Chinese hackers allegedly accessed confidential data held by the Foreign Office in a cyber attack, it has emerged.
A cyber gang known as Storm 1849 is said to have targeted servers in October and accessed personal information, which could have included visa details.
However, the Government has said it is "pretty confident" visa applicants' details were not compromised.
A Government spokesman confirmed it was investigating the “cyber incident”, adding: “We take the security of our systems and data extremely seriously.”
“Thousands" of confidential documents and data were reportedly retrieved in the data breach.
The Chinese Storm 1849 group was named publicly in March 2024 in connection with cyber attacks on MPs and the Electoral Commission.
However business minister Sir Chris Bryant refused to say whether a Chinese-linked group was behind it. He also told Times Radio that the wider reports were not completely true.
Sir Chris said: "I'm actually going to take some of the details that you've just put out there off the table, because I'm not sure that they're necessarily accurate.
"You just referred to potentially affecting thousands of visas. We are very confident that in the investigation that we've done so far, that nobody, no individual, will have been harmed or compromised by what has happened.
"There certainly has been a hack, I can say that, I'm not able to say whether it is directly related to Chinese operatives or indeed the Chinese state."
He added: "We've been engaged in an investigation since October, just as with (Jaguar Land Rover) and M&S, and the British Library and a whole series of other cyber attacks, it does take some time to get to the bottom of precisely what has happened.”
"The one thing I do want to reassure people is that in our initial investigation, we are pretty confident that no individual will be harmed. You said people's visa applications might have been... I think that is speculating."
A Government spokesperson said: "We have been working to investigate a cyber incident. We take the security of our systems and data extremely seriously."
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