{"id":47096,"date":"2025-05-06T14:49:38","date_gmt":"2025-05-06T18:49:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.technewsday.com\/?p=47096"},"modified":"2025-05-31T08:15:52","modified_gmt":"2025-05-31T12:15:52","slug":"signal-archiving-tool-used-by-trump-admin-is-breached-raising-alarms-over-messaging-security-editorial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/technewsday.com\/staging\/signal-archiving-tool-used-by-trump-admin-is-breached-raising-alarms-over-messaging-security-editorial\/","title":{"rendered":"Signal Archiving Tool Used By Trump Admin Is Breached, Raising Alarms Over Messaging Security (EDITORIAL)"},"content":{"rendered":"

(EDITORIAL) A messaging tool used by Trump administration officials to archive encrypted Signal messages has been hacked \u2014 twice \u2014 forcing its suspension and raising new concerns over how high-level U.S. communications are being protected.<\/span><\/p>\n

TeleMessage<\/b>, an Israel-based tool used by government agencies to archive encrypted messages from platforms like <\/span>Signal<\/b>, <\/span>Telegram<\/b>, and <\/span>WeChat<\/b>, has shut down its services after two hackers separately claimed to have breached the system. The company confirmed it’s investigating a \u201cpotential security incident\u201d and suspended operations \u201cout of an abundance of caution,\u201d according to a spokesperson for <\/span>Smarsh<\/b>, which owns the app.<\/span><\/p>\n

The breach came to light after <\/span>Reuters<\/b> published a photo of then\u2013national security adviser <\/span>Mike Waltz<\/b> using TeleMessage on a Signal-like interface. Days later, <\/span>404 Media<\/b> reported a hacker accessed TeleMessage’s backend in about <\/span>15\u201320 minutes<\/b>, gaining access to names and contact details of U.S. officials, internal credentials, and client indicators. A second hacker reportedly told <\/span>NBC News<\/b> they independently accessed and downloaded a large cache of files.<\/span><\/p>\n

Screenshots from April<\/b>, preserved by the Internet Archive, show that TeleMessage\u2019s 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

The problems with Telemessage are not new.\u00a0 <\/span>Security experts<\/b> had long questioned TeleMessage\u2019s approach. The tool appeared to bypass Signal\u2019s <\/span>end-to-end encryption<\/b>\u2014designed so messages are readable only to sender and receiver\u2014by storing copies of those messages for later retrieval. That process, critics warned, could undermine the core security that Signal was built to protect.<\/span><\/p>\n

It makes you wonder, who, if anyone is actually advising the most senior members of the Trump cabinet on security.\u00a0 Either they are incompetent or they\u2019ve been over-ruled.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

If they need someone good, I hear Chris Krebs is free and apparently not afraid to speak truth to power. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(EDITORIAL) A messaging tool used by Trump administration officials to archive encrypted Signal messages has been hacked \u2014 twice \u2014 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":47097,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,1458],"tags":[275],"class_list":["post-47096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-security","category-top-stories-2","tag-top-story"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/technewsday.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/technewsday.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/technewsday.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/technewsday.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/technewsday.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47096"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/technewsday.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47096\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47098,"href":"https:\/\/technewsday.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47096\/revisions\/47098"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/technewsday.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/technewsday.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/technewsday.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/technewsday.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}