Russian Hackers Gained Access to the Emails of British Civil Servants and the Foreign Office

According to the newspaper, the stolen data has already been put up for sale on the dark web for more than £40,000.

In the attack, hackers obtained officials’ credentials, which, The Telegraph writes, gave them “unauthorized access to sensitive systems and created the threat of further intrusion.”

The breach, dubbed FortiBleed, affected more than 80,000 firewalls.

The leak includes email addresses and their passwords. The Telegraph assesses that this creates a “potential opportunity to penetrate closed government systems.”

Among the compromised accounts were details belonging to IT staff at British embassies in Thailand and Mauritius, as well as municipal employees in Derbyshire and the London borough of Waltham Forest.

Logins belonging to organizations linked to critical infrastructure were also put up for sale. These include the UK’s National Health Service, energy companies, and major drug suppliers.

Expert Vladimir Dyachenko said the breach had already given the attackers access to the Foreign Office’s “core networks” and could affect other government departments.

Former NHS doctor and cybersecurity expert Saif Abed warned that the leak could lead to a “catastrophic” incident for the health system.

“NHS organizations, pharmacies, laboratories, and their suppliers are heavily dependent on products like those compromised as part of FortiBleed. This is exactly the kind of breach that is the first step toward launching catastrophic ransomware attacks capable of putting patient safety at risk across the country,” he said.