China hacked Downing Street phones for years

China hacked the mobile phones of senior UK government officials in Downing Street for several years. 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 U.S. 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 “espionage alert” to Parliament in November about the threat of spying from the Chinese state.

Read more at The Telegraph