Powerful spyware linked to a user in the United Arab Emirates – which could have allowed 24-hour monitoring of messages, photos and calls – was found on the connected device number 10network, it is claimed.
The dangerous cyber security breach is said to have happened almost a year later on 7 July 2020 boris johnsontime as prime minister.
According to the researchers, an Israeli-made spyware known as Pegasus was also suspected of infecting the Foreign Office.
It was linked to operators in the UAE, IndiaCyprus and Jordan.
An investigation reporter working on device number 10 got an infection new yorker magazine.
He explained that several phones, including the PM’s in Downing Street, had been tested, but UK officials were unable to locate the infected device and the nature of any data stolen was never determined.
“When we found case number 10, my jaw dropped,” John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab Center, told the journal.
He claimed Britain was ‘underestimating the threat from Pegasus’ and had been left ‘brilliantly burned’.
Bill Markjak, another senior researcher, said: ‘We suspect there was an exclusion of the data involved.’
Powerful spyware called Pegasus was used to infect a network-connected device at 10 Downing Street, it has been claimed.
Once Pegasus is on a person’s device, it can copy sent or received messages, crop photos, record phone calls, or even pass through the phone’s camera Is. The user can film in secret, or record a conversation by activating the microphone.
It can also potentially be used to find out where someone is, where they are, or who they have met.
Suspected infection of Foreign Office was also found in Citizen Lab.
Its director Ron Deebert wrote in an article for the lab Website Published today, as the Foreign Office has many employees overseas, suspected infections ‘may be related’Equipment located overseas and using foreign SIM cards’.
He said it was “similar to the hacking of foreign phone numbers used by US State Department employees in Uganda in 2021”.
Number 10 and the Foreign Office have been contacted for comments.
The timing of the revelation about spyware on a Number 10 device linked to an operator in the UAE could prove embarrassing for the PM, as it comes a month after Mr Johnson visited the region. comes.
The prime minister used the visit to try and encourage both the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia to increase oil production as Western nations look to wean themselves off Russian supplies.