Chinese threat actors may have already breached UK critical infrastructure, ministers told

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Government is saying very little on the matter

A group of 7 hackers, 6 slightly blurred in the background and one in the foreground, all wearing black with hoods pulled up over their heads. You cannot see their faces. The hacker in the foreground sits with an open laptop in front of them. The background, behind the hackers, is a Chinese flag
(Image credit: Getty Images)

Chinese state-sponsored threat actors may have already breached critical IT infrastructure in the UK, some government officials have claimed..

After taking power, some senior ministers in the Labour government were notified hacking collectives with ties to the Chinese government most likely compromised supply chains and computer infrastructure belonging to certain “vital services”.

Bloomberg, 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.

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Sead Fadilpašić

Sead is a seasoned freelance journalist based in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He writes about IT (cloud, IoT, 5G, VPN) and cybersecurity (ransomware, data breaches, laws and regulations). In his career, spanning more than a decade, he’s written for numerous media outlets, including Al Jazeera Balkans. He’s also held several modules on content writing for Represent Communications.