UK Ministry of Defence Hacked by China, Over Quarter Million Armed Service Members Impacted: Reports

Communist China is suspected of being behind a major hack of Britain’s Ministry of Defence in which over a quarter of a million military service personnel may have had their private details compromised.

All of Britain’s armed forces servicemen and women, including active members as well as reservists and veterans, amounting to an estimated 270,000 people may have been compromised in a hack of the Ministry of Defence’s payroll.

The MoD has established a crisis response unit over the past three days after the suspected hack. Although the government has yet to formally accuse Communist China, multiple media outlets, including Sky News, have cited government sources claiming that Beijing is believed to be behind the cyberattack.

According to The Sun, Britain’s largest-circulation newspaper, the MoD also plans to hire contractors to scan the dark web to monitor if any information contained in the hack begins appearing for sale.

Former chairman of the defence select committee, Conservative MP Tobias Ellwood suggested that the information gleaned could enable the communist country to exert pressure on members of the military to give up secrets in exchange for “financial gain — perhaps even unaware China sits behind this”.

For its part, the Chinese foreign ministry denied involvement, saying that Beijing “firmly opposes and fights all forms of cyber attacks” and “rejects the use of this issue politically to smear other countries”. This claim would be remarkable if true, given the frequency with which European governments accuse China and its agents of attempting to hack their computer databases.

The suspected Chinese hack comes just weeks after the British government publicly accused Beijing of the 2021 hack on the UK’s Electoral Commission, which reportedly compromised the personal details of up to 40 million voters in the country. The UK also claimed that China was behind “attempted reconnaissance activity” on four parliamentary accounts in a separate 2021 incident.

Former Tory leader and co-founder of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) Sir Iain Duncan Smith, who has been personally sanctioned by China, told Sky News: “This is yet another example of why the UK government must admit that China poses a systemic threat to the UK and change the integrated review to reflect that.

“No more pretence, it is a malign actor, supporting Russia with money and military equipment, working with Iran and North Korea in a new axis of totalitarian states.”

Executive Director of IPAC Luke de Pulford added: “This has to represent a turning point. These are actions suited to hybrid warfare, not the ‘mutual respect’ of which Beijing and London regularly boast.

“China under Xi Jinping is not a friend. Remove the blinkers. Our China strategy has failed. We need some realism fast.”

Despite the accusations of major hacks in Britain as well as the human rights violations in mainland China and the former British colony of Hong Kong, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has refused to officially label the communist country a “threat” to the UK.

Sunak, who has long argued for closer trade ties with Beijing, has come under criticism for his ties to China, with the business of his wife’s family, Indian tech-giant Infosys, having significant operations within China.

Sunak’s Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt is also tied to the communist country by marriage, with his wife previously presenting for a Chinse state-run television programme, which the Mail on Sunday said: “Featured reports on the effectiveness of China’s pandemic response and about the beauty of the Xinjiang region without mentioning it is the site of ‘re-education’ camps for its persecuted Muslim Uighur population.”

It is perhaps unsurprising then that Chinese state media essentially endorsed Sunak to replace Boris Johnson in the 2022 Conservative Party leadership contest, with the Beijing mouthpiece Global Times describing Sunak as the only candidate with a “pragmatic view of developing balanced ties with China.”

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