A German newspaper is boasting it has accessed personal data and contact information online, even passwords, for some of America’s top security officials, including Defense Secretary and former Fox News host Pete Hegseth.
Reporters from Der Spiegel used commercially available people-search engines, along with “hacked customer data” that had been published online.
Besides Hegseth, those with leaked information found on the web included National Security Adviser Mike Waltz and National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard, the newspaper reported Wednesday.
Der Spiegel unearthed the data trove in the wake of the major American security “Signalgate” breach earlier this month. The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, was inadvertently invited into a group chat on Signal, an encrypted messaging app available to the public, while top officials were discussing detailed U.S. bombing plans in Yemen.
Houthi targets were bombed later that same day, March 15, when 53 people, including children, were killed. Goldberg finally reported the security breach nearly ten days later on Monday.
Der Spiegel reporters tracked down personal emails and cell phone numbers, and “privately used and publicly accessible” Signal account telephone numbers to Gabbard and Waltz. Some of the information discovered is still in use, the newspaper noted.
It warned that “hostile intelligence services” could utilize such publicly available data to hack into tech-vulnerable officials’ communications by installing spyware on their various devices.
It’s “conceivable” that foreign agents were “privy to the Signal chat group in which Gabbard, Waltz and Hegseth discussed a military strike” because the officials’ communications had already been hacked, Der Spiegel noted.
The Independent reached out to the three officials named by Der Spiegel. None of the three responded to the German newspaper to comment before the article was published.
The Trump administration has downplayed the security breach of the bombing plans in Yemen, insisting the information wasn’t classified. President Donald Trump has called the breach “not a big deal.”
Retired U.S. Army General Barry McCaffery said in a statement on social media on Monday, however, that sharing sensitive military information on Signal, a hackable messaging encryption app available to the public, would expose the information to foreign intelligence and would risk lives.
He called pending U.S. military operations among the “most sensitive” intelligence, adding: “In this case, we’re talking about the lives of Air Force and Navy fliers” involved in the strikes, he emphasized.
McCaffery insisted that a military official in a similar situation would face a court martial if an unsecured app was used to communicate such information.
The nonpartisan American Oversight organization has sued several participants in the Yemen Signal call, arguing that the Trump administration officials avoided using secure communications systems to dodge federal records requirements.
Signal is not secure, nor is it an “authorized system for preserving federal records and does not comply with record-keeping requirements” as messages on the app can be deleted, according to the suit.
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