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Maybe this year nobody in the world has done such catastrophic tech flub as the US defense minister Pete Hegseth.
The saga started as the editor -in -chief of the Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, reported that he was incorrectly added On a non-authorized signal group chat from the American security consultant Michael Waltz, in which numerous high-ranking government officials discussed detailed plans for the attack on the Houthis in Yemen, including times and places where such attacks would take place.
To be fair, we all made some embarrassing technical mistakes. For most people, however, this means accidentally sharing the Instagram post of an ex from five years ago to Mögen-without strictly secret state military plans for a commercial messaging app with non-authorized recipients.
This abuse of massively sensitive information was already problematic enough, but this week the New York Times reported that Hegseth shared information about the attacks on Yemen in another signal chat, to which his lawyer, his wife and brother, who had no reason to get such sensitive information; Hegseth’s wife doesn’t even work for the Pentagon.
These security errors are particularly outrageous – how do you manage to accidentally close a journalist about your military plans? However, this is anything but the first time that contemporary technology has ended up global governments in difficult situations – and we don’t just talk about Watergate.
Stationed in the military? Do not use Strava
Fitness tracking/social media app Strava Can be a nightmare for privacy, also for an average athlete. The app enables people to share their practice protocols – often runs, hikes or cycling – on a public report with their friends who can like and comment on their morning jogging in the park.
However, strava accounts are public by default. Strava is by default to hide the first and last 200 meters of a run to hide where someone lives, because people are probably starting and ending near their house.
For everyone on the Internet, it is still risky to transmit a radius of 200 miles where they live, but it is even more dangerous if they have a Member of the military on a secret basefor example.
In 2018, Strava presented a global heat card and showed where public users have logged activities in the world. This does not matter whether you look at a map of New York City, but in places such as Afghanistan and Iraq, only a few people use Strawa besides foreigners, so that you can assume that hotspots of activity can occur on or around military bases.
In order to make things worse, users were able to examine certain ongoing routes on Strava to see the public profiles of the users who have registered activities there. It would therefore be possible that a bad actor will find a list of US soldiers, for example, which are stationed on a certain basis in Iraq.
Joe bidens not so secret Venmo
Venmo Is a peer-to-peer payment app, but for some reason it is in default to publicly share your transactions. By simply opening my Venmo app – which my Facebook friends synchronized to my account at some point over 10 years ago – I can see that two girls with whom I went to dinner last night. Good for you.
The information that we share over Venmo can be quite boring and benign, but committed fans of reality shows such as “Love is blind” will search for the accounts of the participants to predict who will go out of the show (if the couple sends themselves to each other, they will probably live together).
So if you can find reality stars on Venmo, why not look for the president?
In 2021, some Buzzfeed news reporters decided to search for Joe Bidens Venmo. They found his account within 10 minutes.
From bidens account, the reporters were able to easily find other members of the Biden family and their administration and reduce their wider social circles. Even if a user creates his account on Venmo privately, his friendlist remains public. When Buzzfeed News contacted the White House, Bidens profile was wiped off cleanly, but the White House did not deliver a comment.
So, yes, reporter actually did it Find the Venmo accounts by Pete Hegseth, Mike Waltz and other government officials. Some things never change.
You cannot protect encrypted messages from cameras
You can take all the precautionary measures you want to protect your messages, but nothing can save you from the impending possibility of human error.
Carles Puigdemont, the former President of Catalonia, led a movement in 2017 to gain independence from Spain and become a separate country. But the Spanish government blocked this attempt and displaced Puigdemont from the lead. When the Spanish government issued an arrest warrant against Puigdemont and its allies, they fled to Belgium.
A few months later, the Spanish media took part in an event in Belgium where Puigdemont was expected – he sent a video instead, but when the clip played, a Spanish broadcaster noticed that a former Catalan Minister of Health, Toni Comín, was SMS fully visible with its screen.
The cameraman zoomed on Comín’s phone and revealed texts from Puigdemont, where he had resigned to defeat his attempts to bring about Catalan independence.
Puigdemont later tweeted That he expressed himself in a moment of doubt, but he did not intend to withdraw.
Regardless of the steps you take to encrypt your private messages, you may want to look over your shoulder before you read confidential information in public-especially if you write an SMS with a self-examined former president.
