Els Van Hoof (CD&V), the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, was the victim of a hack emanating from China in 2021, according to an FBI report, cited in Het Nieuwsblad THURSDAY. The information also appears in the Gazet van Antwerpen.
As part of a trial against seven Chinese, an FBI report has resurfaced, establishing that Chinese spies penetrated the Belgian MP’s laptop through an email.
The accused are not only suspected of spying on Americans, but also on parliamentarians who are members of an international association dedicated to human rights in China, IPAC (Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China) and which is therefore in Beijing’s viewfinder.
Ms. Van Hoof, like the vice-president of her committee, Samuel Cogolati (Ecolo), are members of IPAC. They both opened the emails sent by hackers.
The impact of this cyberattack is not yet established. According to the FBI report, the Chinese suspects were able to manipulate the IP address of the laptops. Which suggests that they have been able since 2021 to know where victims’ computers are located.
Els Van Hoof says she is shocked by the news, in the Flemish newspaper: “The fact that the Chinese regime can locate me is very worrying,” she comments. She believes that this hack is part of a series of threats that she has felt from Beijing for several years.
“For example, the Chinese ambassador tried to intimidate me on several occasions. But I do not intend to give in and will continue to express my opinion on Taiwan or the situation of the Uighurs (Muslim minority in China, Editor’s note) for example.
The MP calls for the establishment of an office dedicated to security in the House. In collaboration with State Security, this office could organize security briefings for MPs and continuously inform them about digital security.
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