This just keeps getting worse and worse. Is America's national security hopelessly compromised? Possibly!
"Private contact details of the most important security advisers to U.S. President Donald Trump can be found on the internet. DER SPIEGEL reporters were able to find mobile phone numbers, email addresses and even some passwords belonging to the top officials.
Those affected by the leaks include National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
Most of these numbers and email addresses are apparently still in use, with some of them linked to profiles on social media platforms like Instagram and LinkedIn. They were used to create Dropbox accounts and profiles in apps that track running data. There are also WhatsApp profiles for the respective phone numbers and even Signal accounts in some cases.
As such, the reporting has revealed an additional grave, previously unknown security breach at the highest levels in Washington. Hostile intelligence services could use this publicly available data to hack the communications of those affected by installing spyware on their devices."
I'm sure this German paper is the first entity to discover these details. I'm sure no foreign adversaries stumbled upon it first.
In other news:
"A Venmo account under the name “Michael Waltz,” carrying a profile photo of the national security adviser and connected to accounts bearing the names of people closely associated with him, was left open to the public until Wednesday afternoon. A WIRED analysis shows that the account revealed the names of hundreds of Waltz’s personal and professional associates, including journalists, military officers, lobbyists, and others—information a foreign intelligence service or other actors could exploit for any number of ends, experts say.
Among the accounts linked to “Michael Waltz” are ones that appear to belong to Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, and Walker Barrett, a staffer on the United States National Security Council...
Mixed in with the high-profile names connected to the apparent Waltz Venmo account are a number of accounts appearing to belong to ordinary people, such as several doctors, real estate agents, and a tailor. These are the kinds of low-level connections that, experts say, spies look at for basic information—a relationship with a medical specialist could expose that a person is being treated for an illness that hasn’t been made public—as well as patterns, pressure points, or a way in. Experts call them “soft targets”: people who have access but aren’t protected.
“The first thing you think of is the counterintelligence issue, right? And the security vulnerabilities. It kind of boggles the mind, in a way,” says Michael Ard, a former intelligence analyst who now runs the masters program in intelligence analysis at Johns Hopkins. “It would be really easy for somebody to spoof a contact, and that is something the security industry has already been issuing notices on.”
