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The government said it was not “running away” from the threat from China after MPs expressed anger at being kept in the dark about email hacking.
Lawmakers expressed their displeasure in the House of Commons on Monday. I The government has revealed it knew about China’s massive hack of parliamentarians two years ago but did not warn it until last month.
Leaked FBI documents obtained by I The British government has revealed that it was informed by the US government about the 2022 hack.
Pressuring Security Minister Tom Tugendhat about the findings, Conservative MP Tim Laughton questioned the reason for the delay.
“There was a scandal in March about the hacking of members’ email accounts,” he said. “Then we learned that the FBI not only notified our government about this incident two years ago, but also notified other foreign governments whose members were similarly affected.
“Why did it take two years for us to be informed of a major security breach?”
Tugendhat did not answer questions specifically, but said the government would not “avoid” the threat posed by the Chinese state.
“The reality is that we face threats from all over the world, and sadly many of them are coming out of Beijing today,” he responded. “We know this, we’ve seen this, and a lot of people in this house feel it, so we’re not shying away from this.”
This response is the closest a sitting minister has come to calling China a threat rather than a “groundbreaking challenge” in recent months.
The dispute over this definition has created a rift within the government, with Mr Tugendhat pushing for China to be included in the strengthened Foreign Influences Register (FIRS) against the wishes of his ministerial colleagues. It is understood that there are.
The stepped-up phase includes tougher measures against Chinese foreign agents under a new national security law.
The comments came after Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden announced last month that three MPs and one MP were targeted by a Chinese state-linked hacker group known as APT31 between 2021 and 2022. .
It later became clear that I In fact, at least 30 British MPs were reportedly affected. On Sunday, unclassified documents leaked from the US Department of Justice (DOJ) and FBI revealed that the UK was privately informed of the scale of the hack almost two years ago.
In a briefing to “hosting governments” in affected countries, including the United Kingdom, FBI officials said they would “outline the affected email accounts and explain the nature of the campaign (email tracking). “The activity was attributed to APT31 and provided a malicious APT31 sender account.” .
The information was sent to British law enforcement and intelligence agencies in 2022 “as soon as it was discovered by the FBI,” the document said.
It is unclear why the full scale of the hacking attack was not revealed by Mr Dowden, or why Parliament security assured MPs that the emails would not reach their inboxes.
I Since then, I’ve started seeing emails from this domain in politicians’ inboxes.
Labor MP Kris Bryant expressed his dissatisfaction in the House of Commons, saying he was “not satisfied” with the government’s response.
“When the deputy prime minister came to see us a few weeks ago, he didn’t say anything new. He announced something that happened two years ago,” Bryant said. “If we are to ensure that we take these issues seriously, we must have an up-to-date and current accounting of the activities of the Chinese state.”
he asked: “Why are we only told what happened years ago?”
The security minister again did not answer questions, saying: “We will act quickly and if there is a reason to bring it to the attention of parliament, we will do so.”
Conservative, Lib Dem and SNP politicians, including former Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith, expressed frustration after learning the attack had been kept secret for so long.
A parliamentary spokesperson said: ‘Parliament takes cybersecurity very seriously and, as the Government has already confirmed, no parliamentary accounts were compromised in 2021 as a result of this reconnaissance by APT31. ” he said.
“Everyone who knew we had the email was reassured that if they found it in their inbox, they were not at risk and should delete it.”