BREAKING: Britain’s newest naval spy boats were being spied on by someone in China, due to its components having compromised Chinese made components.
Since March, Royal Marines and Special Boat Service teams have operated a £12 million fleet of K3 Scout drone boats, vessels earmarked for sensitive Gulf missions near the Strait of Hormuz. Forensic checks later revealed that Chinese-made components inside their primary cameras had been sending continuous “heartbeat” signals to an IP address in China.
The cameras could stay active even when the boats themselves were switched off, and the craft had been used near high-level special-forces meetings.
The Ministry of Defence cut the cameras offline after a routine cyber assessment and insists no classified data was compromised.
Kraken Technology, the British supplier, says the third-party cameras met U.S. defence standards and that vulnerabilities have been closed. The same model has also been bought by U.S. Special Operations Command.
