Cyberattack on UK Department for Education and Police Exposes Sensitive Information
A cyberattack has compromised systems used by the UK Department for Education (DfE) and a police legal database, with hackers claiming to have stolen more than 740,000 records containing sensitive information.
The stolen data reportedly includes details relating to government officials, senior school leaders, university staff, police officers and members of the public.
According to the attackers’ leak website, more than 600,000 records were taken from the DfE’s help desk portal. The exposed information is said to include the names, email addresses, telephone numbers and job titles of parents and education staff.
The cybercriminals also claimed to have accessed the department’s Turing portal, which supports the UK’s international student exchange programme, obtaining a smaller collection of similar personal data.
In a separate breach, the attackers targeted the Police National Legal Database (PNLD), a service that provides legal guidance to police forces across the UK. The group claims to have stolen approximately 135,000 records from the system.
The PNLD confirmed that the compromised data includes the names, employing police force or organisation, and work email addresses of police officers and criminal justice personnel. It also revealed that a limited number of names and email addresses belonging to members of the public who had previously contacted the Ask the Police service were accessed.
The organisation stressed that the affected database does not contain confidential information relating to victims, witnesses or offenders, and the incident is not currently believed to pose a significant operational risk.
Responsibility for the attack has been claimed by a previously unknown cybercrime group calling itself ExfilSquad, which published samples of the stolen information on its leak site. Such tactics are commonly used by ransomware and extortion groups to pressure organisations into paying for the return or non-disclosure of stolen data.
I am one of the editors here at www.systemtek.co.uk I am a UK based technology professional, with an interest in computer security and telecoms.