Beijing was enraged when a top British legislator claimed on Tuesday that China was most likely responsible for a significant cyberattack on the identities and bank account information of UK military personnel.
The defence ministry’s third-party payroll system was the target, according to MP and former minister Tobias Ellwood, who also noted that it had the characteristics of a Chinese operation.
“Targeting the names of the payroll system and service personnel’s bank details — this does point to China because it can be as part of a plan, a strategy to see who might be coerced,”, the ex-soldier and former chairman of a parliamentary defence committee, told BBC radio.
Defence Secretary Grant Shapps was due to give details of the data breach to parliament later on Tuesday.
Shapps’s cabinet colleague Mel Stride confirmed there had been an attack on a system run by an outside firm but did not elaborate.
It’s thought that a limited number of active and retired military personnel’s personal addresses were also leaked.
Stride stated that the defense ministry had moved “very swiftly” to take the database offline, in response to Sky News television, which broke the story of the leak initially.
However, he noted, the administration was not now accusing Beijing.
“That is an assumption… We are not saying that at this precise moment,” he added.
But he added that the government viewed Beijing’s government as an “epoch- defining challenge”.
“Our eyes are wide open when it comes to China,” Stride said.
