Emmanuel Macron hosts Xi Jinping for state dinner at Elysee palace. The French president was joined by the Chinese leader, who is on his first visit to Europe in 5 years.
A cyber attack targeting the financial information of 250,000 Ministry of Defence employees fits China 's 'pattern of behaviour' and could lead to blackmail attempts, a former spy chief warned today - as Beijing dismissed the claims as a 'smear'.
'There's a pattern of Chinese behaviour in the past that might lead one to suspect that China is responsible, but it certainly wouldn't be the only suspect in a case like this,' he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. Mr Martin said the attack was not as serious as a 2015 hack on US government security clearance records but remained worrying.
Mr Stride, the World and Pensions Secretary, said the Government was not yet pinning the blame on Beijing. The Government's refreshed review of foreign and defence policy had cybersecurity 'right at the heart of that, exactly these kinds of risks, particularly when it comes to state actors'.But affected service personnel will be alerted as a precaution and provided with specialist advice. They will be able to use a personal data protection service to check whether their information is being used or an attempt is being made to use it.
'For example, personally identifiable information like full names, dates of birth and addresses, all of which can be used to forge documents, steal identities and commit fraud. The MoD has been working at speed to uncover the scale of the attack since it was discovered several days ago. Lauren Wills-Dixon, data privacy expert at law firm Gordons, said the fact the breach appears to be on a database run by a private company did not exempt the MoD from responsibility as the 'data controller'.
The incident risks dissuading other countries with challenging relationships with China from sharing sensitive intelligence with the UK. Conservative former leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith repeated those calls, telling Sky News: 'This is yet another example of why the UK Government must admit that China poses a systemic threat to the UK and change the integrated review to reflect that.
It comes less than two months after Chinese state-affiliated actors were blamed by the government for two 'malicious' cyberattack campaigns in the UK
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