UK Foreign Office systems hacked by suspected Chinese group Reports

London, Dec 19 (PTI) The UK Foreign Office systems containing sensitive documents were targeted by suspected Chinese hackers a few months ago, according to UK media reports on Friday.
     UK Trade minister Chris Bryant told ‘Sky News’ that it is “not entirely clear” who is responsible for the hack. However, ‘The Sun’ newspaper reported that a Chinese group of hackers known as Storm-1849 targeted Foreign Office servers and had accessed information relating to visa details, with “thousands” of confidential documents and data stolen.
     “There certainly has been a hack at the FCDO [Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office], and we've been aware of that since October,” said Bryant.
     “We managed to close the hole, as it were, very quickly,” he said.
     Pointing to other recent high-profile cyber-attacks in the UK of Marks and Spencer, Jaguar Land Rover and the British Library, the minister said: “All of these are really important things for us to tackle and be aware of and prevent wherever possible.
     “Some of the reporting has, I think, been a bit more speculation than accurate.”
     Bryant pointed to a “technical issue” in one of the FCDO sites that caused the recent hacking concern.
     “And we're fairly confident that there's a low risk of any individual actually being affected by this. I know that some of the reports have said, potentially, various things could happen. I think that that's a bit more speculation than is helpful. So, I don't want to scaremonger about this. We are on top of it.
     “And also it's not entirely clear where this has come from. I know everybody's speculating about that as well. That is not entirely clear either,” he added.
     The Opposition Conservative Party accused the Labour government of failing to protect the country against interference from China.
     “China undermines our security, institutions and democracy but Labour is failing to protect Britain from China's foreign interference in our country,” Priti Patel, UK shadow foreign secretary, said in a social media post.
     “Starmer kowtows to China at every opportunity and cannot be trusted to protect our national interest,” she said.
     According to ‘The Sun’ report, Storm-1849 is a China-linked espionage outfit identified by Western agencies as part of Beijing’s state-aligned hacking apparatus. The group has been accused of targeting politicians, parliamentary staff and organisations critical of the Chinese government, using phishing emails and cloud access to harvest sensitive political information.
     “We have been working to investigate a cyber incident. We take the security of our systems and data extremely seriously,” a UK government spokesperson said.

(This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)