Chinese hackers steal about 270,000 records of British military

Banking information containing the names, bank details and residential addresses of current and former military personnel was stolen. The list of victims even includes a member of parliament and veterans who left the service in 2018. The information leak came from the private contractor SSCL.

UK Defence Secretary Grant Shapps said that the leak was not necessarily linked to Chinese government agencies and could be the work of an individual hacker, but other officials involved were less forthcoming.

It is believed that the hackers have had access to the system for some time, possibly weeks, but there is no direct evidence that data has been stolen or altered. At the very least, the military's salary payments were still being made.

China's official response was not long in coming. A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in London said the information was false and called for an end to the spread of information that China posed a threat to the UK.

At the same time, the data of special forces and secret service agents was not leaked because their financial information is processed by another operator.

In August 2021, Chinese hackers were already detected trying to influence the UK election.

As a reminder, Russian troops use digital espionage methods against both the Ukrainian military and civilians in the occupied territory. For example, the Russians have been developing spyware that intercepts traffic from Starlink satellites, and there is no information on whether they have been successful in this.

Source: The Guardian