Amber Rudd has been lured into a fake email exchange with an internet hoaxer who passed himself off as the Prime Minister's new head of communications.
The prankster was the same who targeted members of President Donald Trump's team.
The hoaxer, who uses the name "Sinon Reborn", set up a fake email address to pose as Robbie Gibb, Theresa May's chief of communications.
The hoaxer then emailed Ms Rudd's publicly available parliamentary email address and started a conversation with the Home Secretary when she replied to him from her personal account.
At some point during the exchange, which took place on 7 July, Ms Rudd realised something was up, according to a transcript.
Asked what projects she was working on, she replied: "Well, as you can imagine a few things on the agenda but getting tough on people impersonating others is definitely up there."
The British-based hacker claimed he previously posed as former White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, tricking former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci into an exchange.
Speaking to The Guardian, he said he was able to speak to Mrs Rudd "with relative ease on her personal email address".
"I replied again saying: 'Don't you think you should be more aware of cybersecurity if you are home secretary?' and I never got a reply from that."
A Home Office source confirmed the exchange, adding: "The Home Secretary does not use her personal email address to discuss Government business.
"As the email exchange shows, she rapidly established that this was a hoax and had only exchanged pleasantries up to that point."
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