The private data of top security advisers to US President Donald Trump can be accessed online, German news magazine Der Spiegel reported on Wednesday, adding to the fallout from the officials’ use of a Signal group chat to plan airstrikes on Yemen.
Mobile phone numbers, email addresses and in some cases passwords used by national security adviser Mike Waltz, defense secretary Pete Hegseth, and director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard can be found via commercial data-search services and hacked data dumped online, it reported. It is not clear in all cases how recent the details are.
The Trump administration has been facing calls for the resignation of senior officials amid bipartisan criticism after Monday’s embarrassing revelations. The chat group, which included vice-president JD Vance, Hegseth, the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and others, discussed sensitive plans to carry out strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen via the Signal app, potentially threatening the safety of US servicemen and women taking part in the operation.
On Wednesday evening, Trump backed Hegseth, saying “He had nothing to do with this” and calling the scandal a “witch-hunt”.
The phone numbers and email addresses – mostly current – were in some cases used for Instagram and LinkedIn profiles, cloud-storage service Dropbox, and apps that track a user’s location.
Der Spiegel reported it was “particularly easy” to discover Hegseth’s mobile number and email address, using a commercial provider of contact information. It found that the email address, and in some cases even the password associated with it, could be found in more than 20 data leaks. It reported that it was possible to verify that the email address was used just a few days ago.
It said the mobile number led to a WhatsApp account that Hegseth appeared to have only recently deleted.
The Gabbard and Waltz numbers were reportedly linked to accounts on messaging services WhatsApp and Signal. Der Spiegel said that left them exposed to having spyware installed on their devices.
It said it was even possible foreign agents were spying during the recent Signal group chat on top-secret US plans for airstrikes on Yemen’s Houthi rebels on 15 March.
Waltz inadvertently included a journalist in the chat, the Atlantic magazine’s Jeffrey Goldberg. The magazine published further details of the conversation on Wednesday.
Der Spiegel said the three officials had not responded to its requests for comment.
The national security council said the Waltz accounts and passwords referenced by the German magazine had all been changed in 2019.
With Agence France-Presse
