How a women’s ‘disdain for email guff’ stopped a Putin hack six years on

Dame Mapstone banned the use of phrases “I hope this finds you well and “I trust you find this useful” in emails and the wearing of corduroy to work for senior colleagues in 2016

Vladimir Putin delivers his speech in the southern Russian city of Volgograd (AP)

When Dame Sally Mapstone, the newly appointed principal of St Andrews University, banned her fellow academics from starting emails with “I hope this finds you well”, she did not expect it would one day ouwit hackers from the Russian state.

But six years later, the ban on the cliched phrase did just that when Phillips O’Brien, head of the university’s School of International Relations and one of the world’s foremost authorities on the war in Ukraine, received an email from a colleague that began with the outlawed phrase last week.

The apparent sender was his colleague Stephen Gethins, a professor in international relations, but O’Brien had his suspicions.

Gethins confirmed he had not sent the email and the university’s cybersecurity experts and the National Cyber Security Centre at GCHQ were alerted.

Dame Sally Mapstone became the principal of St Andrews University in 2016

The email contained a PDF attachment titled “Ukraine Report” but cybersecurity experts detected that it contained code that would have given hackers control of O’Brien’s email account.

Seaborgium, a group linked to Russian intelligence, are suspected to have targeted O’Brien for his work on the Russian military’s strategic weaknesses.

Dame Mapstone banned the use of phrases “I hope this finds you well and “I trust you find this useful” in emails and the wearing of corduroy to work for senior colleagues in 2016.

The university principal said she is “delighted” that the policies have in this instance “proven their worth.”

A St Andrews insider said: “Had it not been for Sally’s disdain for email guff, things might have turned out quite differently. The Russians obviously hadn’t done their homework properly.

“Everyone welcomed the no-nonsense clarity the principal has brought around email verbiage, but the corduroy thing has been harder for a few to get to grips with. There are some professors who have had to ditch half a wardrobe.”

Officials have warned that Iranian and Russian hackers have been “ruthlessly” trying to steal sensitive information from British journalists and politicians.

Last week, SNP MP and former defence spokesman Stewart McDonald confirmed that he was hacked in January and that the contents of his inbox had been stolen.