UK military personnel's data accessed in hack, Sky reports

The personal information of Britain's armed forces has been accessed in a significant data breach, Sky News reported on Tuesday, adding that the Chinese state was behind the cyber attack.

Britain's Ministry of Defence (MoD) has not yet commented on the report, but Defence Minister Grant Shapps is due to make a statement to parliament on Tuesday.

Sky said the government would not name the country involved, but it understood China was behind an attack on a payroll system that secured names and bank details of current service personnel and some veterans. The Sky article did not provide details of its sourcing for the China attribution.

British Work and Pensions minister Mel Stride said the database, which was managed by an external contractor, had been taken offline quickly and that more information on the attack would be provided soon.

"The MoD has acted very swiftly to take this database offline. It's a third-party database and certainly not one run directly by the MoD," he told Sky News.

Britain in March accused Chinese hackers and a Chinese entity of being behind two high-profile attacks in recent years, targeting lawmakers critical of China, and the country's electoral watchdog.

The Chinese embassy in London said at the time that those claims were "totally fabricated". China has not responded to the Sky News report.