UK Suspects Chinese Involvement in Foreign Office Cyberattack
The UK Foreign Office was hacked in October in an attack that British officials suspect was carried out by Chinese state-backed actors.
The breach was first reported by the Sun newspaper, which said that a Beijing-linked group had accessed thousands of documents. In a round of broadcast interviews on Friday, Trade Minister Chris Bryant confirmed there had been an attack, but said there was a low risk to individuals.
“We believe that we managed to close the loophole as it were, or the gap, pretty quickly,” Bryant told BBC TV. “We think that it’s a fairly low risk that individuals will have been compromised or affected.”
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Bryant said he couldn’t confirm the authorship of the hack or whether there are any Chinese connections. But British officials speaking on condition of anonymity said actors linked to the Chinese state are suspected of being behind it, though they are not yet ready to make a formal attribution.
“We have been working to investigate a cyber incident,” the UK government said in a statement. “We take the security of our systems and data extremely seriously.”
The incident — which Bryant said has been under investigation since October — comes at a time when the UK is trying to recalibrate its relationship with the Asian power after a cooling in recent years linked to other hacks, espionage, and Beijing’s crackdown on democracy in Hong Kong, a former British colony.
The Labour government’s official policy is to cooperate, compete and challenge China, in a bid to reap the benefits of trade with the world’s second largest economy while guarding against security threats.
While the Prime Minister Keir Starmer just this week criticized the conviction of former Hong Kong media mogul Jimmy Lai, he’s still set to travel to China on his first official visit as premier next month.
“It is absolutely clear that Jimmy Lai has been targeted by the authorities,” Starmer told the Hose of Commons on Wednesday. “It is wrongful, and I call it out. It is important that we continue to engage, so that we can raise this issue with those counterparts.”
Another point of tension has been repeated UK delays over a final decision on whether or not to approve a proposed new Chinese Embassy in London. The mission is set to be the biggest in Europe, but would be close to the heart of London’s City financial center and above sensitive fiber-optic cables.
October’s hack follows a series of other breaches. UK firms Jaguar Land Rover and Marks & Spencer were both hit earlier in the year in hacks that halted key services. Referencing these two cyberattacks, Bryant told the BBC that they are now a “part of modern life that we have to tackle and deal with.”
Photograph: The Foreign and Commonwealth Office, left, and the Treasury, right, stand in London, U.K., on Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2019. Photo credit: Luke MacGregor/Bloomberg