‘It could be taken down by an enthusiastic child’: Whitehall wide open to cyber-attack, warn campaigners

TaxPayers' Alliance says HMRC, health department and atomic energy authority all use old servers that make them vulnerable

Government departments responsible for running health and social care, and for collecting taxes, are using outdated software that leaves them wide open to cyber-attacks, according to a disturbing new investigation.

The use of legacy" servers and databases has been uncovered through freedom of information (FoI) requests from the low-tax pressure group the TaxPayers' Alliance. It has found that many of the systems in Whitehall were so out of date that they were no longer supported by Microsoft and would cost huge sums to replace.