The personal phone of former British Prime Minister Liz Truss was reportedly hacked by Vladimir Putin spies, potentially searching for "kompromat" (compromising information).
Suspected Russian agents working for Putin reportedly hacked the phone, picking up top secret negotiations with allies, private messages with British Parliament member Kwasi Kwarteng, and some top-secret information on Ukraine, including arms shipments and delivering of aid, the Mail on Sunday exclusively reported.
The phone was so compromised, it was locked down in a government safe, according to the report.
The phone determined to be compromised at the summer when Truss was the Foreign Secretary, but then-U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the Cabinet Secretary Simon Case kept the hack from being publicly disclosed.
"This caused absolute pandemonium," a source told the paper. "It is not a great look for the intelligence services if the Foreign Secretary's phone can be so easily plundered for embarrassing personal messages by agents presumed to be working for Putin's Russia."
The potentially damaging information was being sought to blackmail the leaders, if not the U.K., according to the report.
"We do not comment on individuals' security arrangements," a U.K. government spokesperson told the Mail on Sunday.
There is a hacking method that can be activated simply through text message. The processes runs in the background of the phone without the user's knowledge and gives the hacker access to everything on the phone, including tracking the phone's location.
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