A heady mix of sex, power and espionage
‘‘ The surveillance threat and the cyber-attacks from both Russia and China are increasing
The honey trap sexting scandal has gripped UK politics for several days now. As controversies go, the one now engulfing senior Tory MPs has it all, the heady mix of, sex, power, embarrassment and possibly even a whiff of espionage.
It is doubtlessly manna from heaven for tabloid editors and yet another headache for a Conservative party high command that is clearly in its death throes. The Tory MP at the centre of this, William Wragg, fell victim to a scam known as “Catfishing”. Using fake profiles, scammers throw out some bait and see who they can reel in.
It’s more widespread than you might think. Earlier this year I was messaged by an unknown number. I explained they were mistaken, but they still tried to draw me into conversation and sent me an impossibly beautiful profile picture. I shut them down and blocked their number. I’ve no idea what their motivation was, but a sinister pattern is emerging. It comes after a raft of MPs have discovered attempts to hack their parliamentary emails and a cyber attack on the Electoral Commission. That pattern is the reason that I’ve been working with Stewart McDonald
MP to try to get both of our parliaments to take this threat more seriously.
Now I’m not saying that the sexting scandal is linked to a hostile state actor, but it could be. The word Kompromat is Russian in origin. It is used to describe compromising material that is deployed as leverage against a high-level target. What happened to William Wragg has all the markings. When he confessed he explained that he was compelled to pass mobile numbers of MP colleagues to the person he’d met on Grindr because of the “material they had on him”. All this comes hot on the heels of the UK Government blaming “Chinese state-affiliated actors” for cyber-attacks against parliamentarians and the Electoral Commission.
The surveillance threat and the cyber-attacks from both Russia and China are increasing.It is vital we move forward in this new reality with an understanding of that risk and prepare accordingly.