NOAH KEATE AND STEFAN BOSCIA
Britain's Ministry of Defense (MoD) has been hit by a suspected Chinese cyber-attack that left the personal details of tens of thousands of troops exposed.
The hack targeted a contractor-run MoD payroll system which includes names and bank details of current and former armed forces members.
Every troop apart from the U.K.'s special forces was affected, amounting to around 270,000 people. The breach also includes a few thousand home addresses.
Updating the House of Commons Tuesday afternoon, Defense Secretary Grant Shapps stopped short of directly accusing China of the attack. Beijing has angrily denied involvement.
But Sky News, which first broke the story, reported that Beijing is indeed in the frame. Previous public finger-pointing at China has come after months of work by U.K. security agencies. Officials told POLITICO's London Playbook newsletter their work had not cleared the high bar for public attribution.
No comments:
Post a Comment