China suspected of hacking UK armed forces payroll

China suspected of hacking UK armed forces payroll

British soldiers Sailors Air Force personnel reservists retired military up to 270,000 people could have had their names and Bank details hacked the government’s not confirming it but it’s convinced China is the culprit there are indications that a malign actor has compromised the Armed Forces payment network but I do want to reassure people that Ministry of Defense has already taken action removing the network offline taking it offline and making that people affected are supported the government’s ordered an independent investigation into how cyber security was breached at an outside contractor shared services connected who organized Ministry of Defense payroll payments experts say China would have hoped to find some potential spies in a vast troll I think it is very much classic by collecting all this data and putting it together aggregating with other data um you can start to make some quite interesting deduction about individuals and therefore if you’re targeting them from an intelligence point of view uh let’s let’s say that they go beyond just the bank account details that manage to get into those bank accounts you can start seeing well who’s in debt who’s um spending far too much money um who might want some money one MP who’s an army reservist was amongst those told their details might have been hacked his case having recently been told he’s amongst 40 MPS believed to have been hacked by China first I like to thank the minister for his call this morning it is a little frustrating to be told that one’s Bank details and National Insurance number are winging their way to Beijing or wherever they’ve gone if there is a state actor behind it we assume it’s China because China has form in stealing Mass uh data I’m sorry that he had to receive that uh phone call about what’s um happened it is possible and I can’t rule out that it’s attached to a country but as soon as I say that everyone assumes it therefore is attached to a country and I am not in a position to uh confirm that at this point simply because the work is required and it is incredibly detailed forensic work to get to that point China’s president XI is in France today fed by president macron on a trip to the Alps a sort of hospitality he last enjoyed in Britain under David Cameron’s Premiership some Tor MPS said today’s Revelation proved the case for putting X China in an enhanced tier of threat countries which would require all those working for China here to be registered why in Heaven’s name don’t we take the decision to place this malign actor into that enhanced place and then make sure we deal with them accordingly president G’s spokesman back in Beijing said British politicians allegations were totally absurd and China opposed cyber attacks experts say it conducts them on an industrial scale many much more dangerous than the mod hack any body who’s a bit shocked at this potential Chinese cyber activity yes it’s alarming but it’s by no means the worst no um not really I mean they may not even have got into people’s bank accounts if you aggregate it with all the other forms of um targeting that they’re doing through information then it then it might add to a relatively serious pot but I would still put that as possibly the third of of of the threats that are identified on of the Science and Technology the threat to your critical National infrastructure and then the threat to um know sensitive Personnel whether as a military intelligence or ministers or or whatever the defense secretary said at this stage he didn’t think the hacker had actually managed to steal material located but he apologized to all service Personnel left concerned about their payroll data

Rishi Sunak says a “malign actor” has broken into the armed forces payroll system, potentially compromising the details of more than a quarter of a million current and recently retired members of the military.
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Ministers declined to identify the culprit but many MPs blame China for the cyber attack – an accusation Beijing said was absurd.

As politicians returned to Westminster after last week’s local elections, the disturbing revelation dragged their attention away from analysing the results of those contests.
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