CYBER warfare experts from the UK have been flown into Gibraltar after hackers secretly infiltrated the government’s cloud network for several weeks.
The unauthorised access went undetected by local authorities until tech giant Microsoft raised the alarm over a potential data breach.
Officials have launched a major forensic investigation to establish if the emails and documents of thousands of cross-border workers and foreign residents have been exposed.
The hackers compromised the government’s core cloud environment, which houses services including Microsoft Outlook, Teams, SharePoint and OneDrive.
Specialists from the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and partner organisations travelled to the Rock on Monday, November 2, to manage the crisis alongside local tech teams.
The severity of the intrusion forced the government to suspend some public services on Friday, November 6, to allow investigators to scour the network and implement emergency security measures.
Authorities confirmed the incident remains active, with ongoing attempts to access the accounts currently being blocked.
While the government stressed that principal databases containing residents’ personal records are kept on separate local infrastructure, they admitted they do not yet know if other sensitive information was stolen.
A spokesperson said a detailed forensic probe is ongoing to establish ‘whether any information was accessed or extracted without authorisation’.
Any residents whose personal data has been compromised will be contacted directly as the investigation progresses.
Officials have urged the public to remain vigilant against unexpected emails or texts claiming to be from the government.
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