Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government which state actors they originally identified to have levied cyber-attacks against UK institutions in the past five years; and whether their assessment of the origins of those attacks has subsequently altered.

​There are several established, capable states seeking to exploit computers and communications networks to gather intelligence and intellectual property from British Government, military, industrial and economic targets. We attribute malicious cyber activity where we believe it is in the best interests of the UK to do so. Sometimes this is in public, and sometimes we have private conversations with the country concerned. The Government has publicly stated that the Russian government, specifically the Russian military, was responsible for the destructive NotPetya cyber-attack that affected some UK companies. It has also publicly stated that it is highly likely that North Korean actors known as the Lazarus Group were behind the WannaCry ransomware campaign. The Government's view on both has not changed.