'Full gamut' China hacking threat goes beyond raid on voters' data

In March last year an integrated review of the UK's defence and foreign policy said it would protect the country's "democratic freedoms" from Chinese state attacks.

- Dan Milmo

A few months later the Electoral Commission confirmed why institutions and processes were on the threat list as it revealed that a cyber-attack had accessed the data of 40 million voters.

On Monday the government announced that a unnamed Chinese state-backed actor was behind the sortie and said a Beijing-affiliated group, called ATP31, was likely to have been responsible for targeting the email accounts of four British parliamentarians who have been critical of China.

The list of targets cited by the review went beyond democratic institutions and processes, however, and outlined the scale of the Chinese cyber-threat. The economy, national infrastructure and supply chains were also mentioned. Last year parliament's all-party intelligence and security committee said China had the resources to target the UK "prolifically and aggressively", referring to "hundreds of thousands of civil intelligence officers" and a "highly capable and sophisticated cyber-espionage operation".