China Hacked Downing Street Phones For Years (telegraph.co.uk)
- Reference: 0180662398
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/01/27/0138225/china-hacked-downing-street-phones-for-years
- Source link: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/01/26/china-hacked-downing-street-phones-for-years/
> China [1]hacked the mobile phones of senior officials in Downing Street for several years , The Telegraph can disclose. The spying operation is understood to have compromised senior members of the government, exposing their private communications to Beijing. State-sponsored hackers are known to have targeted the phones of some of the closest aides to Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak between 2021 and 2024. It is unclear whether the hack included the mobile phones of the prime ministers themselves, but one source with knowledge of the breach said it went "right into the heart of Downing Street."
>
> Intelligence sources in the US indicated that the Chinese espionage operation, known as Salt Typhoon, was ongoing, raising the possibility that Sir Keir Starmer and his senior staff may also have been exposed. MI5 issued an " [2]espionage alert " to Parliament in November about the threat of spying from the Chinese state. [...] The attack raises the possibility that Chinese spies could have read text messages or listened to calls involving senior members of the Government. Even if they were unable to eavesdrop on calls, hackers may have gained access to metadata, revealing who officials were in contact with and how frequently, as well as geolocation data showing their approximate whereabouts.
[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/01/26/china-hacked-downing-street-phones-for-years/
[2] https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2025-11-18/debates/39086819-08E6-4218-A26E-6A3368FC5D9C/ChinaEspionageGovernmentSecurityResponse
Every country does this (Score:3)
The difference is the western countries admit when they get hacked. (Not sure if the US still counts - will find out in 2028).
China? Russia? Iraq? If someone is lucky, they just fire the General responsible for security. If not lucky, they fall out of a forty story building. And the press says it was an accident.
But they never admit what happened - because they are terrified of letting the common folk find out how bad they are at their job.
Who is the loser here? (Score:2)
End result China's IQ reduces by 10 points listening to limey blabber.
China? (Score:1)
Or someone making it look like China?
The news isn't that the phone's got hacked (Score:2)
The news is that you're being told that the phone's got hacked. Every Nation does this. If you're over 30 you've seen a couple of these stories how maybe if you're over 20 just through osmosis.
So the hack wasn't a big enough deal that they didn't feel they shouldn't talk about it publicly and instead they're using it for some PR. Maybe to put China on notice. Maybe for some general vibes. I don't have enough of a background in foreign policy to know.
Re: The news isn't that the phone's got hacked (Score:1)
Important people are too important to bother themselves with opsec
Larry the cat? (Score:2)
Never trust anyone with the self-aggrandising job title 'Chief Mouser'.
Crap, another disinformation program disclosed (Score:2)
They've likely been feeding the Chinese bogus crap for years knowing the phones were being tapped.
Re: Crap, another disinformation program disclosed (Score:2)
You would hope. I suspect the reality would be much more disheartening.
It's embarrassing (Score:2)
These same people can't even keep their own infra secure and they expect us to buy that systems like digital ID and even worse their backdoored encryption will be perfectly fine. It would be funny if it wasn't so sad.
I could do that (Score:3)
It's weird to see a global espionage saga and say, "well that's dumb. I am not a wizard with nation state resources, but I could so that on a casual weekend." Their security sucks so much that my grandson could probably accidentally do that while settling up a game server.