Speaking to Sky News, Bryant said officials became aware of the breach several months ago and acted swiftly to contain it. He stressed that investigations were ongoing and that it was “not clear” who carried out the attack, amid media claims linking the incident to a Chinese hacking group.
“There certainly has been a hack at the FCDO and we’ve been aware of that since October,” Bryant said. “We managed to close the hole very quickly. There was a technical issue in one of our sites, and we’re fairly confident there’s a low risk of any individual actually being affected by this.”
Details of the breach emerged on Friday following a report by The Sun, which claimed the cyber-attack was carried out by a Chinese hacking group known as Storm 1849 and may have compromised tens of thousands of visa records. The newspaper said the group had previously been accused of targeting politicians and organisations critical of the Chinese government.
Bryant rejected claims that responsibility had been established, warning against drawing conclusions before investigations were complete.
“Quite often the investigation takes quite a long time to get down to that,” he said. “Some of the reporting has been more speculation than accurate. I don’t want to scaremonger about this. We are on top of it, and it’s not entirely clear where this has come from.”
Asked directly whether China was behind the attack, Bryant replied: “That’s not entirely clear.”
The minister compared the breach to recent cyber-attacks on major UK institutions and companies, including Jaguar Land Rover, Marks & Spencer and the British Library, highlighting the growing threat posed by cybercrime to both public and private sector organisations.
A government spokesperson said: “We have been working to investigate a cyber incident. We take the security of our systems and data extremely seriously.”
The incident comes amid heightened concerns about cyber-security risks facing government departments and critical national infrastructure, with ministers under pressure to strengthen digital defences as hostile cyber activity continues to rise globally.
