Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s phone number may have been compromised, with experts noting that the number has been published on the internet, potentially allowing access to classified information and posing a risk to national security.
The phone number was found in a variety of online spaces as recently as March, including on WhatsApp, Facebook and a fantasy sports site.
“You just don’t want the secretary of defense’s phone number to be out there and available to anyone,” Emily Harding, a defense and security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the New York Times.
Earlier this year, multiple senior staff members of the Trump administration made headlines for discussing sensitive attack plans in Yemen on a group chat on messaging app Signal after accidentally including a journalist. The same number that had been added to that group chat in order to communicate with Hegseth is the one that can be found circulating online.
Earlier this week, it was reported that Hegseth was involved in another Signal group chat, including his wife and brother, where he once again included sensitive information about attack plans and strikes.
“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 New York Times. “He is one of the top five, probably, most targeted people in the world for espionage.”
Experts have stated that the accessibility of Hegseth’s number is unsurprising due to the fact that he was a private citizen before he joined President Trump’s cabinet. Last year, he used his personal number to sign up for a sports betting website under the username “PeteHegseth.”
“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.
Originally published on Latin Times
