The personal data of US President Donald Trump’s top security advisers can be accessed on the Internet, according to the publication of the German magazine Der Spiegel.
The publication writes that through commercial search services and in databases that escaped online after the hacks, it is possible to find mobile phone numbers, email addresses, and in some cases passwords used by Trump’s national security adviser Mike Walz, National Intelligence Chief Tulsi Gabbard and Defence Secretary Pete Hagseth.
The phone numbers and email addresses, most of which are noted to be current, were used for Instagram and linkedIn profiles, Dropbox cloud storage, and apps that track a user’s location.
The publication also says that Gabbard and Volz’s numbers were linked to accounts on messengers WhatsApp and Signal.
Der Spiegel notes that it has sent an enquiry to all three officials from the Trump administration, but has not yet received a comment. The US National Security Council said that the accounts and passwords of Mike Volz, which the German magazine writes about, were changed in 2019.
The Der Spiegel piece adds to concerns about the handling of sensitive information by White House officials, who were previously at the centre of the Signal messenger correspondence leak scandal.
Signal was recently exposed by The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, who announced that he had been mistakenly included in a group chat discussing strikes against the Hussite group in Yemen.
Trump adviser Mike Volz said he takes “full responsibility” for the leak. In an interview with Fox News, he suggested he may have accidentally added Goldberg to the chat by mistaking his phone number for someone else’s. In doing so, Volz called Goldberg a “scoundrel,” accusing him of publishing inaccurate information and saying the journalist has a “terrible reputation” and “hates the president.”