The British government has launched an investigation after Defence Secretary Ben Wallace MP was fooled into speaking to someone impersonating Ukraine’s Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal.
Amid a flurry of disinformation surrounding the war in Ukraine, the British government itself has become the latest institution to be fooled, as both Defence Secretary Ben Wallace and Home Secretary Priti Patel MP have revealed they fell pray to hoaxsters impersonating Ukrainian officials.
On Thursday afternoon, Mr Wallace wrote on social media: “Today an attempt was made by an imposter claiming to be Ukrainian PM to speak with me. He posed several misleading questions and after becoming suspicious I terminated the call.”
“No amount of Russian disinformation, distortion and dirty tricks can distract from Russia’s human rights abuses and illegal invasion of Ukraine. A desperate attempt,” Wallace added.
According to a defence source speaking to Reuters, the call lasted around ten minutes and prompted the defence secretary to launch an immediate investigation into how the government could be fooled so badly.
Further elaborating on the incident, Armed Forces minister James Heappey said that the call took place on a non-secure Microsoft Teams meeting, and therefore could have been “listened in to” by hackers who could have “easily intercepted” the call.
Heappey later divulged that the call had been “pretty bland”, but said that “When the caller started to ask more pointed questions about our intentions militarily in the region, Ben knew full well that was not the sort of question anybody would normally ask on Teams and so he became pretty suspicious and terminated the call.”
Following the disclosure from Wallace, Home Secretary Priti Patel admitted that she had fallen victim to a similar hoax, writing: “This also happened to me earlier this week. Pathetic attempt at such difficult times to divide us. We stand with Ukraine.”
The incident is far from the first time British officials have fallen prey to such hoax calls, with Prime Minister Boris Johnson himself being tricked in 2018 when he was acting as foreign minister. A caller had successfully fooled Johnson into believing that he was the Prime Minister of Armenia and carried out a conversation in which they discussed international relations and even “rude” poetry.
Commenting to The Guardian on the latest hoax call, Shadow Home Office minister Holly Lynch said: “For individuals to be able to fraudulently gain access to two of the most senior government ministers with responsibilities for our national defence is worrying.
“There are questions that need answering as to why the basics in due diligence appear not to have happened, especially at a time of heightened security concerns around disinformation and cyberattacks.”
Disinformation abounds from all sides in the war in Ukraine. On Thursday, for example, a deep fake video of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky emerged in which a digitally fabricated Zelensky falsely told his forces to surrender.
Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka
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