America's biggest cyber threat is inside the government
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Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios
When government officials "move fast, break things," they risk unintentionally breaking systems they didn't realize were valuable to begin with — like their secure wartime communications protocols.
The big picture: America's biggest cyber threat is no longer Chinese and Russian spies lurking in government systems. It's high-ranking officials and government employees who accidentally leak or access classified information.
Case in point: Jeffrey Goldberg's jaw-dropping story in The Atlantic titled, "The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans."
- For days, senior officials including Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, discussed an attack on Yemen's Houthi rebels in a Signal group chat — that accidentally included The Atlantic's top editor.
- A White House spokesperson confirmed to Goldberg that the Signal chat was real.
Zoom out: Typically, communications about military operations follow a more traditional — albeit clunky — process.
- Officials with the appropriate security clearances enter a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF), like the White House Situation Room, which is designed to block out eavesdropping and surveillance attempts.
- Even when officials are on the road, they enter a mobile SCIF that takes time to set up to get updates about an ongoing mission.
Zoom in: A Cabinet-level Signal chat is much more efficient. But while the app is end-to-end encrypted, it's much less secure.
- In fact, hijacking a Signal account isn't that difficult if an account isn't properly secured.
Between the lines: Trump himself has often prioritized convenience over security, including in his use of a personal cell phone to make calls in his first term. He was also indicted for his handling of classified documents.
- And moves by Trump officials to quickly overhaul "inefficiencies" in government systems have spawned urgent warnings from security officials around potential insider threats.
- Elon Musk's tech team is filled with young men who don't have experience navigating sensitive government databases.
- At least one of them has been tied to a cybercriminal gang and fired from a cybersecurity internship for leaking company secrets.
What we're watching: Many of the "inefficiencies" officials are fighting against exist to protect the government's most sensitive information.
- Hackers actively seek out login credentials for government employees with administrator privileges in hopes of accessing state secrets.
- Untrained government employees could inadvertently share information they didn't know was sensitive.
- And if officials continue to share war plans on Signal, they may be exposing them to prying eyes — even without accidentally including a journalist.
