Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s personal cellphone is turning up online on multiples sites, including social media and a fantasy sport site, according to a New York Times report.
It's posing significant security fears.
The phone number is the same one that was used in the Signal chat in which Hegseth shared sensitive information about air strikes on the Houthis in Yemen.
“There’s zero percent chance that someone hasn’t tried to install Pegasus or some other spyware on his phone,” Mike Casey, the former director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, said in an interview with the Times.
While the Trump administration claims there is no classified information in the Signal chat, one source told The Times Hegseth’s aides warned him not to discuss sensitive operational details in his group chat.
It is “unclear” to The Times how Hegseth "responded to those warnings.” While the Signal chat was encrypted, it is not considered as secure as government channels.
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“If you use your phone for just ordinary daily activities, you are leaving a highly, highly visible digital pathway that even a moderately sophisticated person, let alone a nefarious actor, can follow,” said Glenn S. Gerstell, a former general counsel for the National Security Agency.
Adding, “It would be possible, with moderate difficulty, for someone to take over a phone in a surreptitious way once they had the number, assuming you clicked on something malicious. When really sophisticated bad guys are involved, like Russia or China, phones can be infected even if you don’t click on anything.”
The outlet reports that “government cellphones, by contrast, are far more secure because they are fitted with rigorous government controls meant to protect official communications.”
Hegseth is not the only Trump official whose personal information is accessible online. German news outlet Der Spiegel did an investigation and found the phone numbers of several senior Trump officials on the internet.
