Minister Lintilä admits WhatsApp account wasn't hacked, still denies sending Sanna Marin meme
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Loading... - Chiara Accardi
- 16 Feb 2023
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The investigation by parliamentary officials was unable to rule out the possibility that someone may have used Lintilä's account at the same time as him.
Economic affairs minister Mika Lintilä (Cen) told reporters on Thursday that his WhatsApp account had not been hacked after all, a week after announcing in a press conference that it had been hacked.
He then claimed that the hacking-that-wasn't took place around the exact moment when a meme mocking Prime Minister Sanna Marin (SDP) was sent from his account to a group chat composed of Centre Party MPs and aides.
"There was no evidence found," said Lintilä. "There was no evidence of anything criminal that might have happened. That would have been an extremely serious thing. Using the word 'hacked' was maybe too strong an over-reaction to the situation. I knew that I had not sent the message in question, but it had been sent from my phone."
The message was sent last Thursday and had a picture of Marin and her colleague Matias Mäkynen (SDP). It poked fun at Marin's difficulties last summer after a video emerged of her dancing with a pop star in a nightclub, and a tabloid story about Mäkynen spending the night with a woman who was not his wife.
Lintilä said that the investigation had shown that simultaneous use of Lintilä's account by someone else could not be ruled out.
"We will discuss this with Meta and the police, because then we can get the chat log data," said Lintilä. He has not yet made a criminal report to the police, but will do so if it makes it easier to access the logs.
Lintilä said he had gone through parliament's ICT department's report on the ministerial phone and messages that had been sent from it.
Experts have been investigating his phone since last Friday. There are no plans to publish the report itself.
Cybersecurity experts interviewed in the media have cast doubt on Lintilä's version of events, however. Their main queries related to the following:
- There has been some surprise that Lintilä got his hacked account back just a couple of hours after the meme was sent. He had sent a new message to the same group chat, stating that he had not sent the previous message. That happened after his special advisor had asked if he had really sent the meme. Normally it takes weeks to recover a hacked account, and messaging companies usually want an investigation first. Read More…
