Details of tens of millions of voters could have been accessed by hackers who targeted the Electoral Commission, the elections watchdog admitted.
The organisation has revealed that it first detected the breach in October 2022 – but the cyber-attack had happened more than a year before, in August 2021.
The Electoral Commission apologised and insisted that there was little risk of “hostile actors” influencing the outcome of a vote.
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has launched an investigation “as a matter of urgency”, saying voters would be alarmed by the news.
The hack, publicly confirmed on Tuesday, allowed the cyber-attackers to access reference copies of electoral registers containing names and addresses of everyone registered to vote between 2014 and 2022.
Apologising, the Electoral Commission’s chief executive Shaun McNally admitted that his organisation did not know yet exactly which files had been accessed.
“We know which systems were accessible to the hostile actors, but are not able to know conclusively what files may or may not have been accessed,” he said.
“While the data contained in the electoral registers is limited, and much of it is already in the public domain, we understand the concern that may have been caused by the registers potentially being accessed and apologise to those affected.”
Although the alarm was first raised in October 2022, the hackers were first able to access the commission’s systems back in August 2021.
The watchdog chief said measures had been taken to improve security on the commission’s IT systems – playing down the risk of election interference because of paper-based voting.
Ballots are counted at recent Uxbridge byelection— (PA)
“The UK’s democratic process is significantly dispersed and key aspects of it remain based on paper documentation and counting,” said Mr McNally. “This means it would be very hard to use a cyber-attack to influence the process,” he added.
“Nevertheless, the successful attack on the Electoral Commission highlights that organisations involved in elections remain a target, and need to remain vigilant to the risks to processes around our elections.”
The hackers were able to access reference copies of the electoral registers, held by the commission for research purposes and to enable permissibility checks on political donations.
The registers held at the time of the cyber-attack include the name and address of anyone in the UK who was registered to vote between 2014 and 2022, as well as the names of those registered as overseas voters.
But they did not include the details of those registered anonymously.
The register for each year holds the details of around 40 million individuals, which were accessible to the hostile actors, although this includes people on the open registers, whose information is already in the public domain.
An ICO spokesman said: “The Electoral Commission has contacted us regarding this incident and we are currently making inquiries. We recognise this news may cause alarm to those who are worried they may be affected and we want to reassure the public that we are investigating as a matter of urgency.”
