Possibly Russian or Chinese state-sponsored hackers have conducted an attack on a US state institution. The UK Ministry of Defence told its staff a foreign power was behind the attack.
Unknown adversaries conducted a major cyberattack on the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom, according to the British tabloid newspaper The Sun.
Headquartered at what used to be the Royal Military College of Science site at Shrivenham in southwestern Oxfordshire, the Academy provides postgraduate education and the majority of command, staff, leadership, defense management, acquisition, and technology training for personnel in the British Armed Forces, Civil Service, other government departments and service personnel from other ally countries.
The Defence Academy delivers education and training at Shrivenham campus and in a number of other campuses.
The Sun reported the attack on Monday:
“THE MoD’s defence academy has been hit by a major cyber attack.”
Based on the details from a person familiar with the attack, The Sun said the attack can be attributed to a major state adversary: “They said it’s the work of a foreign power.”
The academy staff was told the hack was done by a foreign power, which means Russia and China are among the suspects.
The cyberattack took offline the Academy’s website and knocked out its IT network. The academy management said it would take time to completely restore the impacted computers and servers on the network, which is run by a third-party contractor. But the IT system of the Ministry haven’t been impacted:
“These are run by a contractor and there is no impact on the Ministry of Defence IT network itself. Teaching continues,” the Ministry of Defence stated.
At the time of writing, the Academy’s website is still unreachable.
“Everyone was told to use their personal laptops and computers because the work ones have been compromised,” a source told The Sun. “It is going to take at least five weeks to fix.”
Image: Alamy
