The Ministry of Defence has been targeted in a cyberattack on a third party payroll system including the details of tens of thousands of British armed forces and veterans, according to reports.
The MoD has been working over the last three days to understand the scale of the recently-discovered hack, and MPs will be informed officially in parliament on Tuesday afternoon, Sky News reported.
China’s foreign ministry appeared to deny claims that Beijing was behind the attack, saying: “China firmly opposes and fights all forms of cyberattacks. China also rejects use of this politically to smear other countries.”
But senior Tory Tobias Ellwood alleged that the targeting of a payroll system “points to China” and could be part of “strategy to see who might be coerced”.
Government minister Mel Stride said the MoD had “acted very swiftly” to take the database offline, adding: “It's a third-party database and certainly not one run directly by the MoD.”
It comes after Chinese “state-affiliated actors” were blamed by the government for two “malicious” cyberattack campaigns in the UK between 2021 and 2022.