The U.Ok. authorities has blamed China for a 2021 cyberattack that compromised the non-public data of thousands and thousands of U.Ok. voters.
In an announcement to lawmakers in Parliament on Monday, U.Ok. deputy prime minister Oliver Dowden attributed the 2021 data breach on the Electoral Fee to hackers working for the Chinese language authorities.
Dowden instructed lawmakers that the U.Ok. authorities “won’t hesitate to take swift and strong actions wherever the Chinese language authorities threatens the UK’s pursuits.”
It’s the primary time the UK has attributed the breach for the reason that cyberattack was first disclosed in 2023.
The Electoral Fee, which maintains copies of the U.Ok. register of residents eligible to vote, mentioned on the time hackers took the names and addresses of an estimated 40 million U.Ok. residents, together with those that have been registered to vote between 2014 and 2022 and abroad voters. The data breach started as early as 2021 however wasn’t detected till a 12 months later.
In an announcement Monday, the U.Ok. Nationwide Cyber Safety Centre (NCSC) mentioned it’s “extremely seemingly” that the Chinese language hackers accessed and exfiltrated emails and information from the electoral register in the course of the hack.
The NCSC mentioned Chinese language intelligence may use the info for “large-scale espionage and transnational repression of perceived dissidents and critics within the U.Ok.”
When reached by information.killnetswitch, a spokesperson for the NCSC declined to attribute the Electoral Fee’s data breach to any particular China-backed risk actor.
Dowden mentioned {that a} separate tried cyberattack by a China-backed hacking group focused the e-mail accounts of U.Ok. lawmakers in 2021, however that parliamentary authorities mitigated the tried breaches earlier than any e mail accounts have been compromised.
The U.Ok. didn’t say which lawmakers’ e mail accounts have been focused, however the NCSC mentioned a lot of the affected lawmakers have been “distinguished in calling out the malign exercise of China.”
Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese language Embassy within the U.Ok., denied the allegations, and mentioned that China “doesn’t encourage, assist or condone assaults launched by hackers,” however added that China will “resort to lawful strategies” to counter cyberattacks.
“The malicious actions we now have uncovered right now are indicative of a wider sample of unacceptable behaviour we’re seeing from China state-affiliated actors towards the UK and world wide,” mentioned Paul Chichester, director of operations at NCSC. “The concentrating on of our democratic system is unacceptable and the NCSC will proceed to name out cyber actors who pose a risk to the establishments and values that underpin our society.”
The Biden administration, additionally Monday, accused a number of Chinese language hackers of involvement with APT31’s efforts to focus on U.S.-based corporations. In 2020, Google security researchers linked APT31 to the concentrating on of e mail accounts belonging to the Trump and Biden presidential campaigns.
Final month, a set of leaked paperwork from Chinese language authorities contractor I-Quickly revealed how the non-public contractor targets and hacks different governments on the request of Chinese language authorities.
