China’s spies are coming for our social media passwords. That’s the warning from the UK government and National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), which declared the country a threat to national security this week.
In an unusual intervention, the NCSC, part of the UK’s spy organisation GCHQ, disclosed that a group affiliated to the Chinese state hacked the Electoral Commission, gaining access to the registry and with it the names, addresses and emails of tens of millions of people.
If you were registered to vote in Britain between 2014 and 2022, the Chinese state was able to access your name and address, the organisation disclosed. “The breach must act as a wake-up call for the entire UK,” says Jamie Moles, head of technical marketing at the
