Chinese state-sponsored threat actors may have already breached critical IT infrastructure in the UK, some government officials are saying.
According to Bloomberg, some senior ministers in the Labour government were notified, after taking power last summer, that hacking collectives with ties to the Chinese government most likely compromised supply chains and computer infrastructure belonging to certain “vital services”.
The publication is citing people familiar with the matter, who agreed to speak of matters of national security if their identities remain hidden.
China denies all accusations
Hackers are systemic, and their attacks reach a lot wider and deeper than the government decided to make public. In fact, successive governments decided not to go fully public with their knowledge on this topic, it was said, especially since the matter was being considered by the new administration.
The targets were not named, and the Chinese embassy in the UK did not comment.
Western governments, as well as cybersecurity researchers, often attribute different cyberattacks on 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 American broadband providers and gained access to the interception portals required by US law.
Among the breached were US telecoms 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.
Also, last year a major incident was unveiled, when Microsoft discovered a threat actor tracked as Storm-0558 was able to access US government email accounts. Around July last year, the group accessed more than two dozen Microsoft email accounts belonging to various organizations in the West, including several US government agencies.
China has vehemently denied all the accusations, instead describing the US as the real cyber-bully.
Via Bloomberg