UK cyber teams disrupt 1.6 million scam campaigns

Britain’s national cyber-defence programme disrupted more than 1.6 million commodity attack campaigns in the year to August, according to the National Cyber Security Centre’s new annual review.

Its takedown service removed or blocked malicious infrastructure, while 30,000 confirmed phishing attacks impersonating GOV.UK were first taken down within a median of 90 minutes. Public reports also helped remove malicious links: the suspicious-email service received 13.4 million reports during the year.

A quieter intervention may be just as useful. The NCSC sent more than 52,000 notices to organisations running exposed software; 70% of the identified vulnerabilities were subsequently fixed. A trial found notified organisations repaired weaknesses up to 45% faster than those not contacted.

The centre says some fixes may have happened independently, so the figures do not prove that every notice caused a repair. Netcraft, which supplies takedown data, reports that the UK share of global phishing hosting has fallen from about 5% in 2016 to roughly 1–2%. Together, rapid removal and practical warnings are making attacks harder to sustain.

Sources

• National Cyber Security Centre — Annual Review 2026: securing the UK’s internet
• Netcraft — a decade of proactive protection with the NCSC