China linked to UK cyber-attacks on voter data, Dowden to say

The UK government is expected to link cyber-attacks which accessed personal details of millions of voters to China.

The attacks on the Electoral Commission took place in August 2021 but were only revealed last year.

Several MPs and peers who have been critical of Beijing are thought to have also been targeted in cyber-attacks.

The prime minister called China “the greatest state-based challenge to our national security”.

Rishi Sunak said: “China represents an economic threat to our security and an epoch-defining challenge.

“So it is right we take steps to protect ourselves.”

The BBC understands other Western nations will set out similar concerns.

Acknowledging the attacks last August, the Electoral Commission said unspecified “hostile actors” had gained access to copies of the electoral registers and broken into its emails and “control systems”, but added that it had neither had any impact on any elections nor anyone’s registration status.

The commission said last August that they weren’t able to predict exactly how many people could be affected, but that the register for each year contained the details of around 40 million people.

Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden will address Parliament on Monday about the threat.

It is now thought that Mr Dowden will suggest those behind the attack had links to Beijing, as well as laying out how the UK will respond to what it deems a wider threat.

Publicly identifying the attackers lays the groundwork for potential legal and political actions, such as sanctions or diplomatic protests.

Linking the attackers to China, a fellow member of the UN Security Council, would be an escalation in the diplomatic tension between the two countries.

The prime minister then was David Cameron, who is now the foreign secretary after taking a seat in the House of Lords last year.

China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said the government cracked down and punished all types of malicious cyber activities.

He called on all parties to “stop spreading false information and…