China hacked the mobile phones of senior officials in Downing Street for several years, it has been claimed.
The Daily Telegraph said the hack had been in operation between 2021 and 2024 and was aimed at the phones of some of the closest aides to Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak.
However, senior sources who served in the government at the time said they did not recognise the account. They said they would have been aware if MI5 had uncovered a surveillance operation at the heart of government.
Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak in 2020
HEATHCLIFF O’MALLEY/GETTY IMAGES
Security sources added that it was well-known that China had been targeting UK telecommunications systems more broadly but downplayed claims that this had been successful.
One said the security services had investigated whether China had been able to access metadata from Britain’s telecommunications network after the US authorities discovered that the Chinese authorities had infiltrated American phone networks and had been able to “record phone calls at will”.
However, they said there was no evidence that the so-called Salt Typhoon operation had been successful in the UK.
Sir Keir Starmer will visit China this week, where he will attempt to rebuild ties with Beijing and promote economic co-operation. Critics of the visit say the claims of hacking show the government needs to rethink its position on China.
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Alicia Kearns, a shadow minister for national security and one of the alleged targets of the Westminster spy case, said: “How much more evidence does this government need before it ends its simpering to Xi and stands tall as the great country we are and defends us? Labour is rewarding hostile acts against our state.”
Dakota Cary, from the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub, a US think tank focused on the threat posed by China, told the Telegraph: “Salt Typhoon has focused on telecommunications firms and the back-end of those networks so that they can pick up communications between individuals.
“We know that China has been interested in getting political intelligence on MPs and decision-making in British politics.”
However, one former Whitehall figure said the Chinese would not have had access to secret government information even if they had been able to hack into the officials’ or ministers’ phones.
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They said: “The rules are very clear that people in government using mobile phones should assume that they could be targeted and so they should never be used to discuss secret or sensitive information. Anything of that type needs to be routed through secure government networks.”
In 2022 it was reported that Truss’s phone was hacked while she was foreign secretary. It was claimed that agents suspected of working for Russia had been responsible.
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The previous year, Boris Johnson was told to switch off his private mobile phone permanently amid concerns that the number had been available online and could have been hacked.
Johnson initially claimed that he could not hand over WhatsApp messages to the Covid inquiry as a result, but technical experts were able to recover all relevant messages from the device.