- The United Kingdom confirms the hacking of the Foreign Office system in October and the possible theft of data
- Risk for people considered short; investigation continues, attribution unclear
- Chinese state actors suspected but not officially confirmed
The UK government has confirmed speculation that classified government servers were hacked and accessed by threat actors, as brought to light by former senior adviser Dominic Cummings.
The reports assessed (as did Cummings) that Chinese state-sponsored threat actors broke into a system belonging to the UK government in October and possibly stole data such as visa information.
Now Trade Minister Chris Bryant has confirmed the findings on BBC Breakfast but played down the significance of the hit. According to the BBC, a threat actor broke into a system operated by the Foreign Office, on behalf of the Home Office. The theft was resolved “fairly quickly” and a further investigation is currently underway.
Part of modern life
Bryant would not confirm or deny that it was a Chinese threat actor, saying investigators “just don’t know yet” who is responsible.
He downplayed individuals, insisting; “We think it’s a pretty low risk that people have been compromised or affected.”
He also said that “government facilities will always potentially be attacked” and that investigators are now “working through the implications of what this is.”
“This is a part of modern life that we have to address and confront,” he concluded.
For years, government agencies and private cybersecurity organizations in the West have warned of large-scale, organized, coordinated cyberattacks coming from China. Multiple threat actors, including Volt Typhoon, Salt Typhoon, APT27, and Mustang Panda, have reportedly been targeting critical infrastructure, telecommunications companies, governments, think tanks, and journalists, in an attempt to disrupt key organizations and steal valuable information.
In its first term, the Trump administration even banned Huawei from building the country’s 5G infrastructure, saying the Chinese government could force the company to install backdoors for eavesdropping and cyberespionage.
China has always vehemently denied such accusations and instead claims that the United States is the world’s biggest “cyber bully.”
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