'Significant amount' of applicant data accessed in legal aid cyber-attack

The personal data of hundreds of thousands of legal aid applicants in England and Wales dating back to 2010, including criminal records and financial details, has been accessed and downloaded in a "significant" cyber-attack.

- Rajeev Syal

Officials said the data may have included contact details and addresses of applicants, their dates of birth, national ID numbers, criminal history, employment status and financial data such as contribution amounts, debts and payments.

Lawyers said they had complained for years about the Legal Aid Agency's (LAA) poor IT system and were concerned that the cyber-attack would leave claimants and those briefly represented by a duty solicitor open to exposure and possible blackmail.

Hackers have claimed that they accessed 2.1m pieces of data, a figure that has so far been unverified.

It is understood that authorities do not believe the hack was the work of a state actor, and appeared to be the work of a criminal gang.

A Ministry of Justice source put the breach down to the "neglect and mismanagement" of the previous government, saying vulnerabilities in the LAA systems had been known for many years.