitan Police apologises for Friday night hacking incident

London's Metropolitan Police has apologised for a Friday night hacking incident over the weekend in which a series of bizarre messages were posted through its official twitter account and on its website.

The incident affected the Met Police's Twitter account, emails, and the some web pages.

Met Police's twitter account is normally used to publish updates on current policing matters.

"XEON IS THE BEST FIGHTER IN SCOTLAND," one unusual tweet posted by hackers proclaimed. Another tweet challenged the police: "What you gonna do, phone the police?"

Several tweets, using foul language, were posted at intervals of a few minutes, most using seemingly random and capital letters. The attackers were also able to hack the Met Police's website and to send 'test' press releases. 

One message also called for a jailed rapper to be released. "Free Digga D," the message said.

Digga D, a ‘drill music' artist, aged 18, was jailed last year after he was caught (in 2017), along with other gang members, on the way to attack their rivals with an armoury of weapons, including baseball bats and machetes.

Naturally, US President Donald Trump didn't miss the opportunity to take one more swipe at his old friend, London Mayor Sadiq Khan, retweeting an image of the hacked Met Police account. 

With the incompetent Mayor of London, you will never have safe streets! https://t.co/pJqL1NjyvA

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 20, 2019

The Met Police later confirmed that they had been hacked.

"Our media team are working hard to delete the messages and ensure the security of the account. Please ignore any Tweets until we verify that it is back under official control," Superintendent Roy Smith tweeted after the incident.

New Scotland Yard's Twitter feed currently has 1.22 million followers.

After regaining control on its website and Twitter account, New Scotland Yard said in a statement that the issue was limited to MyNewsDesk, their press office's online provider.

A story published through MyNewsDesk automatically appears on the Met's Twitter account and website. The system also sends an email to people who have subscribed to receive news updates.

According to Met Police, the hackers carried out the attack by exploiting the MyNewsDesk system, although the internal IT infrastructure of the department was not impacted.

"We apologise to our subscribers and followers for the messages they have received," New Scotland Yard said.

"We are confident the only security issue relates to access to our MyNewsDesk account. We have begun making changes to our access arrangements to MyNewsDesk."

"We are assessing to establish what criminal offences have been committed," it added.

Following the hacking incident, it may be worth mentioning here that as many as 27,000 PCs at the Metropolitan Police were running "dangerous out of date" Windows XP in August 2016, despite IT modernisation programme.

In January last year, the department said that it would finish its Next Generation Desktop Windows XP migration project by May 2018.

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