A hacker hacked the secure TeleMessage app used by US government employees and stole their data. This messenger was also used by former national security adviser Waltz, who was fired earlier due to a leak of information. informs Reuters
The hacker was able to intercept messages from more US officials than previously reported. This makes the incident even more serious and raises concerns about information security in the Trump administration.
In leaked materials obtained by the nonprofit organization Distributed Denial of Secrets, Reuters identified messages from more than 60 government users of the TeleMessage messenger. Among them are employees of emergency services, customs, diplomatic agencies, at least one representative of the White House and representatives of the Secret Service.
The messages covered a period of about one day and ended on May 4. Many of them were incomplete or fragmentary. The phone numbers contained in the leak turned out to be valid — one of the applicants to the Federal Emergency Management Agency confirmed the authenticity of his message. The authenticity of the data was also confirmed by a financial company whose messages were among the intercepted.
Cybersecurity expert Jake Williams, a former employee of the US National Security Agency, noted that even if the messages themselves did not contain sensitive information, the metadata — such as the time, participants and frequency of contact — posed a serious threat from a counterintelligence perspective. According to him, such information is valuable for any intelligence service, even without access to the content of the messages.
