The National Crime Agency (NCA) has cautioned all UK gun owners to ensure that they have robust security in place for their firearms after the NSRA (National Smallbore Rife Association) confirmed that their network had suffered a cyber attack and that some data belonging to its members had been compromised.
The warning comes amid fears that the personal data obtained could see some owners targeted for theft of their guns.
The NSRA has published a press release on their website which details the events of the attack and stress that “This attack has targeted legacy servers that contain working documents, not a full database. At this time, we cannot say exactly who this affects as we have no access to the servers.”
The NCA is working with both the NSRA and the South East Regional Organised Crime Unit (SEROCU) to investigate the incident and is attempting to evaluate the threat posed to gun owners affected by this attack.
2nd breach affecting UK owners
This is the second cyber security breach that has impacted on UK gun owners in recent years, after Guntrader, a website dealing in the buying and selling of firearms was beached in July 2021.
In that attack, the details of approx. 112,000 people was stolen and published on the dark web. The details contained names, addresses, telephone details, and email addresses.
Shortly after the data was released, an animal rights activist produced a re-formatted version of the stolen data to allow others to upload it to Google Maps to pin-point exactly where the gun owners lived.
After that breach, the British Association for Shooting and Conservation (BASC) urged members to be vigilant with regards to home security and to “make sure all firearms are appropriately locked away and make sure buildings are kept secure“.