Legal Aid Agency breach reached records back to 1978

The breach is now known to cover decades of government records, widening the number of people and providers who may have been affected.

The UK Legal Aid Agency says attackers who hit its systems in April 2025 took records going back to 1978, making the breach far broader than first reported and relevant to any team handling long-lived government data. The agency first warned in early May that payment details for legal aid providers may have been exposed, then later said the stolen material included sensitive applicant and recipient data from 2010 onward, plus provider contracts, portal credentials and other records. In its latest update, it said about 250,000 records predate 2007, mostly from the 1990s and 2000s, and that the earliest verified record is from 1978. The Ministry of Justice says it had already committed £20 million to stabilise and upgrade the Legal Aid Agency's systems, is now investing more than £200 million in modernisation and security, and has no evidence that the stolen personal data has been published.