{"id":5071,"date":"2025-12-19T08:23:49","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T08:23:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/?p=5071"},"modified":"2025-12-19T08:23:49","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T08:23:49","slug":"uk-foreign-office-victim-of-cyber-attack-in-october-says-chris-bryant-cybercrime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/?p=5071","title":{"rendered":"UK Foreign Office victim of cyber-attack in October, says Chris Bryant | Cybercrime"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">The UK\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/politics\/foreign-commonwealth-and-development-office\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" data-component=\"auto-linked-tag\">Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office<\/a> was hacked in October, the minister Chris Bryant has said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Bryant, a trade minister in Keir Starmer\u2019s government, told Sky News there was a low risk to \u201cany individual\u201d from the cyber-attack.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Details of the hack emerged on Friday in a report by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thesun.co.uk\/news\/37681625\/china-hackers-stole-secret-files-foreign-office\/\" data-link-name=\"in body link\">the Sun<\/a> that claimed a Chinese hacker group was behind the cyber-attack.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">However, Bryant told broadcasters it was \u201cnot clear\u201d who perpetrated the attack and cautioned against speculation. \u201cThere certainly has been a hack at the FCDO and we\u2019ve been aware of that since October,\u201d Bryant told Sky News.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">\u201cAnd just as you will have been reporting earlier on this year on the cyber hack at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/business\/2025\/nov\/14\/jaguar-land-rover-loss-cyber-attack\" data-link-name=\"in body link\">JLR<\/a> [Jaguar Land Rover] and at Marks &amp; Spencer, and earlier last year, I think it was at the British Library, all of these are really important things for us to tackle and be aware of and prevent wherever possible.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">\u201cSome of the reporting has, I think, been a bit more speculation than accurate.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Bryant said: \u201cQuite often the investigation takes quite a long time to get down to that. We managed to close the hole, as it were, very quickly. There was a technical issue in one of our sites, I gather, and we\u2019re fairly confident that there\u2019s a low risk of any individual actually being affected by this.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">\u201cI know that some of the reports have said potentially various things could happen. I think that\u2019s a bit more speculation than is helpful. So I don\u2019t want to scaremonger about this. We are on top of it. And also, it\u2019s not entirely clear where this has come from. I know everybody\u2019s speculating about that as well. It\u2019s that that is not entirely clear either.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure data-spacefinder-role=\"inline\" data-spacefinder-type=\"model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.NewsletterSignupBlockElement\" class=\"dcr-173mewl\"><gu-island name=\"EmailSignUpWrapper\" priority=\"feature\" deferuntil=\"visible\" props=\"{&quot;index&quot;:8,&quot;listId&quot;:4156,&quot;identityName&quot;:&quot;morning-briefing&quot;,&quot;description&quot;:&quot;Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what\u2019s happening and why it matters&quot;,&quot;name&quot;:&quot;First Edition&quot;,&quot;frequency&quot;:&quot;Every weekday&quot;,&quot;successDescription&quot;:&quot;We'll send you First Edition every weekday&quot;,&quot;theme&quot;:&quot;news&quot;,&quot;idApiUrl&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/idapi.theguardian.com&quot;}\"\/><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"ff4290a1-8064-47b4-be39-f3c5c21f1dab\" data-spacefinder-role=\"richLink\" data-spacefinder-type=\"model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.RichLinkBlockElement\" class=\"dcr-47fhrn\"><gu-island name=\"RichLinkComponent\" priority=\"feature\" deferuntil=\"idle\" props=\"{&quot;richLinkIndex&quot;:9,&quot;element&quot;:{&quot;_type&quot;:&quot;model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.RichLinkBlockElement&quot;,&quot;prefix&quot;:&quot;Related: &quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;\u2018The frontline is everywhere\u2019: new MI6 head to warn of growing Russian threat&quot;,&quot;elementId&quot;:&quot;ff4290a1-8064-47b4-be39-f3c5c21f1dab&quot;,&quot;role&quot;:&quot;richLink&quot;,&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/uk-news\/2025\/dec\/15\/new-mi6-head-blaise-metreweli-speech-russia-threat&quot;},&quot;ajaxUrl&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/api.nextgen.guardianapps.co.uk&quot;,&quot;format&quot;:{&quot;design&quot;:0,&quot;display&quot;:0,&quot;theme&quot;:0}}\"\/><\/figure>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Asked if <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/china\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" data-component=\"auto-linked-tag\">China<\/a> was behind the attack, Bryant said: \u201cThat\u2019s not entirely clear.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">The Sun named Storm 1849 as the Chinese cyber gang responsible for the breach, which it said was understood to possibly include tens of thousands of visa details.<br \/>The group has been \u201caccused of targeting politicians and groups critical of the Chinese government\u201d, the newspaper said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">A government spokesperson told the Guardian: \u201cWe have been working to investigate a cyber incident. We take the security of our systems and data extremely seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>#Foreign #Office #victim #cyberattack #October #Chris #Bryant #Cybercrime<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The UK\u2019s Foreign, Commonwealth&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5072,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5071"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5071"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5071\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}