Coveney claims to have previously been hacked.

There will always be those that will blindly follow and make excuses for the political party that they zealousy support, thankfully these people are few are far between. The problem we have a the moment in this country is that the alternative mainly SF is less appealing and there is an apprehension amongst voters to let them into government. I am one of them, I want to see FG and FF consigned to history, I think both parties are corrupt from top to bottom and are no longer interested in what is good for the country but only interested is what is good for themselves and their backers but like I have said I am apprehensive about SF being in government, they haven't really set the world alight in opposition and seem to jump on the latest band wagon that is passing. So for a voter like me who has no party allegiance we are between a rock and a hard place.

Its always the little things that trip people up. This whole saga is over an insignificant (low paid) job that was bestowed on a FG luvvie.

Positions are bestowed on acolytes all the time in the political world. Ministerial office, seanad appointments, special advisors etc...This is no different.

I thought Cowen had a brass neck to compare it to his situation. But he's got his agenda too. Its a pity the real business of running the country gets overshadowed by grubby politics. But, it's the nature of the beast!

All involved in this debacle are very foolish to not realise what they were doing/facilitating.

It is standard procedure right across the world to not acknowledge state IT security breaches or hacks that have occurred, whether they are successful or not.

Do you honestly think Coveney should come out and say,

"Yes, my iPhone was hacked by x group/country on y date, and they got z data from my phone which compromised xyz policy initiatives by the Irish state"

I know the media love some drama, but a line has to be drawn somewhere.

Foreign affairs and defence matters should not be discussed or revealed on Twitter to satisfy some internet mob.

Spot on. The handwavers can wave all they want but important questions need answering here.

Well there isn't and while not technicilly impossible, a lot of the issues with this type of thing aren't technical.

There are multiple reasons why ALL ministerial correspondance cannot and most likely should not be recorded on a data base.

Can only thank the lord that we do not have any weapons such as missiles or some such in this country when the Minister for Defence claims his Phone was hacked and was being controlled by someone else.

The absolute state of this post. The Irish State was literally hacked just 2 months ago and the entire HSE IT system crashed because of it. It was fully acknowledged by the State that they were hacked and reported on by the media for weeks on end. So much for your "standard procedure". The US reports on attempted hacks of its IT systems all the time, its all there in the Mueller report if you want to gain some knowledge on the subject.

Really marko if you dont know what you're talking about its better to just keep your mouth shut rather than just go making stuff up which is patently and provably untrue.

Have the rangers been deployed to find the hackers yet?

Well I think that depends who the hacker is. The Pegasus software available for sale by an Israeli company can send texts/emails/Whatapps direct to the hacker in real time, this all came out just a few months ago when Saudi Arabia were caught phone hacking Saudi journalists who are in exile around the world. Jeff Bezos also had his phone hacked using that same software so if it can happen to him via an end to end encryption service like Whatapp then it can happen to anyone. Also when a text message is deleted it isnt truly deleted. Theres going to be metadata behind it that can be unscrambled, again this would be a straight forward task for an intelligence agency using the phone hacking software that is available to them.

In your own case you're talking about your company protecting against corporate espionage, the phone hacking software available to those spooks wouldnt be as high level as the software that is available to government intelligence agencies.

It was mentioned earlier on Virgin Media News that Coveney claimed he was hacked last Summer. If this is the case, why has it taken a year to announce this?

If Coveney's iPhone was hacked, it won't matter when he deleted his texts as once they arrive on his phone they will be compromised.

It is also worth noting that if his phone was checked, will only recent texts be found ? and if not it will show that he deleted texts that he wanted nobody else to see.

Michael Martin claims he knows nothing about this plus if this is true its no reason to delete texts on his phone.

From what I have heard he got a "phishing e mail or message" (which most of us have gotten.But his spin doctors have twisted this to him being hacked,which is rubbish.These boys really are taking the Irish people for fools.

Also nowhere in that article does it say his phone was attacked just that Coveney's name is used in a phishing attack

Well, we can ask the Gardai now, can't we?

"Explaining why he clears his text messages regularly Simon Coveney said his phone was compromised in 2020.

"What is not known is that some of my foreign minister colleagues across Europe were contacted using my phone's identity as a front during the hack incident," he said.

The Minister said the matter was dealt with by his department and the gardaí.

"As a result of this incident and others, I work on the basis that very few telecommunications are completely secure," he said."

You are at least the second poster today who is going to have to back down on his calling someone a liar. Of course he was going to pretend it wasn't a hack initially, why would you want to draw attention to a breach of national security?

Your post is another example of the overdramatic reaction and melodrama around this issue.

Just look up the details on the Jeff Bezos phone hack, which has never been offically confirmed by Amazon or Jeff Bezos himself and they certainly have not released into the public domain the exact in's an out of what exactly happened and security measures they undertake now.

I never knew that this forum was populated by so many Cyber Security experts!!🙄

But but but.... its not a hack.....

Tell us all, when did your family get phone calls or text messages that were apparently from your phone, but were actually someone else?

Or even more extreme.

Tell us, when did your boss or people you work with, in levels of important decision-making roles get a text or phone calls from your number, but it wasn't actually you?

Now escalate it to the State level where ministers of Foreign Affairs get phone calls or texts from another minister, but it's not them...

.

.

.

I hope that puts to bed that it was indeed a very serious incident, which WAS reported to the Gardai at the time.

He is 100% right though, no IT system or phone is 100% secure. All one can do is take measures to make it as difficult as possible for nefarious perpetrators to gleam relevant data from your device or system.

Getting a new phone every year is one such measure. Deleting old data off it is another.