Chinese state-sponsored threat actors may have already breached Britain’s critical IT infrastructure, some government officials say.
According to Bloomberg, after coming to power last summer, some senior ministers in the Labor government were informed that hacking collectives linked to the Chinese government have most likely compromised the supply chains and computer infrastructure of certain “essential services” brought.
The publication quotes people familiar with the matter who agreed to speak on national security matters if their identities remain hidden.
China denies all allegations
Hackers are systemic and their attacks extend far wider and deeper than the government has decided to make public. In fact, successive governments decided not to make their knowledge on the subject fully public, it was said, mainly because the matter was under consideration by the new government.
The targets were not named and the Chinese embassy in Britain made no comment.
Western governments, as well as cybersecurity researchers, often attribute various cyber attacks to China and its state-sponsored groups. For example, earlier this month it was reported that a group known as Salt Typhoon hijacked government systems to breach several US broadband providers and gained access to the interception portals required by US law.
The breaches included US telecom giants Verizon and AT&T, as well as ISP Lumen Technologies, where hackers may have had access to a “vast collection of internet traffic” for months, including court-ordered wiretaps collected in the name of national security.
A major incident was also revealed last year, when Microsoft discovered a threat that was tracked when Storm-0558 accessed US government email accounts. Around July last year, the group had access to more than twenty Microsoft email accounts from various organizations in the West, including several US government agencies.
China has vehemently denied all allegations and instead described the US as the real cyber bully.
Via Bloomberg