UK Defence Ministry targeted in cyberattack: Minister
Al Jazeera
Third-party payroll system with names and bank details of armed forces staff hacked, reports say.
Britain’s Ministry of Defence has been the target of a large-scale cyberattack, a government minister confirmed to British media.
On Tuesday, Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride told Sky News, which first reported the hack, that the attack was on a system run by an outside firm but was still a “very significant matter”.
It targeted a third-party payroll system used by the Defence Ministry and included the names and bank details of current and former service personnel of the armed forces, Sky News and the BBC reported.
Defence Secretary Grant Shapps is expected to give further details to parliament later in the day.
“The MoD [Ministry of Defence] has acted very swiftly to take this database offline. It’s a third-party database and certainly not one run directly by the MoD,” Stride told Sky. The ministry first discovered the cyberattack several days back.
