Foreign Office outpost in Milton Keynes helped the CIA to hack into mobile phones

A SECRETIVE branch of Britain’s intelligence services which is home to reallife “Qs” fictionalised in James Bond was behind the hacking of mobile phones and televisions revealed in a series of leaked CIA documents.

Her Majesty’s Government Communications Centre (HMGCC) is identified as the British intelligence agency that collaborated with the CIA in breaking into the iOS operating systems used in iPhones.

It is understood that HMGCC was also involved in helping MI5 to develop software to enable secret services to spy on targets through Samsung internet-connected television. HMGCC is a little known outpost of the Foreign Office based in Hanslope Park, a 17thcentury manor house, just off the M1 and close to Milton Keynes in Bucks.

One document, uncovered by The Telegraph among more than 8,000 published by WikiLeaks this week, shows the involvement of HMGCC.

Under a file codenamed Triclops Summer 2015, the document details a “top secret” workshop held in Ottawa, Canada, involving US, Canadian and British intelligence agencies, in which hackers discussed methods for targeting iPhones.

One of the projects – codenamed Saline – gives an update on progress in using software to “attack” the iOS operating system using “return-oriented programming” – or ROP – a technique in which the hacker “attacks” a device by hijacking the software and taking control without the user knowing it.

The document states that the previous hacking method is “not as accurate anymore” and adds, “using HMGCC’s new method of continued execution”.

The file advises that, for the future, the agencies should “fix up reliability” and “merge” methods with HMGCC.

Unlike more famous branches of the British secret services – such as MI5, MI6 and GCHQ – little is known about HMGCC. Its website states: “We design and deliver communication systems and provide technical solutions that protect national security at home and overseas, now and for the future.”

Its former boss Eddie Alleyn, an Oxford graduate, retired at Christmas after five years as both its chief executive and chairman.