Email scam targets 40 Dutch members of parliament

Dutch MPs were the intended victims of a phishing scam this week, police in The Hague reported Thursday. An investigation is underway. The email scam was sent to the official work addresses of “40-something” MPs in the Tweede Kamer, the lower house of Dutch parliament, police spokesman Thomas Aling told NL Times. The email was made to appear like an internally transmitted message, pointing recipients to enter personal information on a site claiming to offer increased email safety. Police believe that a television show is responsible for the attack. “Several points are pointing that way,” said the spokesman. But when asked what technical evidence led to the preliminary conclusion, he refused to comment because the investigation is ongoing. The spokesman also refused to comment when asked if the show was, as de Telegraaf has suggested, located in the media hub of Hilversum. No email recipients are known to have fallen for the scam. Access to the phishing site has been blocked from the Tweede Kamer’s network. The police praised parliament’s security, who had intercepted the emails. “They did the right thing. They look very quickly and they saw there was phishing,” the spokesman told NL Times.