British Prime Minister Keir Starmer was forced to give up his personal email account shortly after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The reason was the fear that Moscow had carried out a hacking attack.
This was reported by Politico, citing the article “Get In: The Inside Story of Labour Under Starmer”, which was written by reporters Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund.
It is noted that in 2022, the UK's National Cyber Security Centre informed the then opposition leader that his personal email account may have been hacked. The hacking organization that may have been responsible for this was linked to the Kremlin.
Because of this, Starmer's then-head of office, Jill Cuthbertson, ordered staff not to send emails to the Labour leader under any circumstances. She did not explain what these measures were related to, the publication emphasized.
According to the reporters' article, Starmer later changed his email address and added two-factor authentication to his account.
The publication recalled that Starmer is not the first British politician to fall victim to hackers. When former Prime Minister Liz Truss was the UK's Foreign Secretary, her phone was hacked. In addition, Russian hackers attacked the email account of the former head of the MI6 intelligence agency, Richard Dearlove.