The messaging app at the heart of a burgeoning Trump administration national security scandal has temporarily shuttered its operations as a result of a reported hack, CNBC said on Monday.
"The potential hack of TeleMessage, an Israel-founded app that acts as a modified version of the encrypted messenger Signal, was first reported Sunday by the tech news site 404 Media," said the report.
A spokesman for Smarsh, the app's parent company, said in a statement, “TeleMessage is investigating a potential security incident. Upon detection, we acted quickly to contain it and engaged an external cybersecurity firm to support our investigation. Out of an abundance of caution, all TeleMessage services have been temporarily suspended. All other Smarsh products and services remain fully operational.”
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TeleMessage is a modified version of Signal, the group chatting service that multiple high-ranking Trump national security officials were found to be sharing highly sensitive military attack plans on, with some of the information leaking to a journalist for The Atlantic.
The app "markets itself as a way for government agencies and businesses to adhere to those [records-retention laws] by making backup copies of chats. But 404 Media reported last week that TeleMessage could undermine Signal’s end-to-end encryption — which protects the privacy of messages — because 'the messages can be later retrieved after being stored somewhere else.'"
Mike Waltz, the former National Security Adviser, was photographed using TeleMessage in a Cabinet meeting last week. Shortly after this, Trump announced he would be moving Waltz from the National Security Council to an ambassadorship, though the administration denies this was in any way a punitive move.
