British police social media accounts hit by cyber attack

Series of bizarre tweets and emails sent from the account of the UK's Metropolitan Police

MB5547 a person looks at Facebook and Twitter logos on a computer screen
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Britain's largest police force suffered an embarrassing cyber attack on Friday night.

The Metropolitan Police's website was hit by hackers who posted a series of bizarre messages, including some about a rapper and a missing child.

The messages were sent from the force's verified Twitter account, which has over 1m followers.

The incident began at 11.30pm on Friday.

Scotland Yard confirmed that its website had "been subject to unauthorised access".

The force said it used an online provider called MyNewsDesk to issue news releases and said "unauthorised messages" appeared on its website, Twitter account and in emails sent to subscribers.