Fake Twitter account purporting to be Royal Navy head suspended
Hoax profile imitating new First Sea Lord removed at request of the MoD
BOSSES at Twitter have suspended a fake account posing as the head of the Royal Navy following calls from the Ministry of Defence, The News can reveal.
The fake account was set up last week and was imitating the Senior Service’s new First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Ben Key.
Named @FirstSeaIord, the hoax profile has since been suspended after news of its existence was raised with defence chiefs in Whitehall.
Prior to being removed, the page had been sharing seemingly-legitimate posts about the Royal Navy during the few days it was active.
Although the account was not verified, and did not have ‘blue-tick’ status, security sources said there was a chance it could have acted as a base to eventually spread disinformation about the Royal Navy and naval operations.
The issue was raised by The News with the Ministry of Defence (MoD) on Sunday evening, with a Royal Navy official saying they were ‘aware’ of the account and that a ‘request’ had been made to Twitter to remove it.
In a statement to The News, a spokesman for the navy confirmed: ‘The fake account has now been removed at our request.’
This is not the first time the MoD has stepped in to clampdown on fake Twitter accounts.
in 2017, at least three pages – including one in the name of the then-defence secretary, Gavin Williamson, and another in the name of his predecessor, Michael Fallon – where suspended following protestations by the MoD.
Another, using the name of the Royal Air Force, was also transferred to the control of the department, according to details released under the Freedom of Information Act.
It comes after a complaint by the Foreign Office in September of that year which resulted in the suspension of a Twitter account that was set up by RT, the Kremlin-backed news channel formerly known as Russia Today, as part of an extensive online project to mark the Russian revolution’s centenary.
However, the MoD’s interventions came too late to prevent some from being taken in by the spoofs, with Sky News’s defence correspondent Alistair Bunkall among those duped.
Defence cyber security expert Chris Parker, a former Lieutenant Colonel in the British Army, said such tactics were an ‘effective’ form of cyber warfare. ‘Social engineering is what it is called and it’s a very real attack methodology,’ he told The News. ‘It is about making people think what they’re reading is from a legitimate source.
‘It’s now becoming a de-facto cyber attack because it’s obstructing legitimate data by the means of impersonation… It’s an effective form of cyber attack and prevalent in other industries. There’s no real defence against this.’
He added there were concerns that social media accounts for government and military figures were fast becoming a ‘double-edged sword’.
‘There’s a very real risk of misinformation which is a big part of modern warfare – we’ve seen it used as a tactic by Russia, for instance,’ he said.