The Cabinet Office has rejected Dominic Cummings’ claim that China breached high-level systems used to transfer sensitive government information.
In an interview with the Times, Cummings said China obtained “vast amounts” of “extremely secret” information from the UK intelligence services and parts of Whitehall.
He told the paper the breach was covered up after he was briefed on the compromised data in 2020 while a senior aide to then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
In response, a Cabinet Office spokesperson said: “It is untrue to claim that the systems we use to transfer the most sensitive government information have been compromised.”
Cummings said China breached high-level systems used to transfer so-called Strap material, a government classification for highly sensitive intelligence data.
In the interview, he said the compromised information included: “Material from intelligence services. Material from the National Security Secretariat in the Cabinet Office.
“Things the government has to keep secret. If they’re not secret, then there are very, very serious implications for it.”
He told the newspaper: “The cabinet secretary said, ‘We have to explain something; there’s been a serious problem’, and he talked through what this was.
“And it was so bizarre that, not just Boris, a few people in the room were looking around like this – ‘Am I somehow misunderstanding what he’s saying?'”
He added: “What I’m saying is that some Strap stuff was compromised and vast amounts of data classified as extremely secret and extremely dangerous for any foreign entity to control was compromised.”
Cummings also claimed the breach was covered up.
“If the MPs want to finally have an inquiry about it, I’d be happy to talk about it,” he said.
A former government security official told the BBC he was “mystified” by Cummings’ claims.
Professor Ciaran Martin became the first chief executive of the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre in 2016 and stood down in August 2020.
Speaking on Radio 4’s The World Tonight programme, Prof Martin cast doubt on Cummings’ claim that the so-called Strap system was breached.
“This is, to the best of my knowledge, categorically untrue,” he said. “That would have fallen to the National Cyber Security Centre to lead and there was no such investigation.”
Prof Martin added: “China is a consistent and serious cyber security threat… but these systems are entirely different.
“They’re built, monitored, secured and operated in an entirely different way than normal internet-based systems.
“It doesn’t follow that… they [China] can somehow penetrate these entirely bespoke systems and there wasn’t any evidence in 2020 that they did so.”
