46 ms·

U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat

• LWIRVoltage 2y ago
  <tangent opening line of my comment> From people on Reddit: Something that blows my mind- but is fully true "Hell, I've been in fucking EVE Online alliances that had better opsec than this." "I'll raise you one: I've never been in any EVE alliance that didn't have better opsec than this." ..I noted Board Games(Secret Hitler, for example) require better opsec. So do card games- it's mindblowing to note this too... [Main comment by me - technical outlook] This is not a surprise at all- there were reports that the first Trump administration was using Signal to communicate, and that it was a a risk as messages can be totally wiped and not kept for records keeping. -From an infosec standpoint- this is more notable than I think people are giving it credit- the fact that the Vice President(Well, maybe not him, he notably admittted in interviews during the presidential campaign, that he'd been briefed by three letter agencies on Salt Typhoon tageting him, but that he was secure because he used Signal) - the director of national intelligence- and several others- use Signal. it's one thing for Congress, Sweden's Military, and apparently our own military branches to push Signal heavily for non-sensitive stuff- But when those around three letter agencies -and the groups that would be interested in finding compromises- are using it, that screams to me that it's considered not that easy to attack- which is a point towards Signal So then the final thing to secure are the endpoints- and of course the risk is a zero day exploit targeting someone. As for subtle push app updates by Signal themselves being a vector- i'd think the Open Source nature of the app prevent that - if the infrastructure for pushing updates is open source as well especially. Again though- if the White House is using Signal- they likely KNOW most of what their own Three Letter agencies can and can't do(to a point)- so when people in the know are using it- that is telling. A lot of it may be for the auto disappearing messages, admittedly- but that's notable. And yes, I'm aware Mark Zuckerberg has been known to move conversations off of WhatsApp, to Signal - again, maybe for the disappearing messages(and lack of a report function which would send part of a convo to FB/Meta to my understanding)- but possibly, for the security and lack of meta data being better from a attack surface standpoint
  • bayarearefugee 2y ago
    Even if we are generous and assume Signal's protocols and entire communication infrastructure are 100% safe and cannot be compromised, any one single person in the group chat using Signal on a compromised device invalidates all of that. The fact that Signal was used is less concerning to me personally than the fact that they had this group chat outside of the overall safety umbrella of fully end-to-end vetted systems. Though the use of Signal is still concerning in that any official system they would otherwise use would have (one would hope) made it far harder if not impossible to accidentally leak the conversation to a random third party.
    • LWIRVoltage 2y ago
      This is true absolutely One would hope indeed- I do wonder on that ...... There's another observation though- Salt Typhoon compromised wiretap infrastructure - before Signal, there's no doub't some stuff like this occured over text messages- Because of everyone's efforts to go to Signal- even if it's for the message disappearing- with this, with military branches pushing it hard- with Sweden's Miltary pushing it, etc(for non sensitive stuff)- there's so much of that , that the attack surface overall is massively reduced. In short, if there's going to be stuff outside of vetted systems- running that sort of stuff Signal- likely still helps. (I'm reminded again, of the JD Vance interviews where he let slip that he'd been targeted ,and was informed about it by agencies- but that he was good because of his Signal usage. Now, I don't know what measures he takes to avoid zero day exploits and whatnot- the TLAs would inform him of that- but from what he was saying, it sounds like they were sure he wasn't compromised by that.) (I'm aware a serious targeted effort would be more intricate than Salt Typhoon/ Trying to use the country's own general Wire tapping capability to target the VP) Edit: Also, this reveals a bit about psyche- J.D.Vance somewhat ribbed the president- there is probably pressure TO use Signal, so a record of him criticizing the President can't be found out by the President or those more allied with the President who could then start retribution- I imagine dynamics like that, which are human behavior- -ultimately are what absolutely drive all of this.
      • blitzar 2y ago
• deleted 2y ago
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• deleted 2y ago
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• apical_dendrite 2y ago
  This would be unbelievable in a normal administration. The combination of flagrant lawbreaking and incompetence is just so characteristic of these clowns. No, nothing in the Clinton email scandal comes close to cabinet secretaries accidentally real-time texting imminent war plans to journalists using a non-governmental system with auto-deleting messages.
  • krapp 2y ago
    ¯\(ツ)/¯ Plenty of people in Trump's own cabinet used private email servers too, but no one cared. As always, it's only a problem when a Democrat does it.
    • cocacola1 2y ago
      I’m sort of surprised Democrats haven’t snapped yet.
      • ipython 2y ago
        Honestly, I think a lot have just given up at this point.
        • krapp 2y ago
          The Democrats really are the Charlie Brown of politics, and the Republicans are Lucy with the football.
      • 4ndrewl 2y ago
        Democrat what? There's no power anywhere outside of the Trump circle.
        • cocacola1 2y ago
          ?
          • 2y ago
• allears 2y ago
  Paywall
  • Jtsummers 2y ago
    https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/03/trump-administration-accidentally-texted-me-its-war-plans/682151/?gift=LuC6nXerkXTLQWoEoNhRFXiJBghotdYHXFYNovGnLCM&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/03/trump-a...
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• tetraven 2y ago
  https://archive.is/JEYep https://archive.is/JEYep
• dbl000 2y ago
  This was such a weird news story to read. At least they used Signal? That's gotta be a plus at some level. Unrelated, but I wonder how the gray hat market for Signal vulns is doing now?
  • tptacek 2y ago
    It's unlikely that there is one.
  • stefan_ 2y ago
    The basic Signal vulnerability even if the protocol is perfectly sound is that they can push effectively silent automatic app updates to do whatever. Presumably they didn't want to signup for this but that's how app distribution works nowadays, and it's certainly not fit for classified information.
  • ratg13 2y ago
    Signal is primarily for end-to-end encryption. If a device has been compromised, the database can be extracted with all messages and contacts
  • alistairSH 2y ago
    How is that a plus? Maybe vs plain old SMS... But, it's a flagrant leak of classified info. Using a medium explicitly prohibited by policy. And likely now lost to time (Signal messages can be configured to auto-delete on a timer), when all of this sort of correspondence is legally required to be retained.
    • yks 2y ago
      > How is that a plus? They could've used Telegram /s. It's popular with the crypto crowd after all.
      • rasz 2y ago
        They probably do also use Telegram https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveywinder/2025/03/22/russian-broker-offers-4-million-for-telegram-zero-day-app-attack/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveywinder/2025/03/22/russian-...
• nickthegreek 2y ago
  Is it wild that a 3rd party app like Signal is used for this type of communication? I feel like that's crazy.
  • danso 2y ago
    From the story: I have never seen a breach quite like this. It is not uncommon for national-security officials to communicate on Signal. But the app is used primarily for meeting planning and other logistical matters—not for detailed and highly confidential discussions of a pending military action. And, of course, I’ve never heard of an instance in which a journalist has been invited to such a discussion. Conceivably, Waltz, by coordinating a national-security-related action over Signal, may have violated several provisions of the Espionage Act, which governs the handling of “national defense” information, according to several national-security lawyers interviewed by my colleague Shane Harris for this story. Harris asked them to consider a hypothetical scenario in which a senior U.S. official creates a Signal thread for the express purpose of sharing information with Cabinet officials about an active military operation. He did not show them the actual Signal messages or tell them specifically what had occurred. All of these lawyers said that a U.S. official should not establish a Signal thread in the first place. Information about an active operation would presumably fit the law’s definition of “national defense” information. The Signal app is not approved by the government for sharing classified information.
    • neverokay 2y ago
      If you want to put a tinfoil hat on, one could argue external state actors could have convinced the Trump admin their provided forms of communication are tapped, so they should consider alternatives. Such a state actor would know the alternatives are compromised well in advance by them.
      • richardatlarge 2y ago
        that’s tinker tailor soldier spy
      • outer_web 2y ago
• danso 2y ago
  Staggering display of incompetence and carelessness. And unfortunately, one that we’re unlikely to get much transparency about, in terms of how such an operational screwup was allowed to happen. > At 11:44 a.m., the account labeled “Pete Hegseth” posted in Signal a “TEAM UPDATE.” I will not quote from this update, or from certain other subsequent texts. The information contained in them, if they had been read by an adversary of the United States, could conceivably have been used to harm American military and intelligence personnel, particularly in the broader Middle East, Central Command’s area of responsibility. What I will say, in order to illustrate the shocking recklessness of this Signal conversation, is that the Hegseth post contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing. > …The Signal chat group, I concluded, was almost certainly real. Having come to this realization, one that seemed nearly impossible only hours before, I removed myself from the Signal group, understanding that this would trigger an automatic notification to the group’s creator, “Michael Waltz,” that I had left. No one in the chat had seemed to notice that I was there. And I received no subsequent questions about why I left—or, more to the point, who I was
  • belter 2y ago
    Is this worst than using Top Secret documents as toilet paper? https://d3i6fh83elv35t.cloudfront.net/static/2023/06/FyM1h-CWYAEmQ1k.jpeg https://d3i6fh83elv35t.cloudfront.net/static/2023/06/FyM1h-C...
    • alistairSH 2y ago
      Possibly, yes, as these messages leaked details of ongoing military operations.
    • asdff 2y ago
      I never realized before with this photo, but space was actually made to still use the toilet sitting in that room with the tower of boxes 6 inches from your face. Straight out of a comedy sketch, almost too perfectly staged with the gaudy lights, stool colored formica, and $2 walmart shower curtain with the pressure fit rod right into the plaster. A shame for all of us that the photo came out of real life and not satire.
• techterrier 2y ago
  but her emails
• legitster 2y ago
  The whole thread is WILD, and the fact that it was verified is crazy. But the actual text of the thread is horrifying: On one hand, they say they complain about "bailing out Europe". But on the other hand, they explicitly moved up the timeline so they could move before other actors and take credit. > "If the US successfully restores freedom of navigation at great cost there needs to be some further economic gain extracted in return." So to be clear, when presented with the option to wait a month, they instead explicitly choose to act decisively for political reasons. And then they want to turn around and extort European allies over it.
  • dtquad 2y ago
    The US is primarily attacking Houthis to support Israel and not Europe. Vance knows that. J.D. Vance comes of as a rabid anti-Europeanist in his speeches, tweets, and apparently also his private messages. Here in Denmark the authorities reported that his wife, Usha Vance, is tied to an unusual money transfer and upcoming meeting with Greenlandic separatists.
    • timewizard 2y ago
      J.D. Vance is less of a person and more of a living proxy for the will of Peter Theil.
    • tptacek 2y ago
      No, I'm pretty sure this is actually about shipping lanes and freedom of navigation. Israel doesn't need the help. If you read the story, one of their concerns is that if they don't act, Israel was going to instead.
      • jacquesm 2y ago
        So no, then it clearly wasn't about shipping lanes and freedom of navigation but just about taking the credit. After all if Israel was going to do it instead it could simply be solved by waiting a little bit. These guys are super transactional and they were afraid they missed the moment that would allow them to take credit and use it as coin for exchange.
• scyzoryk_xyz 2y ago
  It’s actually kind of a relief to at least confirm that these cronies would work like this. I.e. whatever they have in store they will probably end up shooting themselves in the foot. Well, themselves and the 53 humans who were blown up in a distant country by Star War technology. Actually, now that I think about it, no - this is terrifying and awful and just so so so stupid.
• llm_nerd 2y ago
  This is an insane story demonstrating extraordinary incompetence, not to mention revealing some rather comical beliefs about American exceptionalism. It's on the bottom of the third page, pushed down by flags. During any other administration, such a disastrously, criminally incompetent use of technology would have been top of the front page for days, but this administration is so cosmically incompetent that pointing it out is "partisan" now. Everyone is just tired of people commenting on the fact that this criminal bunch of Fox News host miscreants clearly have zero idea what they're doing. Also...but her emails! Who do you think will sponsor the Egg roll? They just need to move the Tesla infomercial out of the way, and maybe Trump can feature some of his garbage shitcoin crypto. Jesus Christ. What a fallen idiocracy.
  • UncleMeat 2y ago
    Not just days - months. We saw A1 headlines for months about Clinton's emails. Often daily.
    • bediger4000 2y ago
      [flagged]
      • deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      • llm_nerd 2y ago
        It's extraordinary to me when anyone claims that the "MSM" is left leaning. If it was, Trump's hubris, criminality, ignorance, senility, self-dealing grift and myopia would yield an unending series of "WTF?" type headlines. Instead they sane wash it. The guy is sending plane loads of who-knows-who to a country that they have no association with, based upon zero charges or due process, where they are imprisoned into basically slavery. This is so outrageously beyond the pale illegal, both in US and international law, that it is just mind-blowing, but it's just another day. Good god. Despotic, banana-republic autocrat behaviour is now just...accepted. I saw a complaint by a right wing figure noting the increased number of injunctions Trump has received versus prior presidents. Instead of rationally thinking "gosh...maybe he shouldn't contravene the constitution and/or break laws so frequently", they actually think it's unfair and needs to be balanced. It's a shocking collapse of norms or reason. It is incredibly dark times.
• ceejayoz 2y ago
  > In his text detailing aspects of the forthcoming attack on Houthi targets, Hegseth wrote to the group—which, at the time, included me—“We are currently clean on OPSEC.” Simply incredible. This is wild.
  • rasz 2y ago
    he said similar thing on his confirmation hearing "My commitment is to not touch alcohol while I have this position"
    • outer_web 2y ago
      Lol the most liar-y way to phrase it.
• dartharva 2y ago
  This is just unreal. Ridiculous!
• ahaferburg 2y ago
  That is absolutely wild. How is this not on the front page?
  • belter 2y ago
    HN front page is curated manually.
    • AnimalMuppet 2y ago
      I don't believe your statement is accurate. [Edit: I interpreted "curated manually" to mean that dang picks each story that is on the front page. tptacek interpreted it to mean that, since users upvote and comment on stories, that's "manual curation". I interpret that as being "automatic curation", that is, an algorithm picks the front page stories, even though it's based on users' upvotes and comments. I cannot prove which of these two forms belter meant. Naturally, I prefer to think that it was the one I read it as, but I can squint hard enough to see tptacek's version.]
      • tptacek 2y ago
        It is (it's a combination of manual and community inputs) but almost certainly the reason this isn't on the front page is that lots of people flag stories about the Trump administration. I didn't flag this one (it's too juicy, and has a Signal connection) but I flag most of the other ones.
        • neverokay 2y ago
          [flagged]
          • otterley 2y ago
            Moderation and ranking are not the same thing. The mods can put a story in the #1 slot, but they reserve that privilege for rare occasions.
• lapcat 2y ago
  > Waltz set some of the messages in the Signal group to disappear after one week, and some after four. That raises questions about whether the officials may have violated federal records law: Text messages about official acts are considered records that should be preserved. I suspect that this was the point of their using Signal, to avoid preservation of records.
  • neverokay 2y ago
    The DoD or Pentagon don’t have their own messaging apps? Maybe our government doesn’t spend enough on tech. To me this is the same as if this were happening on Zoom or Discord, since these are not exactly world war level apps. Finally, the echoes of Dr Strangelove are strong with this one. A veritable board room of talking heads that don’t ever really talk about life or death, but just the material numbers of raw commerce or messaging (deterrence) .
    • burkaman 2y ago
      Of course they do, but you can't set official government apps to illegally delete messages after a week. Edit: Seems like they are supposed to use Microsoft Teams https://dodcio.defense.gov/Portals/0/Documents/Library/Memo-UseOfTextMessagesOnMobileDevices-RM.pdf https://dodcio.defense.gov/Portals/0/Documents/Library/Memo-.... Also - > When mission needs or the effective conduct of DoD business cannot be adequately supported by Microsoft Teams Chat, SMS texting may be used in accordance with DoDI 8170.01. In such cases, a complete copy of the record must be forwarded to an official DoD electronic messaging account of the user within 20 days of the record's original creation or transmission in accordance with Section 2911 of Title 44 U.S.C, and Component processes. The complete copy of the record includes the content of the message and required metadata, and the record must be retrievable and usable in compliance with the applicable retention schedule approved by the Archivist of the United States. DoD Component heads shall ensure that DoD users are provided guidance on their Component's processes for forwarding complete copies of records originating in SMS texts.
      • tomohawk 2y ago
• belter 2y ago
  [flagged]
• bediger4000 2y ago
  One of my takeaways is that "national security secrets" really aren't that important. The Secretary of Defense was in on this. Whatever was in that chat just doesn't matter, except to manage the reporting on it. I call on Bart Gellman to dump the Snowden document repository he's got. Clearly nothing in it matters, if this was so casually compromised.
  • alistairSH 2y ago
    It only "didn't matter" because the journalist had the good sense to keep quiet until after the operation was complete. And continues to keep some of the conversation secret. Imagine if Hegseth had accidentally CC'ed somebody aligned with Iran?
• cactacea 2y ago
  https://archive.ph/AP0H4 https://archive.ph/AP0H4
• amai 2y ago
  Reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Taurus_leak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Taurus_leak „Among the topics the officials discussed in their conversation, conducted using standard commercial Cisco Webex video conferencing software, were the presence of UK and US military personnel in Ukraine and the potential use of Taurus missiles to blow up the Crimean Bridge.“
  • yencabulator 2y ago
    A thing using authorized channels that was spied on by a different state has practically nothing in common with this. (Yes, it probably shouldn't have been an authorized channel, but it was.)
    • realityking 2y ago
      Though the channel wasn’t cleared for the level of information that was discussed. WebEx was cleared up to the equivalent of Restricted. The conversation likely reached the level of Secret or Top Secret. Two of the generals were disciplined. (4-figure fine)
• originalvichy 2y ago
  The nickname Stupid Watergate will never die
• alistairSH 2y ago
  Even worse, Trump wasn't aware of this leak (or denies knowledge of it) until questioned at a press conference earlier today. And instead of promising an investigation, the best he can do is throw some weak insults at The Atlantic. BUTTERY MALES indeed.
  • dragonwriter 2y ago
    > Trump wasn't aware of this leak (or denies knowledge of it) until questioned at a press conference earlier today. Trump routinely denies knowledge of things he doesn't want to talk about, even things that he has previously demonstrated knowledge about. It's a standard deflection that he never gets called out on or significant pushback on the implications of his claimed lack of knowledge, so he keeps doing it.
    • gitaarik 2y ago
      Well I think it's very common for representatives to not directly reply after a certain incident, because they don't have all the details yet and they want to take time to form a proper response. Don't see how this is specific to Trump.
      • dragonwriter 2y ago
        I didn't say being evasive immediately after an incident (either to gather facts or put together a strategy) was specific to Trump, I said feigning ignorance including of material he has previously demonstrated awareness when he doesn't want to talk about something is a repeated pattern for Trump. Those are distinct, though potentially overlapping, behavioral patterns.
        • gitaarik 2y ago
          Can you give some examples? Honestly interested
          • trymas 2y ago
• hello_computer 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • Balgair 2y ago
    What does this have to do with this story?
  • anigbrowl 2y ago
    Goldberg wrote an influential-at-the-time article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Goldberg#Views_on_Iraq https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Goldberg#Views_on_Iraq I feel it's a stretch to say 'he lied us into the Iraq war' as if everyone based their decisions on that. There's an very unfortunate tendency in political discussions to rely on fallacies of composition, where an instance of some phenomenon is taken as equivalent to a whole. Throwing that out with no further context or discussion looks like a genetic fallacy as well. The White House has already acknowledged the reported conversation appears to be authentic.
    • hello_computer 2y ago
      [flagged]
      • anigbrowl 2y ago
        Stay mad.
      • DangitBobby 2y ago
        Thank you for taking the time to remind us that everything is black and white, and there are no shades or grey.
        • hello_computer 2y ago
          I am ideologically neutral in this pissing match you and anigbrowl are projecting. Is Hegseth dumb enough to make such a mistake? Yes. Is Goldberg a known fabricator? Yes. I reminded people of the latter, since most of you already accept the former. If the tables were turned, I'd have asked a similar question about Hegseth. Distorting a "gentle reminder" of a fact (not an argument) into a fallacy is a slime ball move, worthy of the most shameless press operatives; only real difference being that the aforementioned operatives are smart enough to demand a dear price for their shamelessness, whereas anigbrowl does it for free! edit: and to answer ipython since i've been rate limited: As previously stated, it was not an argument, but a fact, and a signpost to the "Jeff Goldberg is a POS" monument, commonly referred to as his wikipedia page.
• Balgair 2y ago
  If anything, I'm a bit surprised that Jeff Goldberg burned this source. If anything, I'd suspect that he'd keep the channel open as long as he could. Or, he's got other channels that work better. All the same, I mean, wow. These guys are just morons here, there's really no other way around it. I'm trying to think of a charitable way to spin this and I've got nothing. Like, very clearly, these people are going to get service-members killed due to their idiocy
  • anigbrowl 2y ago
    My theory is that he had to balance the journalistic scoop of the century with the risk of being arrested for illegally accessing/storing classified information. If they had noticed before he published the story then he could have been vanned and the public told that he had infiltrated a secure channel, and who would be able to say otherwise? MAGA people would cheerfully call for his execution.
    • nradov 2y ago
      Under US federal law it is generally not a crime for a person without a security clearance to receive or store classified information. The legal problems come in when they solicit it or take some other action to obtain it.
      • anigbrowl 2y ago
        Would you trust the current DOJ to handle this fairly if it landed in your lap?
      • zeven7 2y ago
        Laws matter less than they used to. When the President regularly uses the term "retribution" to describe his mode of operation, I don't blame someone for taking a more careful approach in a case like this. It shouldn't be that way, for a journalist. But a lot of things shouldn't be the way they are today.
  • mostafah 2y ago
    My guess is that he was consulting their lawyers during this. IANAL but it might have been a crime if he did not leave the group as soon as he was sure it was real. He keeps mentioning that he was not certain this is real until the first attacks. After the first attack, he could not continue this argument.
• voodooEntity 2y ago
  I mean im not shocked by neither the fact this happend nor the content. it portraits the staff exactly as i would imagine them. Tho i still find it kinda amusing that this is the finally proofs that the average security invested joe has a better opsec than the highest ranking us gov officials.
• asdff 2y ago
  304 votes, 75 comments 3 hours after posting and this is already being thrown all the way back to 134 rank on the front page with some 2-3 day old posts. This is very clearly hacker news: a case of opsec slipup in easily the worst fashion coming straight from the SecDef (or one representing the SecDef). A shame it is probably getting flamed and downvoted over partisan reasons, although I know there are many conservatives here who probably don't enjoy these constant leopards eating face moments they've unleashed and am not surprised they'd be acting out and flagging embarrassing posts.
  • hnburnsy 2y ago
    >A shame it is probably getting flamed and downvoted over partisan reasons Is this the forum for this type of news? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html... On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
    • lcc 2y ago
      Like the parent said, a tech-related opsec failure at this level is absolutely something a 'good hacker' would find interesting.
      • hnburnsy 2y ago
        >tech-related opsec failure Not sure that 'fat fingering' on a mobile device rises to the level of tech-related opsec. The choice to use a non-government approved device certainly is news, but not necessarily Hacker News. Plenty of better places to debate it.
        • cmilton 2y ago
• anigbrowl 2y ago
  Is that a SCIF in your pocket or are you just displeased to see me
• iteratethis 2y ago
  This is bad news for entire genres of books, TV shows and movies that are based on the supreme competence, sophistication and wealth of the Pentagon, NSA and CIA. Turns out US military strategy is the same as me and my mates setting up a bar date. It's a disturbing leak in itself but i take issue with the journalist obsessing over the tool of choice whilst ignoring the actual strategizing. The casual way in which a mass murder is planned. The emphasis on "messaging" and how to spin this on Biden and Europe. The teenage-like emojis to celebrate acts of war. This administration looks bad from the outside but through this leak we can see that their shocking press moments are still the polished and spun versions of a reality that is far more sick.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • outer_web 2y ago
    Film and tv are safe, this was done by political appointees. The civil servants (you know, the "deep state") are much better about it because it's their job.
  • 9dev 2y ago
    The most excellent steak can be ruined by an amateur chef easily. I agree with your point on the spin, although I wonder if the Signal angle is the only thing even republicans can agree with to be kinda bad, given that even the most egregious reports on the current administration don’t really cause as much as a raised brow there. So to make it a story that doesn’t just resonate in the liberal echo chamber, include something despicable to both camps.
  • timewizard 2y ago
    > on the supreme competence, sophistication and wealth of the Pentagon, NSA and CIA. Agencies with no oversight are seen as competent? That's news to me. There's a definite waste of taxpayer dollars on propaganda to try to make this point publicly but I didn't think anyone was poorly educated enough to actually believe it.
    • 2y ago
• telez 2y ago
  seems like a UI design failure
  • rchaud 2y ago
    "Don't make me think" was certainly the guiding principle at play here.
  • timeon 2y ago
    UI could be considered failure if we were talking about casual gossip. Particular UI shouldn't be the issue because the App was not supposed to be used for this. These should be professionals. Issue was between keyboard and chair.
• belter 2y ago
  https://archive.ph/xpZHl https://archive.ph/xpZHl
• docmars 2y ago
  [flagged]
• atonse 2y ago
  Setting aside the obvious shock of the actual subject, I'm going to try the herculean task of bringing this back to being a HN-related topic... My guess is that there is someone named Jeffrey Goldberg in the NatSec team (or high up, it seems like a common combination of first and last name at least), and likely that they meant to add him, rather than the EDITOR IN CHIEF of the Atlantic of all people. Could this be a UI/UX thing with Signal? (not differentiating between two Jeffrey Goldbergs on your contact list?).
  • rnjesus 2y ago
    i think this is likely what happened, though i also find it just as plausible that he was fat-fingered or drunk-added into the group (i’ve been added to group chats accidentally by both these “methods”)
    • outer_web 2y ago
      [flagged]
  • jredwards 2y ago
    There is someone with the same initials, not with the same name. I saw someone else point out a potential candidate here but I don't recall the exact name.
    • nkurz 2y ago
      I've seen Jamieson Greer as US Trade Representative (same initials) and Jeffrey Kruse of the Defense Intelligence Agency (same first name) mentioned as possibly being the intended invitee.
  • roughly 2y ago
    I mean, I expect the actual approved governmental secure messaging apps would make it much harder to accidentally add a journalist to the thread, so I don’t know if this is a Signal problem per se.
• yahoozoo 2y ago
  Sounds almost too good to be true.
  • maest 2y ago
    [flagged]
• dzhiurgis 2y ago
  Could've been a setup to get The Atlantic to leak government secrets...
  • ttyprintk 2y ago
    But the backfire is catastrophic: every leaker in DoD can now claim as a defense that their leak must be a political appointee up there attaching docs to now-expunged Signal chats. That is now both Occam and Bayes rational.
  • outer_web 2y ago
    I don't think you deserve the downvotes considering that would be very in character for this administration. That said, it does not seem plausible considering the number of officials they'd have to incriminate to burn Goldberg, not to mention the airing of so much dirty laundry. Seems like a better plan would be to go to him directly with a phony leaker.
  • StefanBatory 2y ago
    And then, the natural course of action is to ban them.
• itbeho 2y ago
  Colossal fuckup on many levels. Heads should roll. This kind of thing puts people in our military service at undue risk.
  • mherkender 2y ago
    Nothing will happen. If something does happen, it will be an attack on the author of the article.
• nunez 2y ago
  A normal govvie sending cleared materials to unapproved recipients over unapproved channels? 20 years in federal prison. A govvie with status doing the same? A slap on the wrist. Embarrassing.
  • WorldWideWebb 2y ago
    A Trump cabinet member doing the same? Not even a slap on the wrist.
  • CapricornNoble 2y ago
    Yeah, the next time I have to submit a SAAR form for military network access, and they request my Information Awareness Annual Training certification as an attachment, it's going to be hard to not laugh in their face. We were getting scolded about "not even searching the 'Net for the content of the Teixeira leaks because possessing classified info could be prosecuted" and these guys are discussing upcoming strike packages in their Signal chat? Un-fucking-real.
  • enceladus06 2y ago
    Basically confirming what we knew all along that it is security theater. IMO we should keep the nukes & drone force to secure the borders and make sure that these are competent to maintain security. But the rest of the military/DOD/ABCD/USAID is legacy bloat left over from the cold war and should be cut. Then we can finally get rid of the income tax for most if not all of the country. Edit: I say this as an independent who does not support either "side".
• n1b0m 2y ago
  In 2023, Hegseth had his own critique of the Biden administration handling classified documents “flippantly”, remarking on Fox News that “If at the very top there’s no accountability”, then we have “two tiers of justice”. https://x.com/MattGertz/status/1904228588414464167 https://x.com/MattGertz/status/1904228588414464167 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/24/journalist-trump-yemen-war-chat-reaction https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/24/journalist-t...
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
• ChrisArchitect 2y ago
  More: https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2025/03/jeffrey-goldberg-group-chat-military-houthi-yemen/682160/ https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2025/03/jeff...
  • ipython 2y ago
    https://archive.ph/u1H02 https://archive.ph/u1H02
• e44858 2y ago
  How can we know this group chat was really comprised of government officials and not some bored teenagers? Signal allows you to set your profile name to anything you like.
  • jfim 2y ago
    Have you read the article? The author mentions this exact concern.
  • n2d4 2y ago
    From the article: > Brian Hughes, the spokesman for the National Security Council, responded two hours later, confirming the veracity of the Signal group. “This appears to be an authentic message chain, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain,”
    • e44858 2y ago
      Is there an official statement of this on a government website?
      • Ylpertnodi 2y ago
        They used signal and included a journo...a web-page highlighting an 'error', may take a while to appear. Especially as some poor mf has to make a page that doesn't criticize la presidentino.
  • sjsdaiuasgdia 2y ago
    Watch the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing from earlier today. You can hear one of the participants in that chat acknowledge that he's in it and it's real in response to the questions of committee members. This is not in question, at all.
    • alabastervlog 2y ago
      The natural and insider language of the chat, and (especially) the perfect timing of the strikes with the planning in the tread, also make it extremely unlikely this was anything but a genuine conversation, even without confirmation. The alternative is a combination of a very-prepared fraudster with either their own source of privileged information (to get the timing right) or else an incredible coincidence such that their entirely fake and uninformed planning matched the timing set out in the real planning. That it was genuine is far, far more likely than either of those (one of which raises its own, different security concerns, anyway)
• Frederation 2y ago
  False Flag, perchance?
  • Jtsummers 2y ago
    What? What are you saying was a false flag?
• evanjrowley 2y ago
  Who is surprised the US is planning on military action in Yemen?
  • ttyprintk 2y ago
    The journalist declined to give any details after “UPDATE”, so that the story is not about Suez shipping but about opsec.
• heartbreak 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • fzeroracer 2y ago
    They have a tendency to simply just ignore things that challenge or are not aligned with their worldview so I expect you'll be waiting for quite some time unfortunately.
  • dang 2y ago
    Please don't do this here, regardless of how wrong someone is or you think they are.
    • heartbreak 2y ago
      I honestly don’t think my comment warranted your attention, let alone your feedback. Nonetheless, point taken.
      • dang 2y ago
        The overtone of personal attack is the thing that made me respond. It's easy to fall into that without intending to.
• codedokode 2y ago
  Mr. Trump's return into White House made news about America interesting again.
• codedokode 2y ago
  I wonder whether the phones and software used were certified for discussing such sensitive issues and if there are risks of leaking the data because of this.
  • ttyprintk 2y ago
    Before the phrase “good with the Cyber” I believed opsec was teachable.
• Neonlicht 2y ago
  This Yemen situation is quite interesting. In 1948 nobody could have conceived a situation in which white people wouldn't be running the world, Dutch people were still religious and public opinion was pro Israel. Hopefully when the last boomers die we can finally extricate ourselves from this self imposed fuck up.
  • Ylpertnodi 2y ago
    Did only boomers vote?
• financetechbro 2y ago
  This story lacks substance and is a perfect of example of medias complacency to the state in the name of “national security”… total BS. Ken Klippenstein has a great take on this reporting. https://open.substack.com/pub/kenklippenstein/p/trump-admin-caught-making-war-by?r=18bgnm&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email https://open.substack.com/pub/kenklippenstein/p/trump-admin-...
• nanna 2y ago
  Relatively minor side point, but still: for people who chastise "European freeloading", it's interesting to note that none of Signal group's members' usernames have the badge Signal gives users who pay for the service. Users like me, from Europe. Sure, they might all be paying but have opted out, but let's be honest that's unlikely.
• frenchman_in_ny 2y ago
  In the banking world, employees have been fined significant sums, or even forced from their jobs [0], for unauthorized use of messaging platforms. And here, it's barely a shrug. Unbelievable. [0] https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/morgan-stanley-hit-bankers-with-up-1-mln-penalties-messaging-breaches-ft-2023-01-26/ https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/morgan-stanley-hit-...
  • hoistbypetard 2y ago
    In the government world, people have been jailed for it. Not people so directly connected to a president, though.
    • billy99k 2y ago
      Heh. Like when they arrested someone for running their own mail server and sending classified information through it? Oh wait...
      • jjeaff 2y ago
        yes, after months and months of investigations and hearing and non-stop new coverage and a Republican led committee that admitted in their final report that while there was negligence, they couldn't find any wrong doing.
    • StefanBatory 2y ago
      Laws no longer apply to them - laws bound people below. If you're interested what will follow, look into Russia or Hungary.
  • jillyboel 2y ago
    Rules for thee but not for me. Now get back to work, peasant.
  • swiftymon 2y ago
    it's not unauthorized use of signal; "Government officials have used Signal for organizational correspondence, such as scheduling sensitive meetings, but in the Biden administration, people who had permission to download it on their White House-issued phones were instructed to use the app sparingly, according to a former national security official who served in the administration." https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/heres-what-to-know-about-signal-the-messaging-app-used-in-apparent-leak-war-plans-journalist https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/heres-what-to-know-about...
• perdomon 2y ago
  https://web.archive.org/web/20250324194236/https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/03/trump-administration-accidentally-texted-me-its-war-plans/682151/ https://web.archive.org/web/20250324194236/https://www.theat...
• dvh 2y ago
  When they say VP do they mean Vice President or Vladimir Putin?
• quickthrowman 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • scottlamb 2y ago
    No, this isn't just about Hegseth. Any of the people on the chat could and should have said... * Signal isn't an approved communications method for national security information at all. * Who is this extra person on this chat? (and Hegseth wasn't even the one who added him apparently.) * Having the only record [1] of this be auto deleting definitively violates the Federal Records Act (even if signal were an approved platform). This is about group malfeasance and normalization of deviance. [1] I don't know that part for certain, but I do suspect it...
• jxjnskkzxxhx 2y ago
  [flagged]
• jdcasale 2y ago
  Without commenting on the (important) political or reputational considerations here, I want to talk a bit about the operational risk presented by this practice. There is a somewhat sizable "So what? Signal is e2e encrypted. Nothing bad happened and you're all overreacting." narrative floating around. (not so much in this thread, but in the general discourse) If this operation was planned in Signal, then so were countless others (and presumably so would countless others be in the future). If not for this journalist, this would likely have continued indefinitely. We have high confidence that at least some of the officials were doing this on their personal phones. (Gabbard refused to deny this in the congressional hearing -- it does not stand to reason that she'd do that unless she was, in fact using her personal phone). At some point in the administration, it's likely that at least one of their personal phones will be compromised (Pegasus, etc). E2E encryption isn't much use if the phone itself is compromised. This is why we have SCIFs. There was no operational fallout of this particular screwup, but if this practice were to continue, it's likely certain that an adversary would, at some point, compromise these communications. Not through being accidentally invited to the chat rooms, but through compromise of the participants' hardware. An APT could have advance notice of all manner of confidential and natsec-critical plans. In all likelihood this would lead to failed operations and casualties. The criticism/pushback on this is absolutely justified.
  • lokar 2y ago
    It seems one of the people (and thus the phone) was actually in Moscow during the chat!
    • wood_spirit 2y ago
      That counts as a friendly country these days =(
  • dgacmu 2y ago
    Or not even the device: The other reason we have SCIFs is they provide a secure location. These personal devices could have been in use anywhere, including places where they were subject to observation. Including but not limited to Moscow. :)
• anthomtb 2y ago
  This hypocrisy reminds me of one of my former lead developers. He required everyone on the team to go through multi-person code reviews and pass an extensive CI suite before merging changes into our mainline. But him? Half that time he'd approve his own changes without review, the other half he would force-push and bypass the CI system entirely. He knew the system well and seemed to do enough local testing to avoid major breakage but still. Why have a bunch of rules and policies that you do not follow yourself?
  • manquer 2y ago
    As one such developer, it is a powerful ability to be able to bypass restrictions meant to be used sparingly for a good reason I rarely commit the same kind of code the full time professional developer do(when bypassing policies). Typically it is stuff like urgent patch in prod that may not have coverage , or partial long running refactor which breaks existing tests but better to be able merge quickly than keep the branch constantly free of merge conflicts , or experimental exploratory new type of code(new lang , stack whatever )for which we have to yet evolve processes, part of what the lead is supposed to be exploring and so on. Although In my experience junior leads more often than not abuse their privileges than use it well.
  • idle_zealot 2y ago
    > Why have a bunch of rules and policies that you do not follow yourself? If you can get away with it, why wouldn't you set things up this way? Rules for thee, not for me. You can't try to view power plays like this through the lenses of ethics or morality. The point is to use rules to bind and punish your enemies and to make sure that only your friends can get away with breaking them. You do this with media capture and twisted narratives, taking advantage of the erosion of rule of law as a respected concept among the public.
    • t-writescode 2y ago
      That’s the definition of authoritarianism.
    • conductr 2y ago
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• lenerdenator 2y ago
  The behavior will continue until an effective negative stimulus is introduced.
  • thewileyone 2y ago
    So it'll just continue ...
• jeffbee 2y ago
  Amazing that with H.N.'s doctrinaire application of the exact original title rule, this is the title that the mods chose to editorialize.
  • thunkingdeep 2y ago
    Remember: every comment on here is implicitly directed to dang, and every link is implicitly approved of by dang. This is really his website at this point. The rules are mainly just his tools for shaping the content of discussions and submissions to his liking. A decade ago it was different. I mean, he was still way overbearing and biased, but I don’t think it really had the same power-steering effect on the shapes of discussions as it does today. Over time, this is where we’ve come to.
    • guerrilla 2y ago
      I happen to know first hand that the thread is not going quite to dang's liking at the moment. I'm hoping it improves, but people are having a hard time sticking to the technical and security aspects.
      • jeffbee 2y ago
        There are zero technical issues to discuss in this affair.
      • thunkingdeep 2y ago
        [flagged]
        • dang 2y ago
          Actually we specifically re-upped the thread and turned off all the software penalties (such as the flamewar detector) and user flags that were affecting its rank.
        • guerrilla 2y ago
          The opposite. I had him frontpage it to give it a chance.
• yodsanklai 2y ago
  And these guys have been in power for only a few months, they're still finding out about their new tools. What will happen in the next 4 years? will they even leave power peacefully?
  • nopelynopington 2y ago
    Trump has already been president and already demonstrated to us that he will not leave power peacefully. He's openly discussing serving a third term. I think it's highly unlikely that the transfer of power will happen peacefully unless 1) he dies in office (of natural causes) Or 2) the republicans win in 2028 and a different republican president is sworn in.
    • serpix 2y ago
      There are more options than this.
      • watwut 2y ago
        Conservatives or Trump will not give power back peacefully. The most likely is that they will prevent fair elections, but they also may simply refuse to give out power. They are attacking justice now and placed loyalist in power agencies. They cant afford giving away power now. Just in the last three months, there were multiple very clear law breaking acts. Musk is giving government contracts to himself. They do not worry about these, because they do not intend to give out power.
      • nopelynopington 2y ago
        If you can think of more options that lead to a peaceful transfer of power, I'd love to hear them
    • garfield_light 2y ago
      The real test will be the midterms.
      • 2y ago
• ctrlp 2y ago
  In my opinion there are at least two ways to interpret this: a) It's an unintentional opsec failure. Perhaps there was an address book collision with another intended user. Perhaps it was fat-fingered. This seems likely. b) It was an intentional leak. Perhaps overtly, perhaps covertly, by one or more of the channel members for unknown purposes. This seems less likely as there are better ways to leak with less blowback risk. Regarding using Signal in the first place. Yes, this seems like bad opsec, but it's possible that the current admin working groups don't trust the official secure channels and assume they are compromised and they are being spied upon by their own or foreign agencies. That seems very likely, given the circumstances. In which case, it is still a possible opsec failure, but perhaps a less bad risk than trusting operational security to known adverse agencies. This is the more interesting case, imho, since the assumption on here is largely that these types of coordination should be happening on official government channels. But "government" is not necessarily a unified collective working towards the same goals. If you have a strong suspicion that agents within your own team are acting against your goals, then of course, you have to consider communicating on alternative channels. Whether that's to evade legal restrictions or transparency, like with the Clinton email servers, or to evade sabotage, I'm not judging the ethics, just considering the necessity of truly secure communication. Is that trust in Signal justified? It suggests members at the highest security clearances believe Signal is not compromised. Are they correct? In any case, clearly there are more ways to fail opsec than backdoors.
  • boringg 2y ago
    Option (a) 100%. This is an abysmal mistake on the big stage for a bunch of new people on the job. That it is the intelligence community makes it feel so much worse.
    • alistairSH 2y ago
      "abysmal mistake" makes it sound like this wasn't a considered action and willful disregard for both op-sec and the law. There is zero chance these guys didn't know what they were doing... At minimum, Mike Waltz is retired special ops, Rubio has had high-level clearance for ages from his time in the Senate, same for Gabbard in the House. None of them responded "Hey, this is poor op-sec and illegal, perhaps take this to an approved messaging service?"
• ctrlp 2y ago
  It would be interesting and valuable to have additional security controls in Signal group chats. It's frustrating that the platform is so feature limited.
  • guerrilla 2y ago
    Can you expand on what you'd like to see?
    • ctrlp 2y ago
      Some layer of ACL and better controls over group membership and message visibility. In this case, if it were an inadvertent added member, then there could be a group/role level restrictions on channels that restrict members from a pool of approved members depending on the security context. Classic security stuff, really. I'm sure others could think of more interesting use cases, but preventing mistaken group adds feels like low-hanging fruit.
      • guerrilla 2y ago
        Yeah, that's what I thought you meant. This situation is what MAC and specifically MLS are actually for, so that exactly this doesn't happen. There must be mobile devices and texting apps that actually support that but as far as I understand it Android is very far from being able to implement that kind of policy (despite heavy use of SELinux). It's actually weird we don't see this in the corporate world either. These problems, as many of us know personally, exist everywhere, not just at the White House and it's going to lead to huge issues down the road. Anyone here know if the DoD actually has their own stuff for this? It was they who came up with these technologies back in the rainbow books days.
        • ctrlp 2y ago
          A stupid simple way to do it would be to use control groups as security pools. If you are not a member some master control group, then you can't be added to related spawned "child" groups. Better than what is there now, which is nothing. Would have to be client level controls, maybe a smart contract could govern, but could Signal build on the current abstractions by having groups be members of groups and inherit the same "phonebook" as the group they are a member of. Just spitballing.
• Madhouse61 2y ago
  Jeffrey Goldberg mentioned in an interview with MSNBC his Signal Alias was "JG." I wonder if JD Vance goes by JD?
• Animats 2y ago
  Here's how Eisenhower dealt with a similar leak.[1] General Henry Miller made public comments about the secret date of the Allied invasion of Normandy in May 1944. He was a personal friend of Eisenhower. Eisenhower demoted him and sent him back to the US in disgrace. He wasn't court-martialed. [1] https://youtu.be/fD0IlFPTopA?t=269 https://youtu.be/fD0IlFPTopA?t=269
  • rafaelmn 2y ago
    I'm sorry but how in the hell is that a similar leak other than they are in the same category ? Not justifying Trump administration but just seems like a whole different level of stakes.
    • dontparticipate 2y ago
      Today's bombing of Yemen is tomorrow's landing of Marines on Taiwan, or I guess these days marching into Montreal and landing in Greenland. All of these require complete OPSEC from the entire chain of command.
    • nitwit005 2y ago
      People could, obviously, die from leaking a military operation. You're right that more people would die in a larger operation, but I'd assume most of us are okay with firing or prosecuting people for risking lives for not following basic policies.
      • rafaelmn 2y ago
        Yes, but one is involving hundred thousand lives on a land invasion by a military general, another is about long range bombing being less effective by warning the target hours in advanced by a civilian/politician. The level of potential impact, expectations and repercussions are very very different between the two. He should absolutely get fired because you cant do that sort of thing at that position - but equating the two is disingenuous. The general should have been court-martialed in that situation.
• DrNosferatu 2y ago
  Indirect strong hint: Signal is uncompromised. …at least at the moment. Or of course, that’s what they want you to think :D
• DrNosferatu 2y ago
  The reason? I would put my chips on (an attempt at) avoiding the duty to keep records.
• joshuamerrill 2y ago
  I began my career in a classified environment working on government satellite programs. In my first week on the job, I was told, explicitly, that if I shared Classified or Controlled Unclassified information over unapproved channels, I would be reprimanded—likely fired, or less likely, prosecuted. It was also made clear that safeguarding the nation's secrets from the carelessness of others was my responsibility, too. It is mind-boggling that 18 people were on this thread, and none of them ever suggested that this discussion would be better served in a SCIF. To say nothing of SecDef starting the thread on Signal in the first place. How many other such threads are active at the highest levels of government right now? Does Chinese intelligence know? I'm not suggesting punishment, or even prosecution, for the people involved. But the idea that this breach can occur with no accountability, consequences, or operational changes is unacceptable.
  • baby 2y ago
    SCIF?
    • rescripting 2y ago
      Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitive_compartmented_information_facility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitive_compartmented_inform...
  • bambax 2y ago
    No accountability or consequences for anyone is the motto of the Trump administration (or indeed Trump himself, who is a convicted felon).
    • SSLy 2y ago
      The consequences will arrive by the will of the Trumpist administration. Levied on the Undesirables only.
    • dylan604 2y ago
      First felon I know that has had no issues getting a job or getting a place to live. It's amazing how being a felon makes life so much more difficult for normies, yet actually improved his stature. It's embarrassing no matter which angle it is viewed.
• bambax 2y ago
  > The Signal chat group, I concluded, was almost certainly real. Having come to this realization, one that seemed nearly impossible only hours before, I removed myself from the Signal group Why? Why not stay in the group indefinitely (or until found) and write stories sourced from a mysterious individual deep in the entrails of the Trump administration? That would have been absolutely specacular and could have resulted in a hilarious purge while the culprits searched in vain for a traitor in their ranks.
  • rdsubhas 2y ago
    Are you suggesting he knowlingly convert into a hacker and get prosecuted as a traitor? He exited and correctly disclosed himself as a victim of being unknowingly added. This is exactly what anyone who values the rest of their life should do.
• goldforever 2y ago
  [dead]
• yowzadave 2y ago
  What are the odds that Goldberg was included in the Signal chat intentionally by a whistleblower? I.e., someone who had reservations about what was about to take place (either the bombing action itself, or the intentional avoidance of government recordkeeping) and so included him as a witness?
  • anigbrowl 2y ago
    I'd give it about 10%
  • simmerup 2y ago
    Sounds like youre desperately searching for competence where none exists
• jimnotgym 2y ago
  I guess Signal is pretty safe, but the phone you are using it on is far from safe. Then there is the issue of being able to accidently add unvetted people to the chat. Is that pretty much the size of the technological issue here?
  • xuhu 2y ago
    Yes. Then there's the fact that they do this on a daily basis to avoid accountability.
• gorfian_robot 2y ago
  It just came out one of the chat members was in Russia at the time.
• simonh 2y ago
  Steve Witkoff was on the chat while he was in Russia. There’s a vulnerability in Signal where you can set up linked devices that replicate your signal messages. You can do this by just scanning a QRcode. This is known to be used by Russian hackers. What are the chances the Russians duped Witkoff into scanning a QR code while he was in Moscow?
  • HumblyTossed 2y ago
    > What are the chances the Russians duped Witkoff into scanning a QR code while he was in Moscow? What are the chances this admin had him do it ON PURPOSE?
    • throwaway5752 2y ago
      And why would they when they can pop Starlink and get a far bigger prize? https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/17/us/politics/elon-musk-starlink-white-house.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/17/us/politics/elon-musk-sta...
  • bb88 2y ago
    Why must a Signal attack take place only in Russia? If Russia intelligence operations can operate freely in the US, they can attack US Officials in the US as well.
    • simonh 2y ago
      Good point. I was just thinking Witkoff must be dealing with Russian functionaries all the time in Moscow so they have near constant direct access. There’s nothing to stop them duping one of them in the US though, and it doesn’t seem like duping these guys would be a stretch.
      • bb88 2y ago
        Honestly, the Russians probably already have done so. It's just a matter of who's phone in that group has been compromised. In a previous world, some three letter agency (FBI maybe?) would seize the phones in the chat to investigate the leak.
• gigatexal 2y ago
  The level of incompetence in this administration is laughable — well it would be if it wasn’t so sad
• breatheoften 2y ago
  How exactly do you accidentally add a reporter to a signal group chat ...? That's a pretty bizarre sequence of events if it's actually what happened isn't it?
  • guerrilla 2y ago
    The most popular theory is that he has the same initials as someone else. Notice that most of their usernames were just their initials.
• bitbasher 2y ago
  If anything, this is a hell of a "social proof" for Signal :)
  • baby 2y ago
    They're now the top downloaded messaging app in front of Whatsapp https://x.com/signalapp/status/1904213361241268523 https://x.com/signalapp/status/1904213361241268523
• sharpshadow 2y ago
  He may have just received screenshots from a compromised phone and wrapped himself into the story.
• al_hag 2y ago
  Legality is certainly not just to do with breaking rules; this is more true the further up in the hierarchy you are.
• boringg 2y ago
  How much of a bump is signal seeing as a result of this?
• gsibble 2y ago
  [flagged]
• gsibble 2y ago
  [flagged]
• bvan 2y ago
  The level of incompetence and lack of accountability is mind-boggling.
• wnevets 2y ago
  Having people preaching the glorious benefits of a meritocracy and how this white house is gonna spear head it all while these geniuses break the law and operational security the dumbest way possible is simply amazing.
• throwaway984393 2y ago
  [dead]
• matt3210 2y ago
  Who really believes this isn't an intentional "leak".
  • bobsoap 2y ago
    To what end? To gain a casus belli for a terminal crackdown on the "woke" press? I mean, if something is imaginable, there's a chance it is indeed so, but still - this would be on a whole other level.
• MPSFounder 2y ago
  The funny thing is I heard the head of the CIA testify today and say they use Signal because it is E2E encrypted. Are they that confident that no other country like China can crack those? I sure hope our intelligence officers are using better systems than effing Signal
• Folcon 2y ago
  I'm an external individual to the US, but I must admit that some of the sentiments being expressed here in this thread and elsewhere about the lack of accountability deeply concern me, it reminds me of many things I saw growing up and still see today in south asia. Independent of anything else, I do see the overton window shifting in the US, the most subtle of which are norms and expectations around acts of corruption. Every nation has it's minor acts of corruption, small favours between friends, which I've always thought of as being functionally impossible to remove as they also allow for a flexible environment which allows things to get done. However the norms seem to be shifting more towards the idea that those in power can act as they will, and in fact the expected thing is they will act to enrich themselves. I hope this does not happen, because this is death to entrepreneurship, this is one of those things that will poison the economy, when people no longer trust that what they make can be theirs, that others can look on in envy at the work they have built on their blood and sweat and can take it as their due because they have power. That will create a chilling effect for anyone who wishes to create and will make them wonder as myself and many others have considered, whether it's better to create their life's work elsewhere. I sincerely hope this doesn't happen here, once this mindset becomes a norm, it's incredibly hard thing to stamp out.
  • 20after4 2y ago
    It's so much worse than that already. If corruption was the only problem we face in the US then there might be some real hope to reverse course.
    • bsenftner 2y ago
      The corruption is caused by their short sightedness, a total lack of critical analysis capacity to see past the surface assessment of pretty much everything. The problem in the United States is that adults are no longer adults, we manufacture immature people with simplistic world views that seriously know no better, and they have the entire Republican Party hostage, a material percentage of the Democratic Party, and in general the USA is awash in a state of noncommunication because such people cannot see past their immediate assessments to find any common ground. Sure, we have real adults, but not enough to make a critical difference in the quality of our public discourse, to reverse this nose dive.
• solid_fuel 2y ago
  Well, this is distressing. Question: how many people here who are concerned about this behavior have actually contacted their senators or representatives to voice an opinion on this?
• awaymazdacx5 2y ago
  >"The Houthi-run Yemeni health ministry reported that at least 53 people were killed in the strikes, a number that has not been independently verified." weird chat, surprised Waltz was active in planning strikes. 18 confidantes - closer knit cabinet from internal coms. was under the impression that signal log was leaked to emulate Spinoza's excommunication decree.
• nobodywillobsrv 2y ago
  Why don't we see appropriate questions? Like how was the number added accidentally? It would have had to be in the contacts already? Was it? That seems highly unlikely. It's the ATLANTIC! Why would they have the Atlantic in their contacts. And Signal is not an approved app afaik. The whole thing just seems like it is highly likely it is fake/engineered.
  • tempestn 2y ago
    You find it implausible that someone highly placed in the government would have the editor of a major news publication in their contacts?
• collyw 2y ago
  Seems a bit unlikely. Seems more like a deliberate "leak".
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• knorker 2y ago
  So can we now stop hearing "lock her up" and "what about her email server?!".
• TomK32 2y ago
  Isn't there some new agency offering tech support? Can't they focus on helping the Pentagon to sort out some internal secure messaging with strict ACL?
• ernirulez 2y ago
  [flagged]
• Dreautall 2y ago
  [dead]
• Thlom 2y ago
  Everyone crying about the opsec failure and not that these people were cheering murdering women and children in one of the world's poorest country.
  • hypeatei 2y ago
    Caring about people in a far away country is not a winning strategy. Showing that this admin is harming national security and risking American lives is what gets voter attention.
    • webninja 2y ago
      I wish to highlight the pointlessness in your timing of your leftist activism. Trump cannot run for a third term due to the 22nd amendment to the constitution. Therefore even if you found evidence that a small subset of the members held national security worse than Hillary secured her emails, (in this case, leaking a Yemen bombing attack 2 hours before it happened), there’s nothing left for voters to vote on. The only thing far-left activists can do to change this administration is to wait 4 years for Harris, Hillary, or Bernie to run again. But they’ll need a winning platform to run on. Maybe campaigning on making America Great Again or putting America first will work better. All this left-leaning activism is doing is helping other liberals lose even more of their sanity than they’ve already lost. One reason the democrats lost this election because they didn’t even care about their own American people, let alone other American people.
      • hypeatei 2y ago
        > Trump cannot run for a third term due to the 22nd amendment to the constitution Given he started a riot to interrupt congressional proceedings and tried to insert fake electors in 2021, I don't have much hope that he won't try something in 2028. > there’s nothing left for voters to vote on Oh really, so MAGA will just disappear in 2028? The point is to expose the incompetence and the harm that hiring loyalists over qualified people introduces. > Maybe campaigning on making America Great Again or putting America first will work better. I don't think populism is a good strategy, personally. It always devolves into a "us vs them" tribalism battle, where you're going against the "elite" but the "elite" is a moving target and not set in stone. Lots of conspiracies arise and you're less effective as a bloc. > One reason the democrats lost this election because they didn’t even care about their own American people What specifically do you think showed that they didn't care? Incumbents lost globally due to inflation from COVID and the voter population misplacing the blame. I think Dems could have done better before the election (e.g. Joe should've dropped out sooner) but to say that they lost on policy is a bit asinine.
• aucisson_masque 2y ago
  How is trump staff using signal for classified military actions different from Clinton use of private email account ? Back then he said she should be put in jail but now he is downplaying it. How can Americans take this guy seriously is beyond my mind.
  • mehphp 2y ago
    For whatever reason norms/laws just don’t apply to Trump. He’s above the law; it’s baffling.
    • rco8786 2y ago
      Yes exactly. Not sure why either. But laws do not apply to him, they never have, and they never will. He knows that, too.
    • kjkjadksj 2y ago
      The reason is he’s positioned himself perfectly to have shared benefit and shared destruction in many other’s incentive structures.
    • thewileyone 2y ago
      It's not baffling. He just thinks that laws don't apply to him.
      • EasyMark 2y ago
        To be fair the Supreme Court just gave him an out to all but the most heinous crimes conducted as "official acts". He can do almost anything he wants and not worry about going to prison, and he can pardon all of his underlings.
      • mehphp 2y ago
        Sure, I’m not baffled that he think that, I’m baffled that society allows it.
  • fransje26 2y ago
• rambambram 2y ago
  Normalizing war. With emojis and all. Cool.
• ThisRealLife 2y ago
  After reflecting on this for a day, it seems the best case scenario is Waltz decided to blow the whistle on a bunch of useful idiots. Most likely scenario he decided to blow the whistle on a bunch of traitors. It seems least likely that the journalist was accidentally included. The question is why? Seems like our defense personnel are now foreign agents acting against the US.
• sharpshadow 2y ago
  Excuse me folks but is there any evidence that he was really in the group? Going through the reporting a couple of times it could very well be that he was never part of the group. Screenshots of the group members including him or a screen recording nowhere to see. He didn’t write anything in the group but immediately wrote each individual after he left the group. If he never was in the group and only received intel about it, the people which provided him with the intel would be able to tell him that critical information was posted in the group, which was accurate, but he wouldn’t have seen it.
  • 0x_rs 2y ago
    The Atlantic has published the entirety of the chat logs including the members list, so yes. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43481521 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43481521
    • sharpshadow 2y ago
      Thanks that’s what I was looking for!
• baby 2y ago
  easier to read as rendered here https://mimoo.github.io/houthi_signal/ https://mimoo.github.io/houthi_signal/
• amai 2y ago
  Related: https://www.politico.eu/article/russian-hackers-snoop-ukrainian-signal-accounts-google-report/ https://www.politico.eu/article/russian-hackers-snoop-ukrain...
• Dreautall 2y ago
  [dead]
• t0rst 2y ago
  Great take from Timothy Snyder, including… “Signal is attractive not because it is secure with respect to foreign adversaries, which it is not, but because it is secure with respect to American citizens and American judges.” https://open.substack.com/pub/snyder/p/signalgate-violating-national-security https://open.substack.com/pub/snyder/p/signalgate-violating-... (…maybe his article should be a top level HN post)
• la_mezcla 2y ago
  Who is that theater for? Coulnd't he have been deliberately included in a chat?