On leaks - Patrick Beuth, Jörg Diehl, Roman Höfner, Roman Lehberger, Friederike Röhreke, Fidelius Schmid in Der Spiegel:

‘Private contact details of the most important security advisers to U.S. President Donald Trump can be found on the internet. DER SPIEGEL reporters were able to find mobile phone numbers, email addresses and even some passwords belonging to the top officials.
To do so, the reporters used commercial people search engines along with hacked customer data that has been published on the web. Those affected by the leaks include National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.’

(…)

‘DER SPIEGEL was able to find some of the contact information for Gabbard, Hegseth and Waltz in commercial databases, while other information was in so-called password leaks, which are hardly a rarity on the internet. One example is the 2019 discovery by Troy Hunt, who found 773 million email addresses and more than 21 million passwords in a hacker forum.’

(…)

‘The mobile number provided, meanwhile, led to a WhatsApp account that Hegseth apparently only recently deleted. The profile photo showed a shirtless Hegseth in a baseball cap and necklace. Comparisons with other photos of the U.S. secretary of defense using facial recognition software were able to confirm that the photo on the WhatsApp profile was indeed Hegseth.’

(…)

‘To protect the private contact information of the U.S. politicians, DER SPIEGEL is not publishing the telephone numbers, email addresses and passwords it found. Furthermore, no tests were performed to determine if the passwords for the email addresses are still active. DER SPIEGEL informed Gabbard, Hegseth and Waltz of its findings.’

(…)

‘Personal inquiries sent by DER SPIEGEL to the leaked WhatsApp and Signal accounts belonging to Waltz were delivered, according to the confirmation function. His WhatsApp profile photo showed Waltz with two other people in front of a U.S. flag. Shortly after the inquiries were sent, Waltz’s accounts were apparently deactivated; the WhatsApp chat with DER SPIEGEL disappeared.’

(…)

‘DER SPIEGEL reporting, however, found that the private Google account belonging to Gabbard was used as recently as around two weeks ago. Messages sent by DER SPIEGEL to her leaked WhatsApp and Signal accounts were also apparently delivered. Two check marks appeared after they were sent.’

Read the article here.

The leaks are everywhere, obviously

Declassify everything, and there are no leaks anymore.

DYI problem solving.