NATO officials have confirmed that Admiral James Stavridis was the target of a Facebook scam. Picture: AFP Source: AFP
SPIES opened a fake Facebook account under the name of NATO's Supreme Allied Commander, Admiral James Stavridis, and fooled senior British defence and government officials into accepting friend requests.
The incident allowed the reportedly Chinese spies access to the personal email and contact information of some British officials, but it was unlikely any military secrets were compromised, telegraph.co.uk reports.
"Discussions/chats/postings on Facebook are of course only about unclassified topics," a NATO official said of the information that was accessed.
Admiral Stavridis leads the US European Command.
NATO officials confirmed that Stavridis had been the target of a fake Facebook profile, but they refused to speculate on the origin of the security breach.
Sources said that "state-sponsored individuals in China" were responsible for the bogus Facebook page, which has been deleted.
A spokesman for the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe said this was not the first time a bogus social networking profile was put up in the name of a top NATO commander.
The spokesman added that the fake profiles are not considered espionage, but instead "this type of compromising attempts are called 'social engineering'".
NATO officials said Facebook has cooperated in getting rid of the bogus accounts, which could also contain faulty information accessible to the public.
"First and foremost we want to make sure that the public is not being misinformed. Social media played a crucial role in the Libya campaign last year...it reflected the groundswell of public opposition, but also we received a huge amount of information from social media in terms of locating Libyan regime forces," the NATO official told the newspaper.
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