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Work and Pensions Minister Mel Stride said the attack targeted a system run by an external company but it was still an “extremely serious matter”.
Former minister Tobias Ellwood said the target was a third-party payroll system used by the Ministry of Defense and there were indications the cyber attack may have been carried out by China.
“The targeting of names in the payroll system and the bank details of service personnel points to China as it may be part of a plan, a strategy to see who might be affected,” the ex-soldier and former chairman of the parliament’s defense committee told BBC radio.
In some cases, the data breach is believed to have involved the personal addresses of serving and former members of the armed forces.
Mr Stride told Sky News, which first reported the breach, that the Ministry of Defense acted “very quickly” to disable the database. But the government is not currently blaming Beijing, he said. “It’s an assumption (…) we’re not saying that at this moment,” he added.
In March, the UK government accused China of targeting the electoral commission and lawmakers’ email accounts. The attack on the Election Commission was set for 2022. in October, but hackers were first able to gain access to the commission’s systems more than a year ago. China dismissed such accusations as “malicious slander”.
On Tuesday, China also called accusations that it was responsible for a large-scale cyber attack on Britain’s Ministry of Defense “total nonsense”. “The statements made by relevant British politicians are complete nonsense,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said, adding: “China has always stood firm and fought against all types of cyber attacks.”
Defense Secretary Grant Shapps will give parliament more details about the Ministry of Defense data breach later on Tuesday.
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