Mobile phone chargers and USB drives given to foreign delegates at the G20 summit in Russia were ‘Trojan horses’ capable of sending data back to the Kremlin.
The devices contained bugs that could apparently capture valuable data from phones and computers.
According to reports in the Italian press, the German secret services discovered that the gadgets, given to delegates at the meeting of world leaders in St Petersburg last month, were able to retrieve data for use by the Russian secret services.
The G20 conference took place in a climate of great diplomatic tension between Russia and the West.
Only weeks before, the Kremlin had granted asylum to fugitive Edward Snowden, wanted for leaking security information about US surveillance to the Guardian.
At the same time, the US and France were at loggerheads with Russia over intervention in Syria.
The alarm was apparently first raised by EU President Herman Van Rompuy, who was suspicious of the Russians’ gifts. All participating governments were urged to ‘take every possible precaution’.
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