Teacher tried to create ‘army of children’ to launch terror attacks in London

A man walks across London Bridge as the sun rises behind Tower Bridge in London, Britain, January 19, 2018. REUTERS/Hannah McKay

By Michael Holden

LONDON (Reuters) – A British supporter of Islamic State was found guilty on Friday of trying to recruit children he was teaching into an “army” of jihadists to help carry out a wave of attacks across London.

Umar Haque, 25, showed the children beheading videos and other violent militant propaganda, forced them to re-enact deadly attacks on the British capital and made them role-play attacking police officers.

“His plan was to create an army of children to assist with multiple terrorist attacks throughout London,” said Dean Haydon, head of the Metropolitan Police’s Counter Terrorism Command. “He tried and he did, we believe, radicalize vulnerable children from the ages of 11 to 14.”

Despite having no qualifications and being employed as an administrator, police say Haque used the guise of teaching Islamic studies to groom 110 children into becoming militants at the Lantern of Knowledge, a small private Islamic school, and at a madrassa connected to the Ripple Road Mosque in east London.

Of those children, 35 are now undergoing long-term safeguarding measures involving social services and other authorities. Six of the group gave evidence at Haque’s trial, detailing how he taught them fighting was good and had given them training such as doing push-ups to build their strength.

His intention was to use them to attack London targets such as the Big Ben tower, soldiers from the Queen’s Guards, a large shopping center, banks, and media stations, prosecutors said.

Believed to have been self-radicalized online, Haque was inspired by an attack in March last year when Khalid Masood plowed a rented car into pedestrians on London’s Westminster Bridge, killing four, before stabbing to death a police officer in the grounds of parliament.

He had discussed with Abuthaher Mamun – a 19-year-old who also taught at the mosque – carrying out a similar attack using guns and a hire car packed with explosives. He had made the children re-enact Masood’s assault and told another co-defendant the public deserved to be annihilated.

ROLE-PLAYING

“He tried to prepare the children for martyrdom by making them role-play terrorist attacks. Part of that role-playing was re-enacting attacking police officers,” Haydon said.

“He had shown them graphic terrorist videos – beheading videos and frightening terrorist activities overseas. He described himself as a loyal follower to IS.”

Haydon said the children had been “paralyzed by fear” into not telling their parents or teachers, with Haque saying he was part of IS and threatening that they would suffer the same fate as those in the militant videos he showed them.

However, Haque’s “ambitious”, long-term plans were in an early stage, he said. No issues had been raised at the school – rated outstanding by government inspectors – prior to Haque’s arrest and when it came to light what was going on, police initially met a wall of silence from the children.

“He shouldn’t have been teaching, so that’s a concern,” Haydon said. “We have had challenges with both the local community and some of these institutions.”

Haque was found guilty at London’s Old Bailey Court of a number of offences including preparing terrorist acts, having previously pleaded guilty to four charges.

Mamun, who police said was involved in fundraising and attack planning, and Muhammad Abid, 27, were also convicted of helping him. They will all be sentenced at a later date.

(Editing by Stephen Addison)

British police sift through rubble at scene of fatal blast

Members of the emergency services move debris at the site of an explosion which destroyed a convenience store and a home in Leicester, Britain, February 25, 2018. REUTERS/Darren Staples

By Darren Staples

LEICESTER, England (Reuters) – British police searched for survivors on Monday in the rubble of a shop and apartment destroyed by an explosion that killed at least five people and injured five others in the city of Leicester on Sunday evening.

CCTV footage posted on the local newspaper’s website showed the entire front of the building shooting into the road as a car passed. The scene was then engulfed in fire.

The Leicester Mercury said the shop was a Polish convenience store called Zabka Leicester and above it was a two-story apartment.

Police and the fire service said it would take time to establish what caused the explosion but that there was no immediate indication it was linked to terrorism.

“There are still pockets of fire in the basement area of the building,” said Matt Crane of Leicestershire Fire Service.

“We have a significant number of specialist search and rescue teams who are supported by two search dogs.”

Five people were taken to hospital, one of whom remains in a critical condition, police said.

Salvage crews work at the scene of a convenience store and home that were destroyed by an explosion in Leicester, Britain, February 26, 2018. REUTERS/Darren Staples

Salvage crews work at the scene of a convenience store and home that were destroyed by an explosion in Leicester, Britain, February 26, 2018. REUTERS/Darren Staples

Local resident Harrish Patni told Sky News: “We heard this massive explosion, the shop window six doors away vibrated and we thought it can’t be a car accident, it didn’t sound like a crash.

“We came outside and there was a big cloud of smoke, bricks all across the road.”

Leicester, in the center of England, has long been one of Britain’s most culturally diverse cities, with a large population of people from the Asian subcontinent and many other ethnicities.

(Additional reporting by Andrew MacAskill and Kanishka Singh; Editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Catherine Evans)

U.S. says ready to talk Mideast peace; Abbas calls for conference

White House senior adviser Jared Kushner seen with United States Ambassador to the United Nations (UN), Nikki Haley, and lawyer Jason Greenblatt (R) before a meeting of the UN Security Council at UN headquarters in New York, U.S., February 20, 2018. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson

By Michelle Nichols

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The United States is “ready to talk” Middle East peace with the Palestinians, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said on Tuesday in remarks directed at Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas during a meeting of the U.N. Security Council.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, and U.S. Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt, who are working on a new peace plan, sat behind Haley. Speaking after Abbas made a rare address to the 15-member council, Haley gave no details of the U.S. plan.

“Our negotiators are sitting right behind me, ready to talk. But we will not chase after you. The choice, Mr. President, is yours,” Haley said. Abbas did not stay in the council chamber to listen to her.

White House spokesman Josh Raffel said Washington would present a peace plan “when it is done and the time is right.”

The Palestinians no longer view the United States as a neutral negotiator, and Abbas on Tuesday called for an international Middle East peace conference to be convened later this year.

The Palestinians are furious over the Trump administration’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December and its decision to cut U.S. funding for the U.N. agency that helps Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).

“It has become impossible today for one country or state alone to solve a regional or international conflict,” Abbas said. “It is essential to establish a multilateral international mechanism emanating from an international conference.”

Abbas, who shunned a visit by U.S. Vice President Mike Pence to the region last month, said the conference should include the Palestinians, Israel, the five permanent U.N. Security Council members – the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France – the European Union and the United Nations.

French U.N. Ambassador Francois Delattre told the council: “We are open to studying the development of the ways of international accompaniment for the peace process.” Deputy British U.N. Ambassador Jonathan Allen described U.S. leadership on the issue as “indispensable.”

Israel’s U.N. Ambassador Danny Danon told the Security Council that Abbas was part of the problem, not the solution, and that the “only way to move forward is direct negotiations” between Israel and the Palestinians.

Russian U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said the so-called Quartet – made up of the United Nations, the United States, Russia and the EU – and the League of Arab States could play a role in kick-starting the stalled peace process.

(Additional reporting by Steve Holland in Washington; Editing by Paul Simao)

Britain escorts Russian ship near national waters amid strained relations

Images from an infrared camera on a helicopter show Royal Navy frigate HMS St Albans escorting Russian warship Admiral Gorshkov as it passes close to UK territorial waters through the North Sea in an image from an infrared camera on a helicopter handed out by Britain's Royal Navy December 25, 2017.

A British ship escorted a Russian vessel as it passed near UK territorial waters over Christmas, Britain’s defense ministry said on Tuesday, adding that Russian naval activity near Britain had increased in the holiday period.

The frigate HMS St Albans departed on Dec. 23 to track the new Russian warship Admiral Gorshkov as it moved through the North Sea. The Royal Navy vessel monitored the Russian ship over Christmas and will return to dock in Portsmouth later on Tuesday.

UK defense minister Gavin Williamson said in a statement after the incident that he would “not hesitate in defending our waters or tolerate any form of aggression”.

Relations between Britain and Russia are strained, and UK foreign minister Boris Johnson said there was “abundant evidence” of Moscow meddling in foreign elections during a trip to Russia last week. His counterpart Sergei Lavrov said there was no proof for Johnson’s claim.

While Johnson said he wants to normalize relations with Russia, Moscow blames London for the poor state of relations between the countries.

Britain’s defense ministry said another ship, HMS Tyne, was called to escort a Russian intelligence-gathering ship through the North Sea and the English Channel on Christmas Eve. A helicopter was subsequently dispatched to monitor two other Russian vessels.

(Reporting by Alistair Smout, editing by Ed Osmond)

Rookies and robots brace for first UK rate rise since 2007

Office lights are on at dusk in the Canary Wharf financial district, London, Britain,

By Fanny Potkin and Polina Ivanova

LONDON (Reuters) – Financial markets braced this week for what could be the Bank of England’s first rate rise in a decade – a step into the unknown for a generation of young traders who started work after 2007 but also for the state-of-the-art technology they use.

After a decade that included a global financial crash, numerous investigations into market collusion and relentless automation, trading floors at banks in London have been transformed in ways not obvious at first glance.

The newest kid on the block is not necessarily the rookie trader with a PhD in physics but the latest computer model or algorithm. How these models will perform under the almost novel circumstances of tightening monetary policy is as much a question as how the human neophytes will react.

Using past market data, assessments of demand, valuation models and even measures of how upbeat news headlines are, computers crunch the numbers, game the scenarios and buy or sell in the blink of an eye.

But shocks such as Brexit have shown that computer-driven trading can end in stampedes, or so-called flash crashes.

“You’ve got to weigh up the strength of the traders and the strength of the algorithms that have been developed and whether they can manage this kind of a process when the rate hike does come in,” said Benjamin Quinlan, CEO of financial services strategy consultancy Quinlan & Associates.

At Citibank’s expansive trading floor in London, the dealing room doesn’t look much different from a decade ago with traders hunched in front of banks of screens, the odd national flag perched on top, and television screens on mute.

But beneath the outward appearance, foreign exchange trading has undergone a seismic shift: more than 90 percent of cash transactions and a growing proportion of derivatives trades in the global $5 trillion a day FX market are done electronically.

So-called smart algos, or fully automated algorithmic trading programs that react to market movements with no human involvement, were virtually non-existent in 2007. Now, almost a third of foreign exchange trades are driven solely by algorithms, according to research firm Aite Group.

“Most of these algorithms haven’t really been tested in a rising interest rate scenario so the next few months will be crucial,” said a portfolio manager at a hedge fund in London.

To be sure, the U.S. Federal Reserve’s first rate rise in a decade in 2015 provided a dry run for this week’s UK decision – but the two economies are in very different positions and the knock-on effects on the wider financial markets of a Bank of England move are hard to predict.

 

ROOKIES AND ROBOTS

Much has changed since the Bank of England raised rates by 0.25 percent on July 5, 2007 to 5.75 percent. The first iPhone had yet to reach British shores, the country’s TVs ran on analogue signals and Northern Rock bank was alive and well.

Where once lightning decision-making and a calm head in a crisis were at a premium, the bulk of trading today is done by machines and the job of a foreign exchange sales trader is often little more than minding software and fielding client queries.

Itay Tuchman, head of global FX trading at Citi and a 20-year market veteran, said while the bank employs roughly the same number of people in currency trading as over the last few years, fewer are dedicated to business over the phone.

“We have an extensive electronic trading business, powered by our algorithmic market making platform, which is staffed by many people that have maths and science PhDs from various backgrounds,” said Tuchman, who heads trading for Citi’s global developed and emerging currency businesses.

London is the epicenter of those changes with the average daily turnover of foreign exchange trades executed directly over the phone down by a fifth to $566 billion in just three years to 2016, according to the Bank of England.

At Dutch bank ING’s London trading room, Obbe Kok, head of UK financial markets, said the floor now has about 165 people but the bank wants to make it 210 by the end of the year – searching mainly for traders attuned to technological innovations and keen on artificial intelligence.

The proportion of people employed in trading with degrees in mathematics and statistics has increased by a 58 percent over the last 10 years, Emolument, a salary benchmarking site, said.

“What banks have started to do is trade experience for technological skill and with electronic platforms growing, the average age on the floor is a bit younger,” said Adrian Ezra, CEO of financial services recruitment agency Execuzen.

 

TAPER TANTRUM

The increasing use of technology means traders can gauge the depth of market liquidity at the click of a button or quickly price an option based on volatility – a major change from a few years ago when they had to scour the market discreetly for fear of disclosing their interest to rivals.

Ala’A Saeed, global head of institutional electronic sales and one of the brains behind Citi’s trading platform FX Velocity, said its electronic programs process thousands of trades per minute.

Most of the currency trading models used by banks incorporate variables such as trading ranges, valuation metrics including trade-weighted indexes and trends in demand based on internal client orders to get a sense of which way markets are moving – and the potential impact of a new trade.

Nowadays, the models also incorporate sentiment analysis around news headlines and economic data surprises.

These electronic trading platforms also have years of financial data plugged into them with various kinds of scenario analyses, but one thing they have sometimes appeared unprepared for is a sudden change in policy direction.

Witness the market mayhem exacerbated by trend-following algorithms when Switzerland’s central bank scrapped its currency peg in 2015, or the taper tantrum in 2013 when the U.S. Federal Reserve said it would stop buying bonds.

Or Britain’s vote last year to leave the European Union.

Indeed, the biggest risk for financial markets cited by money managers in a Bank of America Merrill Lynch poll in October was a policy misstep from a major central bank.

 

EASY CREDIT, LOW VOLATILITY

One concern is that the rise in automation has coincided with a prolonged decline in market volatility as central banks from the United States to Japan have kept interest rates close to zero and spent trillions of dollars dragging long-term borrowing costs lower to try to reboot depressed economies.

While central banks have been careful to get their messages across as they end the years of stimulus, there are concerns about whether quantitative trading models can capture all the qualitative policy shifts.

For example, a growing number of investors expect the Bank of England to raise its benchmark interest rate to 0.5 percent on Nov. 2, and then leave it at that for the foreseeable future.

But futures markets are expecting another rate rise within six to nine months, injecting a new level of risk around interest rate moves and potentially boosting volatility.

Neale Jackson, a portfolio manager at 36 South Capital Advisors, a $750 million volatility hedge fund in London, said young traders have never seen an environment other than central banks supporting markets, and that has fueled risk-taking underpinned by the belief that “big brother has got our backs”.

“The problem these days is that there’s a whole generation of traders who have never seen interest rates, let alone interest rates hikes,” said Kevin Rodgers, a veteran FX trader and the author of “Why Aren’t They Shouting?”, a book about the computer revolution within financial markets.

 

(Additional reporting by Maiya Keidan and Simon Jessop; writing by Saikat Chatterjee; editing by Mike Dolan and David Clarke)

 

As North Korea threat looms, Trump to address world leaders at U.N.

U.S. President Donald Trump participates in a session on reforming the United Nations at UN Headquarters in New York, U.S., September 18, 2017. REUTERS/Kevin

By Michelle Nichols

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – North Korea’s nuclear threat looms large this week over the annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations in New York, where diplomats are eager to hear U.S. President Donald Trump address the 193-member body for the first time.

North Korean diplomats will have a front-row seat in the U.N. General Assembly for Trump’s speech on Tuesday morning, which will touch on the escalating crisis that has seen Trump and Pyongyang trade threats of military action.

Despite his skepticism about the value of international organizations and the United Nations in particular, Trump will seek support for tough measures against North Korea, while pressing his “America First” message to the world body.

“This is not an issue between the United States and North Korea. This is an issue between the world and North Korea,” Trump’s national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, said on Friday.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres – who, like Trump, took office in January – plans to meet separately with “concerned parties,” including North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho, on the sidelines of the 72nd General Assembly.

“The solution can only be political. Military action could cause devastation on a scale that would take generations to overcome,” Guterres warned on Wednesday.

A week ago, the 15-member U.N. Security Council unanimously adopted its ninth sanctions resolution since 2006 over North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said U.N. sanctions had banned 90 percent of the Asian state’s publicly reported exports, saying of Pyongyang on Friday: “This is totally in their hands on how they respond.”

Haley told CNN’s “State of the Union” program on Sunday that Washington had “pretty much exhausted” its options on North Korea at the Security Council.

Ri is due to address the General Assembly on Friday.

 

IRAN

Some leaders will also push Trump not to give up on a 2015 deal curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions in return for a lifting of U.N., U.S. and European sanctions, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it was time to “fix it – or cancel it.”

The foreign ministers of Iran, the United States, Britain, Germany, Russia, China and France – the parties to the agreement – are due to meet on Wednesday ahead of an October deadline for Trump to tell Congress if he believes Tehran is sticking to what he has described as “the worst deal ever negotiated.”

When asked on Friday what Moscow’s message would be for Washington, Russia’s U.N. ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, said: “Stay in the JCPOA (the nuclear deal).”

A senior U.N. Security Council diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: “We are faced with real uncertainties with respect to North Korea and it’s a bit dangerous … to add another source of uncertainty with respect to Iran.”

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Sunday his country would not be bullied by the United States and would react strongly to any “wrong move” by Washington on the nuclear deal.

Iran and North Korea will also feature heavily during a ministerial Security Council meeting on Thursday, at the request of the United States, to discuss the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

 

MYANMAR, CLIMATE, U.N. REFORM

While leaders and diplomats are also due to meet on longer-running crises including Libya, Syria, South Sudan, Mali, Central African Republic, Yemen and Iraq, a last-minute addition has been Myanmar, where the United Nations has branded violence against Rohingya Muslims as “ethnic cleansing.”

Britain is due to host a ministerial meeting on Monday to seek a way to get Myanmar authorities to end a military offensive in the country’s Rakhine state that has sent more than 400,000 minority Rohingya Muslims fleeing to Bangladesh.

Following Trump’s announcement that the United States would withdraw from a landmark 2015 global agreement to fight climate change, several high-level gatherings are planned on the sidelines of the General Assembly to bolster the deal.

“Climate change is a serious threat,” Guterres told reporters. “Hurricanes and floods around the world remind us that extreme weather events are expected to become more frequent and severe, due to climate change.”

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson appeared to hold the door open for the United States to remain in the Paris climate accord “under the right conditions.”

“The president said he is open to finding those conditions where we can remain engaged with others on what we all agree is still a challenging issue,” Tillerson said on CBS’ “Face The Nation” program on Sunday.

Trump will seek to boost support for reforming the United Nations, which he once called “a club for people to get together, talk and have a good time.”

The United States is the largest U.N. contributor and Trump has complained that Washington pays too much.

“The United Nations, of course, holds tremendous potential to realize its founding ideals, but only if it’s run more efficiently and effectively,” McMaster said on Friday.

 

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols at the United Nations; Editing by Yara Bayoumy and Peter Cooney)

 

‘Near-impossible’ to stop London-style attack: Israeli security expert

FILE PHOTO: A man walks next to a newly erected concrete barriers at the entrance to Jabel Mukaber, in an area of the West Bank that Israel captured in a 1967 war and annexed to the city of Jerusalem, the morning after a Palestinian rammed his truck into a group of Israeli soldiers on a popular promenade in Jerusalem January 9, 2017. REUTERS/Amir Cohen/File Photo

By Luke Baker

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Attacks like the one in London are almost impossible to stop, the former head of VIP protection at Israel’s Shin Bet security agency said on Thursday, acknowledging that even Israel struggled to prevent them.

Despite building a barrier intended to prevent Palestinian attackers protesting against occupation entering from the West Bank, Israel has suffered dozens of low-tech vehicle or knife attacks in the last two years on civilians, police and soldiers.

“What happened in London was basically in a public area and, when it comes to public areas, it’s nearly impossible (to prevent),” said Shlomo Harnoy, who spent 25 years in the Shin Bet, sometimes coordinating protection for U.S. presidential visits. He now directs Sdema Group, a global security consultancy.

“There are ideas to build public areas to counter specific security threats, especially when it comes to explosive materials, but when it’s an attack on a bridge or something like that, it’s very difficult.”

In Wednesday’s attack, the suspect drove his rented vehicle into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge before stabbing a policeman at the entrance to the Houses of Parliament. Four people were killed and at least 40 injured. The attacker, identified by police as British-born, was shot dead.

In Israel, Palestinians have rammed cars and trucks into civilians or members of security forces standing in particular at bus stops, tram stations and security posts.

In January, four soldiers were killed and 17 injured when a Palestinian drove his truck at high speed into a group of cadets waiting by the side of the road in Jerusalem.

BLOCKS AND BOLLARDS

Steel bollards have been put up in sensitive areas, and there are now concrete blocks stopping vehicles from approaching tram stops.

But Harnoy said that “you can’t put concrete blocks and barriers everywhere, especially in the center of a city like London. It can’t be like a military installation”.

“To my mind, the best solution for stopping an attack is having people who know how to use arms, including civilians,” he said.

In Israel, police carry guns, it is not uncommon to see armed soldiers on the streets, and many civilians, most of whom have done army service, carry pistols. When attacks occur, video footage often shows civilians drawing weapons at the scene.

“But of course in Britain that is very difficult,” Harnoy said. “Even most police don’t carry weapons. For me, that is one of the mistakes in Britain, not allowing police to have weapons.”

Even in Israel, Harnoy is not convinced that most civilians who carry a weapon are sufficiently trained to handle an attack.

He also noted that Israel allowed its intelligence services more freedom to dig up background information on individuals than Britain, which had to strike more of a balance with privacy and human rights.

“This is a war,” said Harnoy. “When it comes to intelligence, you need 10 to 15 years of information on people, and in doing that you have to think carefully about their rights, about the balance between freedom and security.

“To implement such an intelligence system, you have to make a different balance with democratic rights.”

(Writing by Luke Baker; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

Cyber fraudsters take money out of 20,000 Tesco Bank accounts

A Tesco supermarket is seen, in west London

By Estelle Shirbon

LONDON (Reuters) – The banking arm of Britain’s biggest retailer Tesco was scrambling on Monday to deal with an online attack over the weekend on 40,000 customers’ accounts, 20,000 of which had money removed.

The hack is the first on a British bank known to have resulted in customers losing money, adding to growing concerns about the British financial sector’s vulnerabilities to cyber attacks, which have jumped in frequency over the past two years.

Tesco Bank, which manages 136,000 current accounts, stopped all online transactions while it worked to resume normal service, although customers could still use their bank cards in shops and to withdraw money from cash machines.

“Any financial loss that results from this fraudulent activity will be borne by the bank,” Tesco Bank Chief Executive Benny Higgins told BBC radio. “Customers are not at financial risk.”

“We think it would be relatively small amounts that have come out but we’re still working on that,” he said, adding that he expected the cost of refunding customers would be “a big number but not a huge number”.

Shares in supermarket chain Tesco, which wholly owns Tesco Bank, were down 1.2 percent at 200.20 pence by 1030 GMT.

The bank is a minnow in Britain’s retail banking market, with about 2 percent of current accounts, and represents only a small part of Tesco’s overall business.

It contributed 503 million pounds ($623.4 million) to the group’s revenue of 24.4 billion pounds in the first half of its 2016-17 financial year.

But while the financial hit to the group may be limited, Tesco Bank risks serious reputational damage from an attack that affected 29 percent of its customer current accounts.

Other British banks have been targeted by cyber attacks in recent years, but the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) which regulates the sector said it was not aware of any previous incident in which customers had lost money.

Reported attacks on financial institutions in Britain have risen from just five in 2014 to over 75 so far this year, according to FCA data, but bank executives and providers of security systems say there are many more unreported attacks.

HSBC issued a series of apologies to customers earlier this year after its UK personal banking websites were shut down by a “denial of service” attack, but no customer funds were at threat during that breach.

Cliff Moyce, global head of financial services at DataArt, a network of technology consulting and software services firms, said reduced staffing levels over the weekend were likely to have been one of the reasons for the impact of the hack.

“The clever part was doing it over the weekend when banks are typically understaffed, and will respond more slowly,” he said in a comment emailed to media.

“Automated fraud detection systems appear to have worked well, but a lack of people at desks will not have helped.”

Other well-known British brands hit by significant cyber attacks over the past year include telecoms firms TalkTalk and Vodafone, business software provider Sage and electronic goods retailer Dixons Carphone.

(Additional reporting by Michael Holden, James Davey and Huw Jones; Editing by Greg Mahlich)