[HN Gopher] The Trump administration accidentally texted me its ...
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The Trump administration accidentally texted me its war plans
Author : _tk_
Score : 518 points
Date : 2025-03-24 16:23 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theatlantic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theatlantic.com)
| apical_dendrite wrote:
| This would be unbelievable in a normal administration. The
| combination of flagrant lawbreaking and incompetence is just so
| characteristic of these clowns.
|
| No, nothing in the Clinton email scandal comes close to cabinet
| secretaries accidentally real-time texting imminent war plans to
| journalists using a non-governmental system with auto-deleting
| messages.
| krapp wrote:
| -\\(tsu)/- Plenty of people in Trump's own cabinet used private
| email servers too, but no one cared.
|
| As always, it's only a problem when a Democrat does it.
| cocacola1 wrote:
| I'm sort of surprised Democrats haven't snapped yet.
| ipython wrote:
| Honestly, I think a lot have just given up at this point.
| krapp wrote:
| The Democrats really are the Charlie Brown of politics,
| and the Republicans are Lucy with the football.
| 4ndrewl wrote:
| Democrat what? There's no power anywhere outside of the
| Trump circle.
| cocacola1 wrote:
| ?
| dekhn wrote:
| The republicans hold the presidency, have a majority in
| congress, and a majority (depending how you interpret the
| moderate members) of the supreme court. Even the more
| moderate republicans are afraid of the Trumpets so they
| mostly vote in-line (see for example Cassidy voting for
| RFK Jr).
|
| There are some things the democrats can do but it's
| mostly "spanner-in-the-works" slow-downs of the process,
| or mid-level judges. At the same time, the democrats are
| in disarray with no clear leader or message.
|
| Probably the best strategy for the democrats is to let
| Trump make more mistakes until even his base questions
| his presidency.
| archagon wrote:
| Democrats could do a lot with their physical bodies if
| they wanted to. Take a page out of classic American
| protest strategies: strikes, marches, sit-ins, etc.
| dekhn wrote:
| You mean the democratic leadership, or members of the
| party/people-who-vote-democratic?
|
| Protests happen in the summer mostly, and they always
| have a small amount of violence and property destruction
| (even when the protest is organized to be peaceful).
| Trump is just waiting around for that so he can have the
| military shut them down (at least, that's what he said).
|
| Unless the protests are large enough (say, 1/4 the
| population of the US), and persistent, and affect
| business heavily. Maybe that would be enough to dispel
| the reality distortion/enforcement shield Trump has cast
| on the republicans.
| archagon wrote:
| People-who-vote-democratic need leaders to organize them.
| Their elected representatives need to be the ones heading
| marches and organizing rallies, not just AOC and Sanders
| shouldering the entire burden.
|
| Yes, the administration will try violence, but it's a lot
| harder to justify when elected officials are on the
| firing line.
| 4ndrewl wrote:
| Won't happen - Erdogan has written Trump's playbook for
| that. You'll end up in Guantanamo.
| archagon wrote:
| Tens of thousands out in the streets in Turkey right now.
| Still possible there. Still possible here.
| timeon wrote:
| > Probably the best strategy for the democrats is to let
| Trump make more mistakes until even his base questions
| his presidency.
|
| Also known as "strategy of Paul von Hindenburg".
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _surprised Democrats haven't snapped yet_
|
| There is no Democrat in the singular. There is a left-wing
| bloc defined, first and foremost, by identity politics and
| foreign policy views (namely, Palestine). There is a
| centrist bloc focussed on employment and wages
| (historically pro-union). And there is a free-trading bloc
| focussed on American enterprise and industry (historically
| pro Wall Street and the party's dominant wing through 2016
| to 2020).
|
| The second and third used to be aligned. Then, briefly, the
| first and second. Currently, nobody is aligned. The
| financial crisis cost the third group its moral standing.
| The third group's affiliation with the second lost
| corporate America and Silicon Valley to the Republicans.
| Then the middle group's alignment with the first lost _its_
| base to the anti-woke pitch. The first group remains
| cohesive, but it 's too small and uncoordinated ( _e.g._
| voting for Trump for Palestine) to move the policy needle
| on its own.
| text0404 wrote:
| to clarify: the leftmost bloc eschews identity politics
| because they are first and foremost anti-capitalist and
| believe that identity politics are a wedge issue designed
| to distract from class struggle (which is to say, they
| still address issues like systemic
| racism/misogyny/bigotry/etc which perpetuate wide-scale
| societal inequality but care less about politics which
| center individual identity). because they are anti-
| capitalist, they also focus on wages and are heavily pro-
| worker and pro-union (pro-labor). in foreign policy, they
| advocate for liberation movements which are part of
| global class struggle.
|
| the second bloc is liberals, which are more center-right
| as they frequently side with conservative policies and
| are pro-capitalist. in recent years, this has come to
| include DSA (AOC) and other progressives like Bernie
| Sanders, who believe that the current system of politics
| under capitalism can be reformed instead of abolished.
| these people are very much for identity politics because
| they believe idpol will bring the leftmost bloc into the
| fold (it won't). this bloc sometimes supports leftmost
| causes but will abandon them when it is politically
| expedient (AOC, Bernie).
|
| the third bloc is just right-wing. Bush Jr-era neocons.
| the party has always catered to these folks but more
| recently has come to embrace them as it moves rightward.
| this bloc will continue to grow as we see more of a
| rightward shift as more Democrats embrace the far right
| because they believe it will lead to electoral gains
| (Gavin Newsom, Chuck Shumer, etc) - once again, it won't.
|
| the first bloc absolutely is not part of the Democratic
| party, and in fact despise the Democrats.
| allears wrote:
| Paywall
| Jtsummers wrote:
| https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/03/trump-a...
| tetraven wrote:
| https://archive.is/JEYep
| dbl000 wrote:
| This was such a weird news story to read. At least they used
| Signal? That's gotta be a plus at some level.
|
| Unrelated, but I wonder how the gray hat market for Signal vulns
| is doing now?
| tptacek wrote:
| It's unlikely that there is one.
| stefan_ wrote:
| The basic Signal vulnerability even if the protocol is
| perfectly sound is that they can push effectively silent
| automatic app updates to do whatever. Presumably they didn't
| want to signup for this but that's how app distribution works
| nowadays, and it's certainly not fit for classified
| information.
| ratg13 wrote:
| Signal is primarily for end-to-end encryption.
|
| If a device has been compromised, the database can be extracted
| with all messages and contacts
| alistairSH wrote:
| How is that a plus? Maybe vs plain old SMS...
|
| But, it's a flagrant leak of classified info. Using a medium
| explicitly prohibited by policy. And likely now lost to time
| (Signal messages can be configured to auto-delete on a timer),
| when all of this sort of correspondence is legally required to
| be retained.
| yks wrote:
| > How is that a plus?
|
| They could've used Telegram /s. It's popular with the crypto
| crowd after all.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| Is it wild that a 3rd party app like Signal is used for this type
| of communication? I feel like that's crazy.
| danso wrote:
| From the story:
|
| _I have never seen a breach quite like this. It is not
| uncommon for national-security officials to communicate on
| Signal. But the app is used primarily for meeting planning and
| other logistical matters--not for detailed and highly
| confidential discussions of a pending military action. And, of
| course, I've never heard of an instance in which a journalist
| has been invited to such a discussion._
|
| _Conceivably, Waltz, by coordinating a national-security-
| related action over Signal, may have violated several
| provisions of the Espionage Act, which governs the handling of
| "national defense" information, according to several national-
| security lawyers interviewed by my colleague Shane Harris for
| this story. Harris asked them to consider a hypothetical
| scenario in which a senior U.S. official creates a Signal
| thread for the express purpose of sharing information with
| Cabinet officials about an active military operation. He did
| not show them the actual Signal messages or tell them
| specifically what had occurred._
|
| _All of these lawyers said that a U.S. official should not
| establish a Signal thread in the first place. Information about
| an active operation would presumably fit the law's definition
| of "national defense" information. The Signal app is not
| approved by the government for sharing classified information._
| neverokay wrote:
| If you want to put a tinfoil hat on, one could argue external
| state actors could have convinced the Trump admin their
| provided forms of communication are tapped, so they should
| consider alternatives. Such a state actor would know the
| alternatives are compromised well in advance by them.
| burkaman wrote:
| Yes, it is illegal (because of the auto-deleting messages) and
| explicitly against the rules that every one of these people
| mandates for their own employees. All of them know that federal
| records must be preserved, and you have to manually turn on
| Signal's auto-deletion feature, so this is obviously
| intentional criminal activity.
| danso wrote:
| Staggering display of incompetence and carelessness. And
| unfortunately, one that we're unlikely to get much transparency
| about, in terms of how such an operational screwup was allowed to
| happen.
|
| > _At 11:44 a.m., the account labeled "Pete Hegseth" posted in
| Signal a "TEAM UPDATE." I will not quote from this update, or
| from certain other subsequent texts. The information contained in
| them, if they had been read by an adversary of the United States,
| could conceivably have been used to harm American military and
| intelligence personnel, particularly in the broader Middle East,
| Central Command's area of responsibility. What I will say, in
| order to illustrate the shocking recklessness of this Signal
| conversation, is that the Hegseth post contained operational
| details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information
| about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack
| sequencing._
|
| > _...The Signal chat group, I concluded, was almost certainly
| real. Having come to this realization, one that seemed nearly
| impossible only hours before, I removed myself from the Signal
| group, understanding that this would trigger an automatic
| notification to the group's creator, "Michael Waltz," that I had
| left. No one in the chat had seemed to notice that I was there.
| And I received no subsequent questions about why I left--or, more
| to the point, who I was_
| belter wrote:
| Is this worst than using Top Secret documents as toilet paper?
|
| https://d3i6fh83elv35t.cloudfront.net/static/2023/06/FyM1h-C...
| alistairSH wrote:
| Possibly, yes, as these messages leaked details of ongoing
| military operations.
| asdff wrote:
| I never realized before with this photo, but space was
| actually made to still use the toilet sitting in that room
| with the tower of boxes 6 inches from your face. Straight out
| of a comedy sketch, almost too perfectly staged with the
| gaudy lights, stool colored formica, and $2 walmart shower
| curtain with the pressure fit rod right into the plaster. A
| shame for all of us that the photo came out of real life and
| not satire.
| ornornor wrote:
| Pardon my ignorance but what's the context of this picture? I
| don't watch the news fwiw.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| After he left office in 2021, it was found that Trump kept
| boxes and boxes of top secret files at his residence,
| including in the bathroom among other places. Somehow this
| is not an issue for the GOP.
| nerdix wrote:
| I believe that is a picture the FBI took when they raided
| Mar-a-Lago and found the top secret documents that Trump
| took when he left office after his first term.
| belter wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI_search_of_Mar-a-Lago
| techterrier wrote:
| but her emails
| legitster wrote:
| The whole thread is WILD, and the fact that it was verified is
| crazy. But the actual text of the thread is horrifying:
|
| On one hand, they say they complain about "bailing out Europe".
| But on the other hand, they explicitly moved up the timeline so
| they could move before other actors and take credit.
|
| > "If the US successfully restores freedom of navigation at great
| cost there needs to be some further economic gain extracted in
| return."
|
| So to be clear, when presented with the option to wait a month,
| they instead _explicitly choose_ to act decisively for political
| reasons. And then they want to turn around and extort European
| allies over it.
| dtquad wrote:
| The US is primarily attacking Houthis to support Israel and not
| Europe. Vance knows that.
|
| J.D. Vance comes of as a rabid anti-Europeanist in his
| speeches, tweets, and apparently also his private messages.
| Here in Denmark the authorities reported that his wife, Usha
| Vance, is tied to an unusual money transfer and upcoming
| meeting with Greenlandic separatists.
| tptacek wrote:
| No, I'm pretty sure this is actually about shipping lanes and
| freedom of navigation. Israel doesn't need the help.
|
| If you read the story, one of their _concerns_ is that if
| they don 't act, Israel was going to instead.
| jacquesm wrote:
| So no, then it clearly wasn't about shipping lanes and
| freedom of navigation but just about taking the credit.
| After all if Israel was going to do it instead it could
| simply be solved by waiting a little bit. These guys are
| super transactional and they were afraid they missed the
| moment that would allow them to take credit and use it as
| coin for exchange.
| tptacek wrote:
| I'm not interested in litigating Israel with you, sorry.
| amarcheschi wrote:
| Bailing out europe when us is the cause of so many troubles in
| middle east (and not only that, or at least contributed to it)
| is deeply ironic
| margalabargala wrote:
| > So to be clear, when presented with the option to wait a
| month, they instead explicitly choose to act decisively for
| political reasons.
|
| This feels like a pretty reasonable thing for a nation-state
| actor to take into consideration, no? Is there any country on
| earth where the government altering timing of something for
| political convenience would be surprising?
|
| The rest of this story is hilariously egregious. The part about
| the government discussing its own best interests and acting in
| them is the least abnormal thing here.
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| It's actually kind of a relief to at least confirm that these
| cronies would work like this. I.e. whatever they have in store
| they will probably end up shooting themselves in the foot.
|
| Well, themselves and the 53 humans who were blown up in a distant
| country by Star War technology.
|
| Actually, now that I think about it, no - this is terrifying and
| awful and just so so so stupid.
| llm_nerd wrote:
| This is an insane story demonstrating extraordinary incompetence,
| not to mention revealing some rather comical beliefs about
| American exceptionalism.
|
| It's on the bottom of the third page, pushed down by flags.
| During any other administration, such a _disastrously_ ,
| criminally incompetent use of technology would have been top of
| the front page for days, but this administration is so cosmically
| incompetent that pointing it out is "partisan" now. Everyone is
| just tired of people commenting on the fact that this criminal
| bunch of Fox News host miscreants clearly have zero idea what
| they're doing.
|
| Also...but her emails!
|
| Who do you think will sponsor the Egg roll? They just need to
| move the Tesla infomercial out of the way, and maybe Trump can
| feature some of his garbage shitcoin crypto.
|
| Jesus Christ. What a fallen idiocracy.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Not just days - months.
|
| We saw A1 headlines for months about Clinton's emails. Often
| daily.
| bediger4000 wrote:
| Looks to me like that intensity of coverage was deliberate on
| the part of NYT. Insane Trump screw ups like this get nowhere
| near the amount of articles.
| llm_nerd wrote:
| It's extraordinary to me when anyone claims that the "MSM"
| is left leaning. If it was, Trump's hubris, criminality,
| ignorance, senility, self-dealing grift and myopia would
| yield an unending series of "WTF?" type headlines. Instead
| they sane wash it.
|
| The guy is sending plane loads of who-knows-who to a
| country that they have no association with, based upon zero
| charges or due process, where they are imprisoned into
| basically slavery. This is so outrageously beyond the pale
| illegal, both in US and international law, that it is just
| mind-blowing, but it's just another day. Good god.
| Despotic, banana-republic autocrat behaviour is now
| just...accepted.
|
| I saw a complaint by a right wing figure noting the
| increased number of injunctions Trump has received versus
| prior presidents. Instead of rationally thinking
| "gosh...maybe he shouldn't contravene the constitution
| and/or break laws so frequently", they actually think it's
| unfair and needs to be balanced. It's a shocking collapse
| of norms or reason.
|
| It is incredibly dark times.
| tptacek wrote:
| Who cares? To a first approximation everybody who reads the
| NYT (really: any newspaper) opposes Trump. People obsess
| about NYT coverage decisions, but the NYT has approximately
| zero political influence in 2025. If education and
| engagement depolarize, that could change, but it hasn't
| yet.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| The NYT amplifying a story in a ridiculous manner can
| convince democrats to stay home because "ugh, they are
| all crooks."
| tptacek wrote:
| That's not what happened in the last election; in fact,
| the Democrats did marginally better with engaged voters.
| Anyways, I'm just saying, there's not much point to doing
| kremlinology about what the NYT is reporting.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| The "but her emails" jokes in this context are all about
| the 2016 election.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| IMO, political influence can be discussed in terms of
| directionality and substance, and both are relevant.
|
| Directionality is short term and simplistic, Does it
| change how someone will vote or poll.
|
| Substance explains _why_ they vote or poll, and is
| relevant because it has downstream consequences in an
| evolving world.
| otterley wrote:
| The top story on Fox News right now is "Trump allies move to
| prevent 'activist judges' from overstepping presidential
| authority." This story isn't even on the front page.
| vwcx wrote:
| To be fair, it broke as an exclusive to the Atlantic about
| 180 minutes ago. The NYT now has it "above the fold" on their
| front page. Unlike a story coming directly from a public
| source, it sometimes takes a bit longer to spin up re-
| reporting on another outlet's scoop like this.
| otterley wrote:
| Good point. It's now the top story on WSJ as well.
| bloopernova wrote:
| Use https://news.ycombinator.com/active as your starting point.
| It's not linked from the front page.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > In his text detailing aspects of the forthcoming attack on
| Houthi targets, Hegseth wrote to the group--which, at the time,
| included me--"We are currently clean on OPSEC."
|
| Simply incredible. This is wild.
| dartharva wrote:
| This is just unreal. Ridiculous!
| ahaferburg wrote:
| That is absolutely wild. How is this not on the front page?
| belter wrote:
| HN front page is curated manually.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I don't believe your statement is accurate.
|
| [Edit: I interpreted "curated manually" to mean that dang
| picks each story that is on the front page. tptacek
| interpreted it to mean that, since users upvote and comment
| on stories, that's "manual curation". I interpret that as
| being "automatic curation", that is, an algorithm picks the
| front page stories, even though it's based on users' upvotes
| and comments. I cannot prove which of these two forms belter
| meant. Naturally, I prefer to think that it was the one I
| read it as, but I can squint hard enough to see tptacek's
| version.]
| tptacek wrote:
| It is (it's a combination of manual and community inputs)
| but almost certainly the reason this isn't on the front
| page is that lots of people flag stories about the Trump
| administration. I didn't flag this one (it's too juicy, and
| has a Signal connection) but I flag most of the other ones.
| asdff wrote:
| Why flag any and not just see what the community engages
| with? You don't have to participate in threads about
| subjects you aren't interested in, you know. And the
| expectation that this is somehow taking time from the
| community who would otherwise be engaging in threads you
| are more interested in yourself, is a little, well, self
| centered to me.
| tptacek wrote:
| I'm going to keep flagging all of them, because these
| stories are all activating and attract tons of upvotes
| and comments, filling the front page with repetitive
| recapitulations of the same tired arguments. It's not
| what HN is for.
| asdff wrote:
| Is it not for discussing topics of interest to the
| community?
| tptacek wrote:
| It's for discussing _on-topic_ topics of interest to the
| community, where _on-topic_ specifically excludes "most
| stories about politics", which is a very easy to bar to
| clear when the stories you're flagging are literally
| duplicative of stories with hundreds or thousands of
| comments on them already.
| neverokay wrote:
| Because they are long-running discussions, it's not
| repetitive. When we allow Rust or JS threads to keep
| popping up, it's because we evolve with the topic over
| time and continuously discuss it.
|
| What the HN shadow mod team is doing is killing the
| possibility of a long-running, evolving discourse on
| important topics.
| belter wrote:
| In the front page number 8 is 19 points - 3 hours ago | 1
| comment
|
| number 30 is 38 points 16 hours ago | 0 comments
|
| number 7 is 13 points | 3 comments
|
| This one has 142 points and 35 comments in 2 hours. Is
| neither on the first or second page.
|
| What is the logic?
| Jtsummers wrote:
| > What is the logic?
|
| The logic is that people have flagged it, but not enough
| for it to be marked [flagged], which downranks it. dang,
| if notified or interested in it himself, could turn off
| flagging for this submission which would likely bring it
| back to the front page (given comment activity, age, and
| current score). You could email him and ask nicely.
|
| You've been on this site for 4 years with 57k karma so
| you must be very active here, I'm surprised you don't
| know this yet.
| _tk_ wrote:
| As far as I know, if submissions get flagged they get
| downranked. Not sure about the details.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| It's not currently flagged, though. (Or at least, it's not
| currently marked [flagged].)
| llm_nerd wrote:
| dang has detailed this before. After so many flags vs
| upvotes, a post is pushed to the bottom of the third page
| or top of four page of results. This is is before the
| [flagged] state is reached. You can often find highly
| upvoted but "politically contentious" submissions at
| position 90 or above.
| bloopernova wrote:
| Or use https://news.ycombinator.com/active
|
| It's not linked from the homepage though.
| 4ndrewl wrote:
| To what end? How is this newsworthy any more? It has the
| President's blessing - that's all you need now.
|
| If literally storming your government building, threating your
| representatives and injuring police officers isn't punishable
| any more what is?
| neverokay wrote:
| It does really feel like we are men watching our women and
| children accosted. We feel impotent as the public currently.
| timeon wrote:
| Omerta.
| lapcat wrote:
| > Waltz set some of the messages in the Signal group to disappear
| after one week, and some after four. That raises questions about
| whether the officials may have violated federal records law: Text
| messages about official acts are considered records that should
| be preserved.
|
| I suspect that this was the point of their using Signal, to avoid
| preservation of records.
| neverokay wrote:
| The DoD or Pentagon don't have their own messaging apps? Maybe
| our government doesn't spend enough on tech. To me this is the
| same as if this were happening on Zoom or Discord, since these
| are not exactly world war level apps.
|
| Finally, the echoes of Dr Strangelove are strong with this one.
| A veritable board room of talking heads that don't ever really
| talk about life or death, but just the material numbers of raw
| commerce or messaging (deterrence) .
| burkaman wrote:
| Of course they do, but you can't set official government apps
| to illegally delete messages after a week.
|
| Edit: Seems like they are supposed to use Microsoft Teams htt
| ps://dodcio.defense.gov/Portals/0/Documents/Library/Memo-....
| Also -
|
| > When mission needs or the effective conduct of DoD business
| cannot be adequately supported by Microsoft Teams Chat, SMS
| texting may be used in accordance with DoDI 8170.01. In such
| cases, a complete copy of the record must be forwarded to an
| official DoD electronic messaging account of the user within
| 20 days of the record's original creation or transmission in
| accordance with Section 2911 of Title 44 U.S.C, and Component
| processes. The complete copy of the record includes the
| content of the message and required metadata, and the record
| must be retrievable and usable in compliance with the
| applicable retention schedule approved by the Archivist of
| the United States. DoD Component heads shall ensure that DoD
| users are provided guidance on their Component's processes
| for forwarding complete copies of records originating in SMS
| texts.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| > not exactly world war level apps.
|
| And what is?
| neverokay wrote:
| A face to face meeting in a bunker. But seriously, we
| pondered the psychological damage of those who are drone
| operators. How is this different? There should be more
| ceremony when making decisions like this, not an afternoon
| group chat. Dress for it, look yourself in the face for it.
| Be present.
|
| I'll just say one thing about this administration. It is
| often true that when one thing is wrong with a man, then
| it's possible all things are wrong with the man. We keep
| adding to the list, but I'm suggesting the inductive proof
| here. All things may be wrong with these men, which is
| scary.
| maronato wrote:
| The obvious follow up is what else do they illegally delete?
|
| If they're doing it so blatantly to plan for attacks that will
| eventually be public, contain no conspiracies or illegal
| activity, and will be used to dunk on Biden, then what else are
| they automatically deleting?
|
| Plus, if China/Russia/Iran/NK weren't targeting US officials
| phones and Signal, now they certainly are.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| SO much for 'the most transparent administration in history',
| not that I bought into that claim in the first place. Seems
| like a violation of multiple public record-keeping laws.
| hypeatei wrote:
| You can already guess what consequences they're going to
| face: none.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Nevertheless, the Democrats should move to impeach. The
| fact that they probably won't be able to get a vote taken
| (never mind win one) is beside the point.
| ludicrousdispla wrote:
| transparent but also ephemeral
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Please FOIA the administration's process for meeting records
| requirements while using Signal. People need to call them out
| on this or nothing happens.
| bediger4000 wrote:
| One of my takeaways is that "national security secrets" really
| aren't that important. The Secretary of Defense was in on this.
| Whatever was in that chat just doesn't matter, except to manage
| the reporting on it.
|
| I call on Bart Gellman to dump the Snowden document repository
| he's got. Clearly nothing in it matters, if this was so casually
| compromised.
| alistairSH wrote:
| It only "didn't matter" because the journalist had the good
| sense to keep quiet until after the operation was complete. And
| continues to keep some of the conversation secret. Imagine if
| Hegseth had accidentally CC'ed somebody aligned with Iran?
| cactacea wrote:
| https://archive.ph/AP0H4
| amai wrote:
| Reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Taurus_leak
|
| ,,Among the topics the officials discussed in their conversation,
| conducted using standard commercial Cisco Webex video
| conferencing software, were the presence of UK and US military
| personnel in Ukraine and the potential use of Taurus missiles to
| blow up the Crimean Bridge."
| LWIRVoltage wrote:
| <tangent opening line of my comment> From people on Reddit:
| Something that blows my mind- but is fully true "Hell, I've been
| in fucking EVE Online alliances that had better opsec than this."
| "I'll raise you one: I've never been in any EVE alliance that
| didn't have better opsec than this."
|
| ..I noted Board Games(Secret Hitler, for example) require better
| opsec. So do card games- it's mindblowing to note this too...
|
| [Main comment by me - technical outlook] This is not a surprise
| at all- there were reports that the first Trump administration
| was using Signal to communicate, and that it was a a risk as
| messages can be totally wiped and not kept for records keeping.
|
| -From an infosec standpoint- this is more notable than I think
| people are giving it credit- the fact that the Vice
| President(Well, maybe not him, he notably admittted in interviews
| during the presidential campaign, that he'd been briefed by three
| letter agencies on Salt Typhoon tageting him, but that he was
| secure because he used Signal) - the director of national
| intelligence- and several others- use Signal.
|
| it's one thing for Congress, Sweden's Military, and apparently
| our own military branches to push Signal heavily for non-
| sensitive stuff-
|
| But when those around three letter agencies -and the groups that
| would be interested in finding compromises- are using it, that
| screams to me that it's considered not that easy to attack- which
| is a point towards Signal
|
| So then the final thing to secure are the endpoints- and of
| course the risk is a zero day exploit targeting someone. As for
| subtle push app updates by Signal themselves being a vector- i'd
| think the Open Source nature of the app prevent that - if the
| infrastructure for pushing updates is open source as well
| especially.
|
| Again though- if the White House is using Signal- they likely
| KNOW most of what their own Three Letter agencies can and can't
| do(to a point)- so when people in the know are using it- that is
| telling.
|
| A lot of it may be for the auto disappearing messages,
| admittedly- but that's notable. And yes, I'm aware Mark
| Zuckerberg has been known to move conversations off of WhatsApp,
| to Signal - again, maybe for the disappearing messages(and lack
| of a report function which would send part of a convo to FB/Meta
| to my understanding)- but possibly, for the security and lack of
| meta data being better from a attack surface standpoint
| bayarearefugee wrote:
| Even if we are generous and assume Signal's protocols and
| entire communication infrastructure are 100% safe and cannot be
| compromised, any one single person in the group chat using
| Signal on a compromised device invalidates all of that.
|
| The fact that Signal was used is less concerning to me
| personally than the fact that they had this group chat outside
| of the overall safety umbrella of fully end-to-end vetted
| systems.
|
| Though the use of Signal is still concerning in that any
| official system they would otherwise use would have (one would
| hope) made it far harder if not impossible to accidentally leak
| the conversation to a random third party.
| LWIRVoltage wrote:
| This is true absolutely
|
| One would hope indeed- I do wonder on that ......
|
| There's another observation though- Salt Typhoon compromised
| wiretap infrastructure - before Signal, there's no doub't
| some stuff like this occured over text messages- Because of
| everyone's efforts to go to Signal- even if it's for the
| message disappearing- with this, with military branches
| pushing it hard- with Sweden's Miltary pushing it, etc(for
| non sensitive stuff)- there's so much of that , that the
| attack surface overall is massively reduced. In short, if
| there's going to be stuff outside of vetted systems- running
| that sort of stuff Signal- likely still helps. (I'm reminded
| again, of the JD Vance interviews where he let slip that he'd
| been targeted ,and was informed about it by agencies- but
| that he was good because of his Signal usage. Now, I don't
| know what measures he takes to avoid zero day exploits and
| whatnot- the TLAs would inform him of that- but from what he
| was saying, it sounds like they were sure he wasn't
| compromised by that.)
|
| (I'm aware a serious targeted effort would be more intricate
| than Salt Typhoon/ Trying to use the country's own general
| Wire tapping capability to target the VP)
|
| Edit: Also, this reveals a bit about psyche- J.D.Vance
| somewhat ribbed the president- there is probably pressure TO
| use Signal, so a record of him criticizing the President
| can't be found out by the President or those more allied with
| the President who could then start retribution- I imagine
| dynamics like that, which are human behavior- -ultimately are
| what absolutely drive all of this.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| It's not _that_ secure. If someone has a desktop signal client
| it has been possible to just access attachments via the file
| system; they were stored with obfuscated names but no
| encryption. They may have fixed this since I tested it ~6
| months ago.
| tailspin2019 wrote:
| > As for subtle push app updates by Signal themselves being a
| vector- i'd think the Open Source nature of the app prevent
| that
|
| The lack of reproducible builds for Signal's apps has been a
| topic of discussion for quite some time:
|
| https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-iOS/issues/641
| originalvichy wrote:
| The nickname Stupid Watergate will never die
| alistairSH wrote:
| Even worse, Trump wasn't aware of this leak (or denies knowledge
| of it) until questioned at a press conference earlier today. And
| instead of promising an investigation, the best he can do is
| throw some weak insults at The Atlantic.
|
| BUTTERY MALES indeed.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Trump wasn't aware of this leak (or denies knowledge of it)
| until questioned at a press conference earlier today.
|
| Trump routinely denies knowledge of things he doesn't want to
| talk about, even things that he has previously demonstrated
| knowledge about. It's a standard deflection that he never gets
| called out on or significant pushback on the implications of
| his claimed lack of knowledge, so he keeps doing it.
| hello_computer wrote:
| Is this the same Jeff Goldberg who lied us into the Iraq War?
| Balgair wrote:
| What does this have to do with this story?
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Goldberg wrote an influential-at-the-time article:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Goldberg#Views_on_Iraq
|
| I feel it's a stretch to say 'he lied us into the Iraq war' as
| if everyone based their decisions on that. There's an very
| unfortunate tendency in political discussions to rely on
| fallacies of composition, where an instance of some phenomenon
| is taken as equivalent to a whole. Throwing that out with no
| further context or discussion looks like a genetic fallacy as
| well. The White House has already acknowledged the reported
| conversation appears to be authentic.
| hello_computer wrote:
| thank you for translating "yes" into slimeball-ese for us
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Stay mad.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| Thank you for taking the time to remind us that everything
| is black and white, and there are no shades or grey.
| ipython wrote:
| The person I was in 2002 is vastly different than who I am now
| (PS- I am not Jeff Goldberg). I would assume the same would
| apply to you as well.
| hello_computer wrote:
| the person that i was in 2002 did not--and would not--spin a
| story out of whole cloth into the national press--especially
| one that would contribute to the deaths of over 100k innocent
| people
| Balgair wrote:
| If anything, I'm a bit surprised that Jeff Goldberg burned this
| source.
|
| If anything, I'd suspect that he'd keep the channel open as long
| as he could.
|
| Or, he's got other channels that work better.
|
| All the same, I mean, wow. These guys are just morons here,
| there's really no other way around it. I'm trying to think of a
| charitable way to spin this and I've got nothing.
|
| Like, very clearly, these people are going to get service-members
| killed due to their idiocy
| anigbrowl wrote:
| My theory is that he had to balance the journalistic scoop of
| the century with the risk of being arrested for illegally
| accessing/storing classified information. If they had noticed
| before he published the story then he could have been vanned
| and the public told that he had infiltrated a secure channel,
| and who would be able to say otherwise? MAGA people would
| cheerfully call for his execution.
| nradov wrote:
| Under US federal law it is generally not a crime for a person
| without a security clearance to receive or store classified
| information. The legal problems come in when they solicit it
| or take some other action to obtain it.
| zeven7 wrote:
| Laws matter less than they used to. When the President
| regularly uses the term "retribution" to describe his mode
| of operation, I don't blame someone from taking a more
| careful approach in a case like this. It shouldn't be that
| way, for a journalist. But a lot of things shouldn't be the
| way they are today.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Would you trust the current DOJ to handle this fairly if it
| landed in your lap?
| mostafah wrote:
| My guess is that he was consulting their lawyers during this.
| IANAL but it might have been a crime if he did not leave the
| group as soon as he was sure it was real. He keeps mentioning
| that he was not certain this is real until the first attacks.
| After the first attack, he could not continue this argument.
| bayarearefugee wrote:
| He was probably worried about the legal ramifications of not
| doing so, though these days he may be more likely to get sent
| off to some El Salvadoran prison for writing the article and
| exposing their staggering incompetence than he would be for
| continuing to knowingly listen in on the chat.
| namaria wrote:
| Knowingly keeping sensitive US national security data on a
| personal phone would be a very bad idea.
| tptacek wrote:
| As soon as he realizes (or a reasonable person would realize)
| that the group chat is not a hoax, and that he is getting
| confidential military information over that channel, his
| continued membership in the channel demonstrates intent to
| receive the information, which makes anything he writes about
| it in the future legally problematic. It's complicated and it's
| not like just receiving classified information from a source is
| intrinsically criminal, but it'll be the entire fact pattern
| he'd be confronted with by prosecutors.
| overfeed wrote:
| The fourt cases related to Watergate established that
| receiving classified information is not illegal, and affirmed
| 1A rights. I'd argue it's a exactly the same as a journalist
| overhearing this motley crew discussing the war plan in the
| halls of the White House without being aware there's a
| journalist nearby. I _wouldn 't_ bank on the current supreme
| court to uphold precedence, or the current administration
| persecuting the journalist for "hacking" into a "secure"
| government chat group - which is what they'll allege without
| evidence. I suspect the journalist cares more about national
| security than the cowboys in the chat group, and is acutely
| aware that they are a target for hacking by nation-states,
| which would leak classified information.
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > I would bank in the current supreme court to uphold
| precedence
|
| Counting on SCOTUS to respect precedent at this point is
| either extremely optimistic or extremely naive.
| overfeed wrote:
| Oh, that was a typo. I do not trust the current supreme
| court to uphold precedence over naked partisanship.
| sharpshadow wrote:
| Sounds like he received the message purposefully and pretends
| it was an mistake?
|
| 2h is a lot but also not that much time, everything is prepared
| already it's more a countdown I would say. What would be a
| usual timeframe to inform the people you want to inform about
| an immediate event which is going to happen?
| Jtsummers wrote:
| > Sounds like he received the message purposefully and
| pretends it was an mistake?
|
| Why would he have been added to the group? For what purpose
| would the current National Security Advisor have to bring in
| an outsider to discussions that ended up involving almost
| certainly classified data?
|
| > 2h is a lot but not that much time
|
| He was added to the group two days (13 March) before the
| strikes (15 March), not two hours.
| voodooEntity wrote:
| I mean im not shocked by neither the fact this happend nor the
| content. it portraits the staff exactly as i would imagine them.
|
| Tho i still find it kinda amusing that this is the finally proofs
| that the average security invested joe has a better opsec than
| the highest ranking us gov officials.
| asdff wrote:
| 304 votes, 75 comments 3 hours after posting and this is already
| being thrown all the way back to 134 rank on the front page with
| some 2-3 day old posts. This is very clearly hacker news: a case
| of opsec slipup in easily the worst fashion coming straight from
| the SecDef (or one representing the SecDef). A shame it is
| probably getting flamed and downvoted over partisan reasons,
| although I know there are many conservatives here who probably
| don't enjoy these constant leopards eating face moments they've
| unleashed and am not surprised they'd be acting out and flagging
| embarrassing posts.
| hnburnsy wrote:
| >A shame it is probably getting flamed and downvoted over
| partisan reasons
|
| Is this the forum for this type of news?
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html...
| On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting.
| That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to
| reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that
| gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. Off-Topic:
| Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or
| celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new
| phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal
| pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-
| topic.
| lcc wrote:
| Like the parent said, a tech-related opsec failure at this
| level is absolutely something a 'good hacker' would find
| interesting.
| hnburnsy wrote:
| >tech-related opsec failure
|
| Not sure that 'fat fingering' on a mobile device rises to
| the level of tech-related opsec. The choice to use a non-
| government approved device certainly is news, but not
| necessarily Hacker News. Plenty of better places to debate
| it.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Is that a SCIF in your pocket or are you just displeased to see
| me
| iteratethis wrote:
| This is bad new for entire genres of books, TV shows and movies
| that are based on the supreme competence, sophistication and
| wealth of the Pentagon, NSA and CIA.
|
| Turns out US military strategy is the same as me and my mates
| setting up a bar date.
|
| It's a disturbing leak in itself but i take issue with the
| journalist obsessing over the tool of choice whilst ignoring the
| actual strategizing.
|
| The casual way in which a mass murder is planned. The emphasis on
| "messaging" and how to spin this on Biden and Europe. The
| teenage-like emojis to celebrate acts of war.
|
| This administration looks bad from the outside but through this
| leak we can see that their shocking press moments are still the
| polished and spun versions of a reality that is far more sick.
| telez wrote:
| seems like a UI design failure
| belter wrote:
| https://archive.ph/xpZHl
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