Security threats Toolkit

Manchester Police come under cyberattack

Andy McCue silicon.com

Published: 03 May 2005 15:40 BST

A UK police chief has been bombarded with thousands of threatening emails in a denial of service attack aimed at crippling his force's computer systems.

At one point just before the bank holiday weekend, 2,000 emails an hour were being sent to Greater Manchester Police (GMP) chief constable Michael Todd.

The attacker spoofed some of the email addresses to show US president George Bush as the sender, while other emails warned that the attacker knew where Todd and his family lived.

GMP said the attack was an attempt to crash the force's computer systems through the volume of emails being sent. It has launched an investigation.

A statement issued said: "GMP has been subject to a cyberattack using emails in an attempt to disrupt GMP's service to the public. However, safeguards in place were effective and prevented any disruption to the force."

Cambridgeshire Police were subject to a similar DoS attack almost two years ago when thousands of spam emails told recipients their credit cards were about to be charged for an iPod they had just bought unless they phoned a customer service number.

The customer service number turned out to be the switchboard at Cambridgeshire police, which was deluged by thousands of people who had received the hoax email, although the culprit was eventually tracked down and arrested