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UK slams China attack

Document Cited in Related
Vincent
Published date26 March 2024
Publication titleEvening Chronicle
Beijing has been publicly blamed by the UK Government for targeting the Electoral Commission and also being behind a campaign of online "reconnaissance" aimed at the email accounts of MPs and peers

A front company and two individuals involved in the China state-affiliated APT31 hacking group have been sanctioned in response to the malicious cyber activity against the parliamentarians. Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron said the actions were "completely unacceptable" and he had raised the issue with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi.

Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden, who announced the measures in a Commons statement, said: "The UK will not tolerate malicious cyber activity targeting our democratic institutions."

The Electoral Commission attack was identified in October 2022 but the hackers had been able to access the commission's systems containing the details of tens of millions of voters for more than a year by that point. The registers held at the time include the name and address of anyone in the UK who was registered to vote between 2014 and 2022, as well as the names of those registered as overseas voters.

The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), part of GCHQ, said it was likely Chinese stateaffiliated hackers stole emails and data from the...

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