Hackers who breached the Legal Aid Agency obtained records dating back almost 50 years, extending the known scope of one of the Ministry of Justice’s most sensitive cyber failures.
In a written statement dated 14 October, courts and legal services minister Sarah Sackman said the “vast majority” of the stolen data still falls between 2007 and 16 May 2025, but a smaller set predates that period. Most of those older files come from the 1990s and 2000s, she said, with a very small number going back as far as 1978.
That matters because the government had previously said the compromised Legal Aid Agency data related to applicants from 2007 onward. The revision is not just archival housekeeping. Legal aid files can contain names, addresses, dates of birth and case-related information, including financial details and other sensitive personal data.
Sackman said no complete legal aid case record was taken. She also said “limited probation data” held by HM Prison and Probation Service was accessed, but not information about victims of crime.
The Ministry of Justice says criminals exploited vulnerabilities in Legal Aid Agency systems, copied data and removed it from departmental systems. The government became aware of the attack in April 2025 and later concluded it was more extensive than first understood, taking the system offline. Reports at the time said the outage disrupted court work and contributed to delays.
The state’s reassurance is narrower than the breach. Sackman said there is no indication the stolen data has been published or shared, and that identifying specific people from the material would not be straightforward for the attackers. She also said the ministry is still working out, where the data allows, whether it can identify which individuals were affected.
Harvey Jr. 
Marcus Azzopardi 
Gabriel Fenech