Summary:
US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is under scrutiny after reports surfaced that he might have opened an account with the Russian email service mail.ru.
This comes as a new twist as the Signal chat scandal involving senior Trump administration officials continues to unfold.
Following reports that top advisers to US President Donald Trump used a commercial communication app to discuss a military strike on Yemen and included a journalist in the chat by mistake, reporters from the German magazine Der Spiegel questioned how easily accessible the personal data of key US officials might be.
Through an editorial investigation, they discovered that mobile phone numbers, email addresses, and even passwords belonging to high-ranking US officials had been found online.
Among those exposed were Hegseth, National Security Adviser Michael Waltz and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, putting the security practices of Trump’s top security officials into question.
Journalists used public databases – including those pertaining to data breaches – to uncover the information. The leaked contacts were linked to various online platforms, including Instagram, LinkedIn, Dropbox, WhatsApp and Signal.
For Hegseth’s data, Der Spiegel reporters simply contacted a commercial provider of contact information primarily used by companies for sales, marketing and recruitment purposes.
The reporters submitted a link to his LinkedIn profile and received Hegseth’s Gmail address, phone number, and other details in return. The same technique was used to obtain Waltz’s information, which was found alongside passwords in open databases connected to Microsoft Teams, LinkedIn, and WhatsApp.
Gabbard, meanwhile, appeared to take more precautions, but journalists still located her email addresses on WikiLeaks and Reddit.
Hegseth’s alleged Russian email address
After the investigation, Finnish disinformation researcher Pekka Kallioniemi published a screenshot from an alleged database compiling past data breaches that purportedly showed an email address owned by Hegseth under the mail.ru domain.
He questioned on social media why the Pentagon chief would have a Russian email account, though he did not confirm whether it was genuine or fabricated.
