Justice Secretary has Twitter account hacked

The Justice Secretary appeared to have her X, formerly Twitter, account hacked on Wednesday night.

A post from the official account for Shabana Mahmood appeared shortly before 8pm claiming that the channel had been compromised.

The message appeared at 7.53pm and had been deleted by 7.55pm.

It read: “THIS IS HACKED ACCOUNT!!!! INTRODUCING $HACKED ON SOLANA. On each account we hack we publish the token address so we pump it and make profits together.”

A long code comprising a mix of letters and numbers appeared, followed by the text “BUY NOW!”

Chris Elmore, Labour MP for Bridgend and Porthcawl and Carolyn Harris, Labour MP for Neath and Swansea East, were also targeted with the same message being shared on their X profiles.

The apparent hack is likely to raise questions about how a Cabinet minister’s account on the platform could seemingly be successfully targeted.

Ms Mahmood is responsibile for dealing with the overcrowding crisis in British jails.

Other hacking incidents

Last year, Chris Heaton-Harris, the then Northern Ireland secretary, apologised after his own account was intercepted. He made a statement after the hacker or hackers posted a series of offensive messages.

Jeremy Corbyn, the independent MP for Islington North, also had his account accessed when he was the leader of Labour.

The hackers posted messages including “here we, here we, here we f---ing go” and “Davey Cameron is a pie”, which were subsequently deleted.

Gillian Keegan, a former education secretary, also had her account accessed over Christmas in 2022.

X, formerly Twitter, has become a go-to means of communication for politicians. Sir Keir Starmer, Nigel Farage and Rishi Sunak all have more than a million followers on the platform.

The Ministry of Justice was contacted for comment.