New York [US], March 27: Personal data belonging to US President Donald Trump's top security advisers may have been directly accessible online, German magazine Der Spiegel reported on March 26.
Phone numbers, email addresses and sometimes access codes for National Security Adviser Mike Waltz , Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth can be found through commercial data search services and hacker data posted online, according to the German magazine.
In some cases, the leaked information included recent phone numbers and email addresses used for Instagram and LinkedIn profiles, cloud storage service Dropbox, and user location-tracking apps.
Ms Gabbard and Mr Waltz's phone numbers were said to be linked to WhatsApp and Signal messaging accounts.
Der Spiegel said the leak of personal data online put President Trump's national security team at risk of having malware installed on their mobile devices.
The German magazine also said that it is even possible that foreign spies were closely following the recent leak of a secret chat group about the airstrike campaign in Yemen on March 15, causing a trio of US officials to face a crisis.
In the incident, Mr. Waltz accidentally brought a journalist into the chat group, that was journalist Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic Magazine .
The US magazine published details of the discussion about the top secret attack campaign on March 26.
Der Spiegel said three US officials did not respond to the newspaper's request for comment.
The US National Security Council said that Mr. Waltz's accounts and access passwords mentioned in the Der Spiegel article were changed in 2019.
President Trump said on March 27 (Vietnam time) that National Security Advisor Waltz was responsible for the leak of the confidential chat group, and that Defense Secretary Hegseth was not involved, after some Democratic lawmakers demanded the minister's dismissal following the incident, Reuters reported.
Source: Thanh Nien Newspaper
