Members of the government working in the Pentagon were warned about using the messaging app Signal this month, but when it came to war plans that were supposed to be highly secretive, it was too little too late.
On March 24, The Atlantic journalist Jeffrey Goldberg published an article revealing he'd accidentally been added to a group chat on Signal which appeared to be made up of members of Donald Trump's administration, and detailed plans to launch air strikes against the Houthi rebels in Yemen.
Just hours after Goldberg received the messages, the attack was actually carried out, and the journalist knew the chat wasn't some sort of elaborate hoax.
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Now, it's been revealed that government workers were warned about Signal prior to the release of Goldberg's article, with a department-wide advisory raising concerns about a 'vulnerability' in the app.
Similar to WhatsApp, Signal is an open-source, encrypted messaging service which allows for instant messaging, voice calls, and video calls.
Goldberg explained in his article that the service is 'popular with journalists and others who seek more privacy than other text-messaging services are capable of delivering' - which may have been why government officials felt they could rely on it for more sensitive information.
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Arguably a face-to-face chat would have been more secure, but we won't get into that now.
In the warning, which has been obtained by NPR, the Pentagon wrote: "A vulnerability has been identified in the Signal Messenger Application. Russian professional hacking groups are employing the 'linked devices' features to spy on encrypted conversations."
The email also notes that Google had identified Russian hacking groups which are 'targeting Signal Messenger to spy on persons of interest'.
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"Please note: third party messaging apps (e.g. Signal) are permitted by policy for unclassified accountability/recall exercises but are NOT approved to process or store nonpublic unclassified information," the email adds.
Unfortunately, the email was dated March 18 - three days after the Yemen attack, and five days after Goldberg was first added to the group chat.
The March 18 email wasn't the only warning staff had received about Signal, though.
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According to NPR, a memo also went out in 2023 which warned against using Signal for any nonpublic official information.
Trump's administration has attempted to downplay the seriousness of the leak, with Trump claiming the messages contained 'no classified information'.
"We've pretty much looked into it. It's pretty simple, to be honest ... It's just something that can happen. It can happen," he said.
In his article, Goldberg claimed the messages contained information which could 'conceivably have been used to harm American military and intelligence personnel'. He chose not to public specifics of those messages.
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In response to news of the Pentagon's warning, a spokesperson for Signal told NPR the email did not relate to the app's security, but rather an advisement that users should be aware of 'phishing attacks', which is when hackers try to gain access to sensitive information through impersonation or other forms of deception.
"Once we learned that Signal users were being targeted and how they were being targeted, we introduced additional safeguards and in-app warnings to help protect people from falling victim to phishing attacks. This work was completed months ago," Signal's Jun Harada said.
Topics: Donald Trump, Politics, Technology, US News
Emily Brown