Experts say Pentagon chief has endangered secrets of US defense department and given assistance to foreign spies
As more develops about the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and his repeated disclosures of sensitive military intelligence in unsecured Signal group chats, there are growing concerns his behavior has weakened the Pentagon in the eyes of its foreign adversaries and made him and his entourage a top espionage target.
Allies, already concerned by Donald Trump’s aggressive tariffs, have also begun to see the US as an intelligence-sharing liability. There are fears that the mounting firings and leak inquiries in Hegseth’s orbit, along with his inability to manage these internal crises, exposes the entire global US war footing – especially, if a geopolitical and external crisis comes across his desk.
“[What if] a foreign entity, whether it be a state actor or non-state actor, is able to intercept the movements of troops or department personnel, or something like that, capture them and hold them to ransom,” said Kristofer Goldsmith, an Iraq war veteran and CEO at Task Force Butler. “That kind of thing could very easily happen.”
The guy is a moron. He’s clearly demonstrated that he has no concept of information security on multiple occasions. For more than a year, it has been known the Signal has a weakness that Russia and others have been exploiting.
It’s really pretty simple. The hackers send a phishing email or text to the target with a specially crafted QR code. If the user is dumb enough to scan the code, and we all know Hegseth is dumb enough, then the hacker’s device will from then on be linked with the target users device and get a copy of every message sent or received. There is no way in hell that Russia, China, and anyone else who wants to isn’t already getting all his Signal messages.
That’s not a Signal weakness. That’s profound user idiocy. It’s very clear what the “link a device” feature is for, and obviously linking someone else’s device would be very dumb.
if only there was a government agency, perhaps one tasked with national security even… that could provide the secure devices and software needed for high-ranking government workers and others working with sensitive information… and those workers actually used that gear and followed their training and policies.
The other glaring weakness is that if you invite Putin to your group chat, Russia gets access to all of your messages!! /s (though, I guess it’s a real threat with this administration)
psst . . . starlink.
Disagree. Every chat you are in should have a visible notification about how many linked devices are copied in the chat. The app is supposed to be about security, isn’t it? It’s a pretty big weakness in my opinion.
That would be a helpful addition, and it sounds like it could be easily done.
It’s secure messaging for the average joe. Organizations can achieve this compliance with an MDM, but I’m not asking Grandma to install my MDM on her phone to see my Wordle results. And sharing your device list (plus, you’d likely need ip location for this feature to be useful, in addition to interrogating your friends about what devices they use) with any random person you’re messaging is arguably more of a security threat than the risk of some moron linking any random device that asks to be linked.
you mean show who’s in the chat?
I think they mean it should remind you which other devices you have linked, so that if you’re messaging on your phone you are reminded that your computer will also get a copy of the chat unless you unlink it.
oh, well if it’s on the phone it shows it there. And there’s only five devices allowed. Plus, if that’s a concern for OpSec this should not be an option - link none.
That’s not an exploit, that is a known and published and advertised feature of signal. That’s like when Grandma says her Facebook was hacked because she gave her username and password to MichaelSoft tech support. This is the level of profound fucking stupid that our Republican government has.
I never said it was an exploit. I said it was a weakness that was being exploited.