Liz Truss on FOURTH phone since July after ‘Russians hacked her’
LIZ TRUSS is on her fourth new mobile phone number since July, as the security services battle to protect her from being further compromised by foreign powers.
The Mail on Sunday revealed last week that the former Prime Minister had to change her number during the summer leadership contest after she was hacked by agents suspected of working for Russia.
Now this newspaper can disclose new details about the panic the hack caused in Ms Truss’s team – and how she is still suffering the consequences.
A former aide says Ms Truss, who was Foreign Secretary, was ‘ashen-faced’ when she was told that the number she had been using for more than a decade had been ‘compromised’.
She was also warned a year’s worth of messages – including exchanges with former Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng and sensitive information about military strategy in Ukraine – were in the hands of an individual who had alerted her office to the security breach.
The aide said: ‘GCHQ laid the blame for the hack squarely at the feet of Russia. Liz was told that the individual had agreed to hand them over because they were clearly the work of Russia.’
One adviser in the room asked Ms Truss what she worried might be in the messages. She is understood to have replied: ‘Stuff between me and my guys.’
Ms Truss initially told just two of her closest advisers about the hack out of fear the information would leak but more knew as the campaign progressed. The aide added Ms Truss ‘exchanged concerned looks’ with her political aide responsible for national security policy while explaining events.
As soon as they were notified of the unprecedented security breach, Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Cabinet Secretary Simon Case moved to ensure information about the incident was suppressed.
‘The individual who had been handed the messages was advised in strong terms not to publish on security grounds,’ the aide said.
They added that questions have been raised about why GCHQ was unaware of the hack until the individual came forward with the messages.
It is believed that key international allies the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand – who comprise the ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence alliance – were informed.
According to one security source: ‘As a matter of normal protocol, intelligence of this nature will have been shared with Five Eyes. But that will probably have been within the intelligence community, rather than at Ministerial level.’
Initially security services believed the phone may have been hacked while Ms Truss was overseas, either in her role as Foreign Secretary or as International Trade Secretary. According to one security source: ‘What people miss is hacking like this is relatively easy. Lots of countries do it, including Tanzania, Ethiopia, etc.’
Particular focus was paid to Ms Truss’s trip to Moscow in February, where she held talks on the Ukraine crisis with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
However officials with knowledge of that visit claim it is unlikely that was where the hack occurred.
‘Liz took extensive security precautions in Russia,’ one Government source revealed. ‘She was given a temporary “burner” phone, and the aircraft carrying her didn’t stay on Russian soil to ensure its own communications systems couldn’t be compromised.’
GCHQ believes the hack probably occurred on British soil. After the incident, Ms Truss was handed a secure phone for the duration of the leadership campaign.
However, after she entered No 10, it was felt an even higher level of precaution was required. In early September she was handed her third phone in as many months.
But the technology in the third phone was so sensitive that when she stood down last month she was required to hand it back in – and had to change her number for a fourth time.
Tobias Ellwood, Tory chairman of the Defence Select Committee, said: ‘This is a constant threat from Russia. They are getting better and better at cyber-attacks and hacking. It is something for the intelligence and security committee to investigate.’
‘GCHQ laid the blame at the feet of Russia’
‘They are getting much better at cyber-attacks’