UK government was hacked in October, minister confirms

British trade department minister Chris Bryant said the government had been hacked in October, partly confirming a report in the Sun newspaper, which said a Chinese group had breached systems to access foreign Office data.



"There certainly has been a hack," Bryant told Times Radio on Friday.



"I'm not able to say whether it is directly related to Chinese operatives, or indeed, the Chinese state," he added.



The Sun named Storm 1849 as the Chinese cyber gang responsible for the breach, which it said was understood to possibly include tens of thousands of visa details.



Bryant said that the reporting around the incident was "speculation" and that the government was continuing to investigate, but at this stage it was "fairly confident" that there was a low risk any individual would be affected.



"We managed to close the hole, as it were, very quickly," Bryant told Sky News, describing the breach. "It was a technical issue in one of our sites."



The Sun newspaper said the group, Storm 1849, was a China-linked gang which was part of a state-aligned hacking apparatus, and which has been accused of targeting politicians and groups critical of the Chinese government.