[bots]

The Labour Party says there has been a "sophisticated and large-scale cyber-attack" on its digital platforms.

Labour said the attack "failed" because of the party's "robust" security system and no data breach had occurred.

The Distributed Denial of Service attack floods computer servers with traffic to try to take it offline.

A Labour source told the BBC "tens of millions of attacks - mostly originating from Russia and Brazil" had been detected.

DDoS attacks direct huge amounts of internet traffic at a target in an effort to overwhelm computer servers, causing their software to crash.

They are often carried out via a network of hijacked computers and other internet-connected devices known as a botnet, the owners of which may be unaware their equipment is involved.

DDoS attacks are not normally recognised as being a hack as they do not involve breaking into a target's systems to insert malware.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2019-50388879