SNP MP Stewart McDonald reveals he was hacked by Russians

A Scottish MP has revealed that his emails were hacked by a Russian spy service.

Stewart McDonald, the Scottish National Party (SNP) MP for Glasgow South, told the BBC his emails were stolen and he feared they would be made public after he fell victim to a phishing scam.

Mr McDonald told the broadcaster the incident had occurred in early January when a hacking group believed to be linked to Russia's intelligence services emailed him pretending to be a member of his staff.

After clicking on the document which was sent from the staff member's actual email address, the MP entered his login details into a login page.

Several days later the same staff member informed Mr McDonald he had been locked out of his personal email account because of suspicious activity - and that he had never sent him the email with the login page.

Mr McDonald told the BBC he decided to go public to warn others of the risks and limit the potential damage as he waited to see what the hackers would do with the stolen material.

Mr McDonald wrote on Twitter: “Over the past couple of weeks I have been dealing with a sophisticated and targeted spear phishing hack of my personal email account, and the personal email account belonging to one of my staff. These hacks are a criminal offence.

“Although attempts to hack my parliamentary account are continuous - as is the case for all MPs - these have not been successful.

“I want to assure constituents that their information is secure. My private account is not used for constituency or parliamentary business.

“Having spoken with officials from parliament's security team and also NCSC, I am confident that my inboxes are now secure. The private email account that was criminally hacked is now no longer actively used by me.”