UK Police National Legal Database (PNLD) and Ask the Police: police and justice staff details published

What happened

• PNLD (run by West Yorkshire Police) identified an incident on 26 Jul 2026. Names, organisations and work emails of police officers and staff, criminal-justice professionals, government partners and customers were “published on the dark web”, plus names and emails of people who had submitted questions to Ask the Police. No evidence that passwords were compromised. CM Alliance reports the attackers claimed over 740,000 records across PNLD and the UK Department for Education and demanded payment (claim).
• Root cause / initial access: not disclosed.
• Attacker: not identified by PNLD.
• Response: working with the National Crime Agency and specialists; ICO notified; affected organisations contacted.

Sources

• https://www.pnld.co.uk/article/?id=7ebf3c0e-598e-f111-8077-7ced8d3aa78f
• https://www.cm-alliance.com/cybersecurity-blog/major-cyber-attacks-data-breaches-ransomware-attacks-in-july-2026

This is a brief: a short, sourced summary from our incident tracking. Full advisories add commands to check whether you are affected.