Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, with reference to the then Deputy Prime Minister's Oral Statement of 25 March 2024 on Cyber-security and UK Democracy, Official Report, columns 1261 to 1264, what was the name of the Chinese state-sponsored group which undertook the cyber-attack.

The then Deputy Prime Minister’s Oral Statement of 25 March 2024 on Cyber-security and UK Democracy refers to two malicious cyber campaigns by Chinese state-affiliated actors: “first, compromising the United Kingdom’s Electoral Commission between 2021 and 2022, as was announced last summer, and secondly, by attempting reconnaissance activity against UK parliamentary accounts in a separate campaign in 2021”.

Attribution for cyber-attacks is a formal process. The Government will only attribute a cyber-attack to a specific actor when we are confident that we have the evidence to do so, and when it is in the UK’s national interest.

In the oral statement dated 25 March 2024, the National Cyber Security Centre attributed the second campaign to the Chinese state-affiliated cyber actor known as APT31.