May 6, 2025 (EDITORIAL) A messaging tool used by Trump administration officials to archive encrypted Signal messages has been hacked — twice — forcing its suspension and raising new concerns over how high-level U.S. communications are being protected.
TeleMessage, an Israel-based tool used by government agencies to archive encrypted messages from platforms like Signal, Telegram, and WeChat, has shut down its services after two hackers separately claimed to have breached the system. The company confirmed it’s investigating a “potential security incident” and suspended operations “out of an abundance of caution,” according to a spokesperson for Smarsh, which owns the app.
The breach came to light after Reuters published a photo of then–national security adviser Mike Waltz using TeleMessage on a Signal-like interface. Days later, 404 Media reported a hacker accessed TeleMessage’s backend in about 15–20 minutes, gaining access to names and contact details of U.S. officials, internal credentials, and client indicators. A second hacker reportedly told NBC News they independently accessed and downloaded a large cache of files.
Screenshots from April, preserved by the Internet Archive, show that TeleMessage’s now-defunct website previously advertised support for archiving messages from Signal, Telegram, and WeChat. Today, those pages redirect to a placeholder homepage, removing any mention of those services.
The problems with Telemessage are not new. Security experts had long questioned TeleMessage’s approach. The tool appeared to bypass Signal’s end-to-end encryption—designed so messages are readable only to sender and receiver—by storing copies of those messages for later retrieval. That process, critics warned, could undermine the core security that Signal was built to protect.
It makes you wonder, who, if anyone is actually advising the most senior members of the Trump cabinet on security. Either they are incompetent or they’ve been over-ruled.
If they need someone good, I hear Chris Krebs is free and apparently not afraid to speak truth to power.
