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Foreign Office data has been compromised by hackers, a minister has confirmed to Sky News, but he said the government is “fairly confident” that no individual data has been accessed.
Trade minister Sir Chris Bryant told Sky’s Mornings with Jones and Melbourne that the government first became aware of the hack in October, and was now “on top of it”.
Sky News understands that the data stolen was on systems operated on the Home Office’s behalf by the Foreign Office, which detected the breach.
The Sun reported last night that a Chinese groups of hackers known as Storm 1949 targeted Foreign Office servers and had accessed information relating to visa details, with “thousands” of confidential documents and data stolen.
But the minister told Sky News that it is “not entirely clear” who is responsible for the hack, and he could share “remarkably little detail”.
The Conservatives are accusing ministers of failing to protect the UK from Chinese interference.
Sir Chris said: “There certainly has been a hack at the FCDO [Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office], and we’ve been aware of that since October.”
Pointing to high-profile hacks this year of Marks and Spencer, Jaguar Land Rover, and the British Library, the minister added: “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.”
He said he could share “remarkably little” in the way of facts about the hack because “quite often the investigation takes quite a long time”.
“We managed to close the hole, as it were, very quickly,” Sir Chris said.
“It was a technical issue in one of our sites, I gather. 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.”
Conservative shadow foreign secretary Dame Priti Patel shared a report that said the hack was Chinese and wrote on X: “China undermines our security, institutions and democracy but Labour is failing to protect Britain from China’s foreign interference in our country.
“[Sir Keir] Starmer kowtows to China at every opportunity and cannot be trusted to protect our national interest.”
