The Chinese State hacked the Ministry of Defense, Sky News understands.
Parliamentarians will be informed on Tuesday about a massive data breach involving the defense Ministrytargeting service personnel.
The government will not release the name of the country involved, but Sky News understands it is China.
The Chinese state will be accused of two or three attempts to hack Ministry of Defense employees – including personnel.
The cyber attack occurred on a payroll system with current service personnel, some employees and some veterans. To a large extent, it is names and bank details that have been exposed.
All salaries will be paid this month.
The contractor’s system is not connected to the Ministry of Defense’s main IT systems and has been taken offline with a review launched.
The Ministry of Defense has been working quickly over the past 72 hours to understand the scale of the hack.
This could raise questions about whether other countries with difficult relations with China will want to share sensitive information with the UK.
This comes less than two months after China’s “state-affiliated actors” were held accountable by the government for two “malicious” cyber attack campaigns in the UK.
Delivering a speech in the House of Commons, Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden revealed the two incidents involved an attack on the Election Commission – responsible for overseeing elections and political finances – in 2021, and targeted attacks against China-skeptic MPs.
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This story originally appeared on News.sky.com read the full story
