UK Foreign Office hit by major cyberattack
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The UK Foreign Office paid its cybersecurity contractor to fix a cyberattack, which ended in mid-January 2022, but about which it refuses to disclose further.
The Stack had recently spotted a payment from the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) in the UK government’s public tender and expenditure register, revealing that it had been the victim of a cyberattack.
The Foreign Office paid £467,325.60 (approximately €554,000) to its cybersecurity contractor, BAE Systems Applied Intelligence, for « business analyst and technical architect support to analyse an authority cyber security incident » that « ended on 12 January 2022. »
« The Authority has been the target of a serious cybersecurity incident, the details of which cannot be disclosed. In response to this incident, urgent support was required, » the document said. Because of this urgency, the FCDO awarded the contract without a tender.
When asked, the Foreign Office declined to comment. The BBC has been told by internal sources that hackers managed to penetrate the department’s IS architecture, but without accessing any sensitive data or systems.