British Foreign Office Hacked
Britain's Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) was the target of a serious cyber security incident last month. The details only came to light via a tender document published on a government website, apparently made public by mistake, revealing that cyber security firm BAE Systems Applied Intelligence was called in for "urgent support" in an incident in which unidentified hackers got inside the FCDO systems, but were detected.
“The Authority was the target of a serious cyber security incident, details of which cannot be disclosed. In response to this incident, urgent support was required to support remediation and investigation,” said the FCDO.
According to the notice, the FCDO paid the company £467,325.60 ($630,000) for its assistance after issuing a contract for “business analyst and technical architect support to analyse an authority cyber security incident,” which concluded in January 2022. It is not thought that any classified or highly sensitive material was breached. It is also not clear when the incident took place, but the contract finished on 12th January.
A number of foreign states have been accused of major espionage campaigns in the past, including Russia and China, and foreign ministries of a number of states are regularly targeted.
The tender details say that BAE Systems was "the Authority's long-term service management integrator... Due to the urgency and criticality of the work, the Authority was unable to comply with the time limits for the open or restricted procedures or competitive procedures with negotiation."
The report suggests the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) was also called in to manage cyber security “incidents” affecting the public sector approximately 300 times between September 2020 and August 2021.
Gov.UK: BBC: Techcrunch: The National: The Stack: Independent:
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