Trump's chief of staff John Kelly's cellphone has been 'compromised' by hackers or foreign government: report

Gen. John Kelly's cell phone has been compromised, government officials warn.

A Politico report explained that the phone belonging to President Donald Trump’s chief of staff had been hacked. During the summer when Kelly was working as the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Kelly gave his phone to tech support because he wasn’t able to download updates. He explained that it hadn’t been working correctly for months.

The IT staff aren't clear on what happened or how it happened, but published a one-page memo in September about the incident for other administration officials. He was not using the phone, however, when he joined the White House staff. He switched to a government-issued phone.

Officials told Politico only that he was no longer using the device and declined to say where the phone was or dispute the timeline.

The news comes less than a week after it was discovered that senior aides Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump were using a non-government email address and a private email server for communication. The private server is similar to what Hillary Clinton did that prompted the Trump campaign to demand she be "locked up."

“The [attackers] I would be most worried about are nation-states or other actors who may have access to resale of commercial spyware sold to nation-states,” said Bill Marczak, a senior research fellow with the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs.