Foreign Office was hacked and we don't know by who

The UK Foreign Office was hacked in October, a minister has admitted, raising fears that thousands of confidential documents and data may have been compromised.

- MILLIE COOKE, KATE DEVLIN

While ministers are “pretty confident” that visa applicants’ details have not been accessed, they have admitted that they are not confident about the identity of the hacker.

Sources told The Sun that the group responsible for the hack in October was Storm 1849, a Chinese organisation that was named publicly in March 2024 in connection with cyber attacks on MPs and the Electoral Commission.

The newspaper reported “thousands” of confidential documents and data had been retrieved in the data breach.

Trade minister Sir Chris Bryant admitted that there “certainly has been a hack”, but he refused to say whether a Chinese-linked group was behind it, claiming that the wider reports were not completely true.