The message arrived on my iPhone on Tuesday evening, just as Foreign Secretary James Cleverly was landing in Beijing for his controversial talks with Chinese leaders.
‘ALERT: State-sponsored attackers may be targeting your iPhone,’ it read. More spam, I thought.
But after examining the sender’s address, and scanning the detail, it became clear that the message was genuine – a fact subsequently confirmed by Apple and the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), a key part of the Government’s war on foreign hackers at GCHQ.
The message warned about attackers trying to ‘remotely compromise’ my iPhone, and suggested that I immediately put it into lockdown mode. This preserves the core functions, but disables attachments and – as I discovered to my cost – many routine applications, such as pay-by-phone parking.
‘These attackers are likely targeting you individually because of who you are or what you do,’ it added. ‘If your device is compromised by a state-sponsored attacker, they may be able to remotely access your sensitive data, communications, or even the camera and microphone.’
THREAT: The phones of Rishi Sunak and his staff are targets
All quite alarming – but also an increasingly common experience for politicians, journalists and business people, who are facing wave after wave of cyber attacks from foreign spies.
Russia and China are the obvious main suspects, followed by Iran and North Korea.
Neither Apple nor the NCSC would provide any further details about the origin or motivation of the attack, although the warning did coincide with the completion of my accreditation for the G20 summit in India, where Rishi Sunak is expected to hold discussions with the Chinese leadership.
I have also covered extensively the growing evidence that the Covid pandemic started as the result of a leak from a Chinese laboratory in Wuhan, and criticisms from within the Tory Party of Mr Cleverly’s closer engagement with Beijing.
It even crossed my mind that the potential attack could be related to my interview last weekend with departing Tory MP Nadine Dorries, who is preparing to publish a book that she says will expose ‘corruption’ at the heart of the British establishment; however, I was assured that ‘we Brits just don’t behave like that’.
‘Most, if not all, of what they might see in your phone will be completely useless,’ a senior security source told me frankly. ‘But to find that golden needle they need a number of haystacks to search.’
The use of ‘state-sponsored’ in the warning was key: it meant that the scale and firepower of the hacking could not have been attempted by lone operators.
Before heading to China, Mr Cleverly and his team were warned that they should not bring their own smartphones and laptops: instead, ‘burner’ phones were purchased to be used then destroyed, while UK government computers will have their hard drives removed and erased on their return to Britain. The British Embassy’s secure satellite phone system has been used to relay any sensitive messages.
British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi shake hands on the former’s visit to China last week
Sometimes the hackers hit the espionage jackpot: last year, The Mail on Sunday revealed that Liz Truss’s phone had been hacked while she was Foreign Secretary, with private messages between Ms Truss and officials – including about the Ukraine war – falling into foreign hands.
That incident, along with a slew of leaked WhatsApp messages revealing the inner workings of Boris Johnson’s No 10 and Matt Hancock’s time as Health Secretary during Covid, mean that many senior political figures have activated the ‘disappearing message’ timer – or save meaningful exchanges for face-to-face meetings.
If foreign agents have accessed my phone, they will have seen a series of messages just saying: ‘Drink?’
When I asked senior government security experts about the best approach to repel the hackers, I was told that one solution was to use a variety of burner phones for different contacts – a similar modus operandi to that adopted by drug dealers. The experts admitted that this was not especially practical.
The security message warned that ‘state-sponsored attackers are very well-funded and sophisticated, and their attacks are constantly evolving’ and urged me to always update messaging and cloud apps to the latest available versions, as they contain the most up-to-date security improvements.
‘State-sponsored attackers are persistent and will likely try to attack you through other channels, devices, and accounts not associated with Apple,’ the message went on.
It continued: ‘We are unable to provide more information about what caused us to send you this notification, as that may help state-sponsored attackers adapt their behaviour to evade detection in the future.’