(20/04/23) Blog 110 – ACRO offline, criminal records bureau hit by cyber attack

ACRO – The UK’s national office which manages criminal record information and the exchange of records with other countries, along with checks to see whether a suspect in the UK has criminal convictions in other countries is still having to use manual processes to deal with their ever increasing workloads after being hit with a cyber attack on the 21^st March 2023.

Signs of attack

A tweet on the ACRO official twitter account (@ACRO_Police_CST) on the 20^th March now looks like the first signs something wasn’t going well at ACRO. The tweet, shown below, looks like the usual “we are a bit busy now” type of message many services are currently running

When viewed with the next tweet sent just over 24 hours later, it seems that the attack on ACRO started around the 20^th

Over the next few days, a series of tweets were released informing customers that there was an IT issue, and things were taking longer to process, but they were still working on cases.

Those seeking Police checks were advised to send requests to a dedicated email address as opposed to the online form which was affected by the IT issue.

Extra staff have been brought in to try to deal with the mounting workload

Not an IT issue – It’s a cyber attack

On the 6^th April, ACRO releasaed a statement declaring that hey have been the victim of an ongoing cyber attack

Visiting the ACRO website (https://www.acro.police.uk/) visitors are currently being presented with a message about the attack and how to apply for services via various email addresses.

All hands on deck

It looks like even the media & marketing side of the Customer Services Team have been drafted to deal with the backlog of applications as the ACRO twitter account is now saying that they cannot respond to tweets as they are too busy dealing with the ongoing issue.

Disruption for many

An attack on such a service as ACRO doesn’t just impact the government, it directly affects the lives of thousands of ordinary citizens.

In a report on the attack by the BBC, they spoke to one man from Scotland who had been waiting for his application to be processed so that he could get his visa to go and work in Brazil, where another man was waiting for his certificate to allow him to travel to Morocco to get married.

Attacks like this are not only costly to the organisations which fall victim, but also to the customers of such services, the lives of whom are directly affected.