For the first time, the identity of a man at the centre of allegations that computers were hacked on behalf of the disgraced News of the World newspaper has been named.
The Guardian reports that security consultant Philip Campbell Smith is alleged to have used a Trojan horse to hack into a computer belonging to Ian Hurst, a former British army intelligence officer who handled IRA informers in Northern Ireland.
For legal reasons, Smith was previously referred to simply as “X” in Hurst’s recent evidence to the Leveson Inquiry into press standards:
It is claimed that Smith, a former member of the British Army’s Force Research Unit (FRU), was contracted by a firm called Southern Investigations to spy on Hurst’s computer on behalf of the News of the World, who wished to discover the whereabouts of IRA…
Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.
Found this article interesting? Follow Graham Cluley on Twitter or Mastodon to read more of the exclusive content we post.
