- British top brass and MoD officials duped into accepting ‘friend requests’
- Fears private details could be used to hack passwords on classified files
By
Rebecca Evans and Ian Drury
08:40 EST, 11 March 2012
|
05:58 EST, 12 March 2012
Centre of breach: Spies created a fake Facebook account for Nato’s Supreme Allied Commander, Admiral James Stavridis (above) in a bid to steal private information from his friends
Nato’s most senior commander has been embroiled in a major security alert after a fake Facebook account was set up in his name by ‘Chinese spies’.
Senior British military officers and Ministry of Defence staff are understood to have accepted ‘friend requests’ from a bogus account for Nato’s Supreme Allied Commander James Stavridis.
In the mistaken belief they had linked up with the American admiral on the site, they then unwittingly provided a treasure trove of personal details – including pictures, phone numbers and email addresses.
Nato will not officially say who was behind the cyber-fraud or who accepted friend requests but it is understood that evidence points to Chinese state-sponsored hackers.
Admiral Stavridis – who was in charge of operations in Libya to bring about the end of Colonel Gaddafi’s regime – now has an official Facebook page, while the bogus one has been permanently deleted from the internet.
Although spies are unlikely to have found any genuine military secrets, it is not known how much information was harvested and any personal details could be used to create profiles of targets for blackmail or espionage.
Officials at SHAPE, the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, confirmed the admiral had been targeted.
A spokesman said: ‘This type of compromising attempt is called “social engineering” and has nothing to do with hacking or espionage.
‘Discussions/chats/postings on Facebook are of course only about unclassified topics.’
A Nato official added: ‘There have been several fake Supreme Allied Commander pages. We are not aware that they are Chinese. Facebook has co-operated in taking them down.’
Internet con: The genuine Facebook page of Adml Stavridis, which was imitated by suspected Chinese spies
Nato officials asked the networking site to remove the fake page last year. Facebook said false accounts have very different footprints from normal users and are identified using the most sophisticated techniques.
An MoD spokesman said: ‘We issue guidance on the risks and benefits of channels such as Facebook.’
The fake Facebook account is the latest tactic in the use of the internet to spy on key figures, with an increasing fear that Chinese intelligence agencies are using ‘electronic warfare’ to target not just military secrets but every aspect of western life.
Information allegedly stolen by hackers includes secrets of stealth aircraft, submarine technology, the space programme and solar energy.
A Facebook spokesman said: ‘We removed the profile for violating our terms within a business day of receiving a report.’
Threat: Officials at Nato’s headquarters in Brussels (above) got Facebook to remove the bogus account as soon as they were made aware of it late last year
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What are they going to discover about his friends? That they need more sheep in Farmville?
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– Luke, Ellesmere Port, 12/3/2012 13:14 … In case you’re not aware, Chinese has taken over majority of the IBM business. I’m not even referring to Chinese owning Lenova; I am talking about the new business divisions like the RFID, smart-grid development, etc.. Imagine NATO keeps track of its armory inventory using RFID technology which is developed by the Chinese…
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This admiral should have understood better than anyone about security protocols. It’s time to sack him.
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Security services should go back to paper copies they’re more secure than anything online and you have to physically steal them. Off course they have to communicate but they should do that by secure lines only which are top class made by IBM’S top brass in computer nerds.
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This is no secret- the Chinese steal everything that moves under the sun!
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Really…should he be in the job if he is putting anything of importance on FB…no wonder this country is going down quicker than the Titanic (or one of Clinton’s interns)…
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Sensitive compuer held data should be held on an intranet access only and there should be no internet access. It really is that simple.
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If senior military officers do not understand basic security, they should be fired for incompetence. No person, militay or civilian, who is in a security senistive job should go anywhere near social networking – everbody knows the data is not secure.
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Why does this story encourage my eyes to roll up into my skull? ..maybe it’s because I see big grown up adults playing silly James Bond games against each other wrapped-up in a fantasy world they themselves have created….next!
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Perhaps its time to end this Facebook sham?
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