The US Department of Defense (Pentagon) has recently come up with a serious security warning for the Signal application. In an e-mail shared throughout the Ministry, Russian-based professional hacker groups abuse the feature of Signal’s connected devices. This warning coincided with a period in which concerns about attacks targeting senior state officials increased. Although the end -to -end encryption technology seems to be safe, the areas open to user errors still have a great risk.
In the documents shared by NPR, the said hacker groups were reported to watch encrypted conversations by establishing unauthorized connections to users’ devices. This may affect not only individual users, but also people in the most sensitive positions of the state. Pentagon’s statement emphasizes the emphasis on “personally targeted people”. These attacks are based on the method of deceiving the user instead of a technical deficit.
Speaking on behalf of Signal, an official stressed that the warning is not related to the encryption infrastructure of the application. The main problem here underlined that the attackers who try to connect other devices to their accounts by deceiving users. In other words, although the safety of the application is not directly questioned, it is of great importance that user behaviors are open to such threats. For this reason, application users are expected to be more careful about the connection requests they do not recognize.
Signal is used by the Trump administration authorities in the organization of secret operations
This announcement of the Pentagon came immediately after another security weakness, which has recently experienced and still preserves its seriousness. Jeffrey Goldberg, Editor -in -Chief of Atlantic Magazine, was mistakenly added to a signal group conversation with national security officials. In this conversation, it was revealed that military targets and operations in Yemen were discussed. The discussion of the highest -level officials of the government in a mobile application, even if such sensitive issues were encrypted, caused controversy.
In the group conversation, Defense Minister Pete Hegseth, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Foreign Minister Marco Rubio took place. With Jeffrey Goldberg’s accidental inclusion in the group, the details of the operations for the Houthi goals in Yemen appeared. Not only military strategies, but also political discourses and personal views in the messages drew attention. In particular, criticisms of European countries and statements about Iran brought about a political debate beyond security weakness.
A circular published by the Pentagon in 2023 forbade mobile applications to be used for the sharing of “uncontrolled unqualified information”. However, not only the unless the information, but direct military planning and target analyzes were discussed here. This is not only a call for technical measures; It also reveals that there is a matter of discipline, attention and responsibility. In particular, the digital communication habits of senior officials began to be questioned again.
After the scandal, Pete Hegseth rejected the group’s reality against the cameras. But the White House approved the accuracy of these conversations in a short time. The incident not only aroused a wide repercussion in terms of content, but also in the way the public was explained. It was observed that there was a serious injury in the public’s perception of security.
Following all these developments, there was a remarkable scene in the session in Congress. Mark Kelly, a retired navy captain and currently serving as a senator, directly asked Gabbard and Ratcliffe. Although it is not yet clear whether the investigations will deepen, the statements of senior names continue to occupy the agenda. These inquiries are considered as a reflection of the general looseness in digital communication, not only one event.
Cyber security experts, not only application developers, but also the end user has important tasks. Features such as connected devices offer ease of use, but also bring security risks. Each user should make sure that it belongs to it when a new device is connected to its account. In particular, it is clear that public officials should be more careful about this issue.