Starmer's digital ID plan risks creating 'enormous hacking target' - expert

Keir Starmer's plan for digital IDs risks creating “an enormous hacking target”, a cybersecurity expert has warned, as technology companies prepared to bid for contracts that could run into billions of pounds.

- Robert Booth UK technology editor

Amid widespread opposition, the prime minister said the mandatory digital ID - including citizens' photos, names, dates of birth, nationalities and residency status - would come into use by July 2029.

The government said the ID would sit in a digital wallet on citizens' smart phones and use state-of-the-art encryption. But Alan Woodward, a professor and cybersecurity expert at the University of Surrey, said that if the data was also held in a vast database to allow for cross-referencing, “it’s painting a huge target on something to say: ‘Come and hack me’”.

The government has not yet provided detail on how it would make the system work, sparking calls for greater transparency. Woodward's warning comes amid public concern about criminal data breaches, which this week hit a chain of children's nurseries, resulting in photos of infants leaking on to the dark web, and continued to cripple Jaguar Land Rover. Data, including photographs, has previously been criminally exfiltrated from a government ID system in Estonia, according to reports.