Pierluigi Paganini
July 28, 2015
The news could appear disconcerting, computers used by MPs, peers and staff tried to access restricted porn sites, the Telegraph reported almost 250,000 attempts to visit porn websites were made on parliamentary computers in 2014.
The number of accesses is worrying, the parliamentary computers accessed 42,000 times to web pages containing pornographic content in April, this means that the number of daily access was more than 1,300 a day. According to the newspaper, in October the expert noticed another peek in the access porn websites with more than 30,000 attempts. In the following table the hits per month:
| Month | Requests |
|---|---|
| Jan-13 | 25865 |
| Feb-13 | 27094 |
| Mar-13 | 27203 |
| Apr-13 | 68670 |
| May-13 | 23835 |
| Jun-13 | 17943 |
| Jul-13 | 20492 |
| Aug-13 | 14962 |
| Sep-13 | 29364 |
| Oct-13 | 14752 |
| Nov-13 | 74584 |
| Dec-13 | 10138 |
| Jan-14 | 19730 |
| Feb-14 | 19504 |
| Mar-14 | 23747 |
| Apr-14 | 42207 |
| May-14 | 13821 |
| Jun-14 | 14842 |
| Jul-14 | 14948 |
| Aug-14 | 19169 |
| Sep-14 | 9462 |
| Oct-14 | 30801 |
| Nov-14 | 19348 |
| Dec-14 | 20297 |
In the previous year there were 350,000 hits to restricted websites according to The Telegraph, which represents more than 800 per day. The disconcerting data was released by Palace of Westminster IT chiefs in response to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request and disclosed to Express.co.uk.
“Some of these ‘visits’ are no doubt the product of pop-ups beyond anybody’s control, but the number is absolutely staggering.” said Jonathan Isaby, Chief Executive of the Taxpayers’ Alliance. “One would hope that those attempting to access these sites at Parliament could keep their extra-curricular activities safely within their own four walls, as it’s not an appropriate use of time when it’s on the taxpayers’ tab.”
In response to the disclosure of the data, a House of Commons spokeswoman declared: “We do not consider the data to provide an accurate representation of the number of purposeful requests made by network users due to the variety of ways in which websites can be designed to act, react and interact and due to the potential operation of third party software.”
It is curious that the same Britain Parliament is very active in the censure of hardcore porn online and in the deep web, recognizing in the adult content a threat to children.
“For a lot of children, watching hardcore pornography is in danger of becoming a rite of passage” said in 2013 David Cameron. “I will do whatever it takes to keep our children safe.”
From a cyber security perspective, this means that a threat actor that wants to compromise British parliament computers have a good chance of success by compromising porn sites accessed by the politicians, for example by running watering hole attacks.
(Security Affairs – porn sites, British Parliament)
