The cyberattackers claimed 2.1m pieces of customer data had been stolen from the Legal Aid Agency

Millions of pieces of personal data, including criminal records, have been stolen from legal aid applicants in a massive cyberattack.

The data, including national insurance numbers, employment status and financial data, was breached earlier this year, according to the Ministry of Justice (MoJ).

The cyberattackers claimed they had stolen 2.1 million pieces of data from people who had applied for legal aid since 2010 but the MoJ only said a “significant amount of personal data” had been breached.

An MoJ source put the breach down to the “neglect and mismanagement” of the previous government, saying vulnerabilities in the Legal Aid Agency (LAA) systems have been known for many years.

“This data breach was made possible by the long years of neglect and mismanagement of the justice system under the last government,” the source said.

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