Hundreds of police officers and members of the public have had their personal details stolen by hackers.

Sussex Police is investigating the security breach of its external website and has contacted around 270 people who have been affected.

Three breaches have been identified within a contained area of the website and could possibly be linked.

Amaraghosha Carter, joint Head of IT for Surrey and Sussex Police, said: "A full investigation is underway to identify the source of the breaches and their impact.

"Those responsible have obtained email addresses of a number of officers and personal email addresses of some members of the public who have used the services of our website.

"Communications staff have contacted around 270 people who may have been affected, in particular to give them security advice in relation to their passwords for our community messaging service.

"Our website is entirely separate to those systems used to investigate crime. The activity has not impacted on any other force IT, web or telephony systems and operational response is unaffected. There has been no impact on our service to the public.”

Sussex Police said measures were being put in place to ensure the security of the website was not compromised further.

Mr Carter added: "Work is being carried out to ensure that all our IT systems remain resilient and secure and an investigation is under way to find those responsible."

If anyone has any concerns they should contact Sussex Police on 101 or email 101@sussex.pnn.police.uk quoting serial 1483 of December 23.