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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Technology
Toby Helm

‘It could be taken down by an enthusiastic child’: Whitehall wide open to cyber-attack, warn campaigners

An illustration showing a computer screen with a warning symbol and the word 'hacked' at the centre
Several government departments are using ‘legacy’ servers that are too old to be trusted, say campaigners. Photograph: solarseven/Getty Images/iStockphoto

Government departments responsible for running health and social care, and for collecting taxes, are using outdated software that leaves them wide open to cyber-attacks, according to a disturbing new investigation.

The use of “legacy” servers and databases has been uncovered through freedom of information (FoI) requests from the low-tax pressure group the TaxPayers’ Alliance. It has found that many of the systems in Whitehall were so out of date that they were no longer supported by Microsoft and would cost huge sums to replace.

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