Signal itself is quite secure. Since the 90s it has been basically impossible to attack properly-applied encryption. And signal is end-to-end encrypted so there are no clear-text copies on a server to attack. If I had a military, and all my people were diligent and trained correctly in the use of secure messaging, I would have no issue with coordinating their movements over Signal.
The only really effective attacks are social attacks – sneak into the chat room by pretending to be someone else. Or just be accidentally added to the group. Or xkcd538ing someone.
The encryption on Signal messages is really good - state of the art - meaning that without some knowledge of the encryption key used for any given exchange, an evesdropper on the communication can’t know what is being said in the message.
But Signal messages are stored on a regular old cellphone, which is vulnerable to being hacked by an adversary and the data on it being exfiltrated, including the encryption key and the messages. So the vulnerability in Signal is not in the communications stream, it’s in the endpoints (the phones).
A security researcher once compared HTTPS encryption (what is used to talk to a web server, including this one) to using heavily armored trucks to “transfer rolls of coins and checks written in crayon by people on park benches to merchants doing business in cardboard boxes from beneath highway bridges.”
In other words, the vulnerability is not in the transmission, it’s in the endpoints.
Also, the people involved are usually the weakest bits of security. Social engineering is a real security concern.
Beyond the endpoints, if the people using the phones are complete idiots about information security (and there’s plenty of evidence this is the case here), there’s no amount of technology that can prevent a data breach.
There are good reasons why communications procedures and secure devices exist. And this group of assclowns demonstrate those reasons every day.
And it doesn’t really matter how secure Signal is. Or even the encryption on a cell phone. To take classified material–in this case, on a secured computer and network, but the same is true for physical documents–and to transfer them to a system not cleared to handle classified information is a violation. There are ways to do so. For example, I know of the acceptability of burning a highly encrypted document to CD and transferring via mail. But even that will have been written and viewed on a secured system at both ends, probably in a SCIF. But to do what he did, however the specifics, is an obvious violation. The kind of thing that would probably get any normal person holding a clearance at best fired and unable to ever hold a clearance again and at worst spending a good amount of time in prison.
Purposely sharing classified data, like he did with his wife and lawyer (rather than accidentally, with the original leak) already has someone rotting away in prison.
Believe me, the last ten years have been very trying to watch a bunch of politicians (including Clinton, Biden, and of course Trump) and appointees get away with doing exactly the sorts of things I get stuck in refresher trainings about every year.
And telling your wife, lawyer, brother, and probably random guy on the bus just where you leave the key to the safe at the office where you are employed.
Why was the Secretary of Defense at the Easter egg roll? I can understand why Trump was there … it’s his house. And Melania, of course, has to put in her annual appearance as specified in her contract. But the SecDef???
I would call it a very high probability. Just check what Israel can do with its Pegasus™ software, and imagine how far behind (/s) other state actors may be. Say, China or Russia or Turkey or Mexico or even Venezuela.
And the stuff reported and pubic knowledge is some years old, reality is probably miles ahead.
The danger is partly that consumer phones can certainly be hacked by state actors, and also that with consumer-style software, it’s easy to add the wrong “Jeff” to your chat. Or to intentionally pass info along to people like your wife.
Signal messages are encrypted before they leave your phone. But they are unencrypted on your screen as you type them. And any responses you get are also unencrypted on your phone too be viewable on your screen. So anyone with control of the phone has access to them.
And don’t forget that it’s a violation of federal record retention laws to have that stuff self-destruct.
I don’t think you even need to get that fancy. One inherent flaw in any encryption scheme is that, at some point, the message must be displayed in a format that a human being can understand.
So, if you can access their phone, something that just screenshots every so many milliseconds, or a keylogger, or the like, gets you the info just fine, as it’s being displayed. Have it send the info to your server at some odd hour of the night, and they’re none the wiser.
Because in an Empire, close access to the Emperor determines how much power you have.
As incompetent as this guy is, he knows the only reason he has this job, the most powerful job he could ever hope to have, is because Trump likes him. So he’ll take every chance he can get to be in Trump’s presence, and praise Trump where Trump can see it. There’s no way he takes any avoidable risk of someone bad-mouthing him to Trump when he’s not around.
Also, he took the time to seek out reporters to talk about how great Trump was at the event. He didn’t have any interest in the actual event or holiday or the kids there or anything. There were cameras and it gave him a chance to suck up in a way his boss would see.
Or even just a camera positioned behind the person as they are reading the message. If the users have predictable habits its not that hard to set up, especially with how small cameras have gotten.
Also important to consider: as poor as Hegseth’s security practices are, how good do you think his wife’s are, or his brother’s, or any of the other random people he has added to chats.