Mike Waltz, Pete Hegseth and Tulsi Gabbard’s private data leaked online, including phone numbers and passwords

This incident comes at a time when the Trump administration is facing calls for senior officials to step down amid the Signal leak scandal. The controversy surfaced after The Atlantic revealed that Jeffrey Goldberg, its editor-in-chief, added to a secret group chat by mistake where high-ranking Trump administration members had been discussing an upcoming military strike against Yemen’s Houthi rebels. This led to the administration’s handling of classified conversations to be questioned. The chat group reportedly included Vice President JD Vance, Hegseth, the secretary of state Marco Rubio, and others. Trump later said Hegseth “had nothing to do with this” and called the scandal a “witch-hunt.”

What private data has been found?

The phone numbers and email IDs found were used for Instagram and LinkedIn profiles in some cases, as well as cloud-storage service Dropbox, and apps that track a user’s location. According to Der Spiegel, it was “particularly easy” to discover Hegseth’s mobile number and email address, using a commercial provider of contact information. The outlet found that the email address, and even the password associated with it, could be found in over 20 data leaks. The email address was reportedly used only a few days back. In fact, the mobile number led to a WhatsApp account that seemed to have been recently deleted by Hegseth.

Gabbard and Waltz’ numbers, on the other hand, were linked to accounts on WhatsApp and Signal, exposing them to having spyware installed on their devices. The national security council said Waltz’ accounts and passwords that were referenced by the German magazine were changed in 2019.