A data breach has hit the UK Army, forcing it to close its recruitment system for over a month.

The breach compromised candidate data, resulting in the information of 124 UK Army recruits being offered for sale on the dark web. This information included full names of the candidates along with their dates of birth, addresses, qualifications, and previous employment details.

The breach took place on March 13th, with the Armed Forces taking down its enrolment portal, the Defence Recruitment System, on March 14th as a precaution.

As such, its recruitment systems have been down for most of the war in Ukraine.

Recruitment since then has been handled by emergency systems. Candidates looking for updates on their applications were directed to call a phone number.

Defence sources have not confirmed who was behind the attack. At present, there are suggestions that the breach was relatively low-level.

As such, it is still unknown if the data breach was due to a hack or if an individual actor had been able to obtain a limited amount of data, through a print-out or screengrab, for example.

“Following the compromise of a small selection of recruit data, the army’s online recruitment services were temporarily suspended pending an investigation,” a British Army spokesperson stated.

“This investigation has now concluded allowing some functionality to be restored and applications to be processed.”

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On March 21st, the Ministry of Defence notified the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) of the breach. After making inquiries, the ICO found that no further action was needed.

Following an investigation, its recruitment system has now been restored. However, its external portal remains down.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has escalated fears of cyberattacks against Western organisations and government bodies. In the build-up to the attack, the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) urged UK organisations to update their defences.

While there have been few definite cyberattacks targeting Western groups, there is still a danger that unrelated organisations may get caught in the crossfire as new malware enters the ecosystem.

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