UK confirms Ministry of Defence payroll data exposed in data breach

The UK government confirmed that hackers recently broke into the country’s Ministry of Defence and accessed part of the Armed Forces payment network. The system that was attacked contained personal data of active and reserve personnel and some recently retired veterans.

MoD core network unaffected:

Defense Secretary Grant Shapps announced yesterday (7 April) in the House of Commons that the intrusion was detected “recently.” The MoD isolated the system and stopped processing all payments.

Despite this, the incident did not have a significant impact on salaries, expense payments, and veterans’ pensions. “I can confirm in the meantime all April salaries have been paid,” said Shapps.

The UK defense secretary clarified that the hackers targeted an external system managed by a contractor that was “completely separate” from MoD’s core network, and had no connection to the “main military HR system.”

The compromised host contained mainly names and banking details, with a few addresses. It is believed that around 270,000 payroll records were exposed.

The incident is being investigated but it is still not known how the unauthorized access happened. However, Shapps mentioned that there are signs of possible mistakes by the contractor that may have made the access possible.

There is no evidence that the hacker stole any data, but the affected service personnel has been notified of the risk through the chain of command.

Impacted veterans will receive letter notifications about the breach and the exposed data. Shapps stated that the attack was conducted by a malicious actor and that it is possible that a foreign state is involved.

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