UK government officials’ phones allegedly hacked for years: Report

LONDON

Mobile phones belonging to senior officials in Downing Street, including top UK government figures, were allegedly hacked for years until 2025, according to a report published Tuesday.

The spying operation is understood to have compromised senior members of the government, exposing their private communications to Beijing, The Telegraph reported.

Citing a source with knowledge of the breach, the report said "state-sponsored hackers" targeted the phones of some of the closest aides to former prime ministers Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak between 2021 and 2024.

The report accused China of being behind the incidents, adding that it remains unclear whether the mobile phones of the prime ministers themselves were compromised. Citing the same source, it said the hacking went "right into the heart of Downing Street."

US intelligence sources indicated that the Chinese espionage operation, known as Salt Typhoon, was ongoing, raising the possibility that Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his senior staff may also have been exposed.

The phone hacking was described as part of a global espionage campaign allegedly carried out by Beijing that targeted multiple countries, including the US and the other three members of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance: Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

- China 'firmly opposes' politicization of cybersecurity issues

The report suggested that the breaches date back to at least 2021, but said it took intelligence agencies three years to detect them, with discovery only occurring in 2024.

China has previously dismissed the claims as "baseless" and "lacking evidence."

One senior US official told The Telegraph that the global breach was part of "one of maybe the more successful campaigns in the history of espionage."

The British daily said it was told there were "many" separate hacking attacks on the phones of Downing Street staff and across wider government, particularly during the tenure of Sunak, who served as prime minister from 2022 to 2024.

In 2023, the UK Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee said China was "aggressively" targeting the UK, while warning that the government had "no strategy" to counter the threat.

A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy told The Telegraph: "China is a staunch defender of cyber security and one of the major victims of cyber espionage and attacks."

"We firmly oppose the practice of politicizing cybersecurity issues or accusing other countries without evidence."