May 7, (THEWILL)- Suspected hackers from China have gained access to the UK Ministry of Defence’s payroll information including names, bank details and some addresses of serving personnel, reservists and veterans.
While an investigation has been launched into how such sensitive information could have been accessed, the British Parliament is expected to be briefed about the cyber attack on Tuesday, by Defence Minister, Grant Shapps.
Although the Ministry of Defence has not confirmed which country was behind the hack, reports in UK media suspected China.
In response to the report, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said Beijing opposed and fought all forms of cyber attack, and rejected any attempt to use the issue of hacking for political ends to smear other countries.
“The relevant remarks from UK politicians are absurd”, he said, in response to British political reaction to the report.
Britain and China have increasingly sparred over the issue of hacking, with London saying in March that Chinese-state-backed hackers targeted the Electoral Commission and accessed the voting records of 40 million people. The commission attack was identified in October 2022, but the hackers had been able to access its systems for more than a year, since August 2021.
They had also targeted members of Parliament and staff from the White House and US defence agencies.
About 2,000 people are thought to have been affected, although the number of addresses that have been compromised is understood to be far fewer.
The cyber attack is thought to have been on a payroll system operated by a contractor external to the Ministry of Defence The system, which is the main mechanism for administering pay and expenses for service personnel, is separate from the wider Defence infrastructure. It was immediately taken offline.
