TeleMessage, used by Trump officials, can access plaintext chat logs

https://micahflee.com/despite-misleading-marketing-israeli-company-telemessage-used-by-trump-officials-can-access-plaintext-chat-logs/

by micahflee • 1 year ago

262 75 1 year ago

micahflee.com

dang• 1 year ago

Recent and related:

Technical analysis of the Signal clone used by Trump officials - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43875476 - May 2025 (313 comments)

ChrisArchitect• 1 year ago

Mike Waltz Accidentally Reveals App Govt Uses to Archive Signal Messages

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43865103

proactivesvcs2• 1 year ago

I'd find it useful if I could access my Signal chat logs in plaintext. The software offers no facility to do this on any platform, and on Desktop the programs that have allowed me to take proper backups are (by necessity) a moving target because of changes to the database, so I am constantly having to get around to updating them and occasionally even that's a pain.

XorNot• 1 year ago

It'd also be useful if backups on Android actually streamed somewhere off the phone so they could be meaningfully appended to, kept. Or handled per channel (i.e. my baby pictures channel with family).

proactivesvcs2• 1 year ago

...and if the restore process wasn't so fragile. The only time I needed to backup and restore it just crashed part-way through, so the backup process wasn't even doing any validation.

nicce• 1 year ago

That would hit the Google One revenue if people would use alternatives…

But also, it must have something to do with law enforcement. On the other hand, Google may say that forensic investigation of phone is harder (if no jailbreak), but on the otherhand it is easier to hand over the data behind the scenes from the remote cloud.

Backups are not E2EE by default (user can enable, so they have an argument), so in most cases law enforcement can access WhatsApp messages, SMS messages and anything else without a problem. Many people don’t think about this, and defaults matter.

walterbell• 1 year ago

PhotoSync can incrementally backup iOS/Android photos to self-hosted or cloud storage targets, with optional encryption, https://www.photosync-app.com/support/encryption

JumpCrisscross3• 1 year ago

I'd find it useful if I could access my Signal chat logs in plaintext

I'd probably also find it useful if I could access your Signal chat logs in plaintext. That's the problem.

jazzyjackson• 1 year ago

If someone has enough control of the app to utilize its export-to-plaintext button you were SOL anyway, there are plenty of use cases for “export a password protected encrypted blob of chat history so I don’t lose everything every time I switch devices”

nicbou• 1 year ago

Neither do other chat apps.

It's usually impossible to regularly export your chats to a machine you own in a format you can use. Same with photo apps.

theyknowitsxmas• 1 year ago

Anyone can change the client name and build it to mislead baddies when photographed in public.

woah• 1 year ago

This is simply a 4d chess move by a team of geniuses

freen3• 1 year ago

Please oh please I hope my team isn’t as catastrophically dumb as it appears they are.

csours• 1 year ago

Oh dear, this seems to be a bit of a footgun.

tptacek7• 1 year ago

Isn't that the point?

Aurornis2• 1 year ago

No, the point is for the government to have access the plaintext after it is securely delivered to an approved archive location, not TeleMessage having access on AWS-hosted servers exposed to the public internet.

TeleMessage pitched their service as using end-to-end encryption of the message into the corporate archive.

End-to-End encryption from the mobile phone through to the corporate archive

Apparently the plaintext messages were going to a TeleMessage server on AWS (not an approved government archive location) that was publicly accessible. Naturally it was hacked.

fnordpiglet3• 1 year ago

I doubt that’s the point either. The government should have cipher text they are able to decrypt in an approved archive location with rigorously managed key material and a careful cryptographically variable chain of custody from its inception. Plain text should never factor into this.

iAMkenough• 1 year ago

Why would they need to hire a foreign Israeli firm for that?

Through this procurement decision, the government has displayed gross incompetence.

hedora2• 1 year ago

Presumably, in the spectrum of secure network protocols, something exists between "delete the message before it can leave this machine" and "send this message to a cloud provider and have them email it in plain text to another cloud provider".

pvg2• 1 year ago

If you're sending plaintext out of an ostensible e2ee system, it's not an e2ee system. You have an 'end' that's not, you know, end-to-end.

deepsun2• 1 year ago

And Email protocol backbone itself was not designed to be secure.

It's worse than internet packets over HTTPS -- the secure connection is established between client and server, so man-in-the-middle cannot decrypt it. In email, connections are only secure between relays, so any relay can decrypt read your email. You cannot guarantee what relays are used. Similar to SMS.

tptacek7• 1 year ago

It's not a secure messaging system. It's explicitly the opposite.

ziddoap• 1 year ago

It's supposed to be available in plaintext to the end customer (government), at their secured archive, but not available in plaintext to TeleMessage.

TeleMessage lies about this in their marketing material, claiming that TM SGNL supports "End-to-End encryption from the mobile phone through to the corporate archive."

Surely someone of your expertise and renown recognizes this difference.

JumpCrisscross3• 1 year ago

Isn't that the point?

The point is making SecDef's communications, including scramble orders, available to whoever can find a TeleMessage employee who will cave to a bribe or blackmail?

Dylan168073• 1 year ago

The point is for the program TeleMessage to have access.

On top of that the company TeleMessage has access, and that is bad.

fnordpiglet3• 1 year ago

These are the guys trying to jail Krebs for being honest. They earned the “experts” they deserve.

actionfromafar• 1 year ago

And still there is ample support for the administration, also here. I am curious how much of it is through cognitive dissonance and how much not thinking too hard about the stuff a particular supporter don't like, and how much of it is with eyes open, embracing the crazy and the incompetence for some "higher goal" whatever that may be.

(It also probably is very different, all from "own the libs" through "escalate the second coming of Christ" or any combination thereof.)

mtlynch• 1 year ago

For anyone else confused, "Krebs" in this context refers to Chris Krebs[0, 1], former Director of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

Chris Krebs is unrelated to Brian Krebs of Krebs on Security.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Krebs

[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/04/fact-sheet-pr...

khaki543• 1 year ago

You DO realize that TeleMessage was put in place and procured before Trump took office right?

yapyap• 1 year ago

genius

aeontech• 1 year ago

Why bother hacking your phone and installing a keylogger when we can convince your IT department to buy it and install it for your entire team. Have to say, this is pretty epic.

khaki543• 1 year ago

This may be a factual but not truthful article. This was initially framed to appear like the Trump Administration was doing something out of the ordinary by using Signal. There were also accusations that they were using Signal's disappearing message feature to conceal their activities from the authorities, and that they were breaking the Presidential Records Act, etc. Now it's revealed that they are using a version that actually archives all the messages to be compliant with the law and individual Agency policies. The new theory is that the Trump Administration is doing something especially nefarious by archiving the messages and/or they are doing it insecurely and they are controlled by Israel.

First and foremost, the Signal infrastructure was setup in most cases by the previous administration! Even a cursory search of USA Spending reveals millions were spent on telemessage before Trump was elected. https://www.usaspending.gov/search?hash=d900bda0a5eccae47ba7... I'm not a journalist, but look for yourself.

As for accusations that what the Biden Administration procured and configured is insecure: it's not. TeleMessage has a configuration approved for CUI that integrates with GCC-high (IL4) and O365 DoD (IL5). Thus they are fine to collect and archive unclassified CUI, ITAR, NSS data, command and control/ISR, tactical data, etc.

"TeleMessage can go a long way in enabling regulatory compliance by working with Microsoft to capture, archive, and maintain text messages, voice calls, and other files, leading to stress-free adherence to all the security controls required as per FedRAMP. Crucially, the mobile archiver supports Microsoft 365 Government Community Cloud, Government Community Cloud High, and Department of Defense solutions across all devices, carriers, and instant messengers.

Federal agencies and contractors can issue their own phones to personnel or have their employees use their own BYOD devices because TeleMessage can still securely retain all the communication within its servers or have it forwarded to a data storage vendor of choice. There is also the option of cross-carrier and international mobile text and calls archiving." -- https://web.archive.org/web/20250502041804/https://www.telem...

So far they're good in theory. They decrypted messages are transmitted in at least 1 encrypted wrapper (TLS) to mobile archiver, then ultimately landing in the DoD Azure cloud environment. The question is whether the whole chain after the phone is in the DoD environment, or if it routes through Telemessage's systems.

If you look at the hack (https://archive.ph/yyyLg), initially it leads you to believe that the message archiver doesn't live in the DoD environment and instead lives in AWS commercial or some lesser rated cloud. I think this is only true some of the time. Note in the hack, they only have messages from CPB. They don't appear to have any .mil, cia.gov, eop.gov, etc. CBP doesn't have access to the IL5 DoD Tenant in the first place and their archiver is likely hosted in AWS Commercial or AWS East/West (IL2).

Frankly, I don't think that any of the higher sensitivity organizations will be routing through a TeleMessage controlled server, or any server lower than IL4. They host that piece on their own infrastructure.

benlivengood• 1 year ago

Without more technical details about telemessage it isn't clear how archive servers are actually selected by the app, where they are hosted, or how they are secured.

For example, while it's possible that DoD phones would only connect to Signal via proxies from within a VPN to a private network, direct Internet connectivity could lead to a potential leak of archived messages to any Internet-connected telemessage server if the app is misconfigured or the wrong app installed.

Given the debug logs shown by the attacker it sounds like the archive server has vulnerabilities exploitable over any connected network which wouldn't protect self-hosted version in govcloud from exploitation from within those networks.

khaki543• 1 year ago

Reading through the guide, organizations have to compile their own apk/ipa and deploy via MDM. I'd suspect that "archive server" variable is set at build time. Maybe not and dozens of agencies ATO'd a setup where the data was running in the clear to a vendor, and to a low security cloud environment. I just don't see that happening at the DoD level.

ceejayoz• 1 year ago

First and foremost, the Signal infrastructure was setup in most cases by the previous administration!

That's likely also true for the phones on their desks.

You're still not allowed to call me up and disclose in advance the battle plans for an attack on Yemen on your phone, though.

mmooss• 1 year ago

So far, no especially substantive analysis in this HN thread. What can anyone say at this point?

A large portion of HN's commenters wouldn't make this mistake in a quickly written offhand comment.

dogman1444• 1 year ago

It’s probably against the rules to self-link old comments. And it’s hard to be remotely proud about having a good take on this news as it unfolded.

However, when this first broke, select HN users were claiming this was OPSEC 4D chess and not deeply irresponsible cybersec practices.

That was a terrible take then, and it’s a terrible take now.

Clear as day when this started there was a nasty vendor supply chain risk lurking, and if it was 4D cybersec chess it was done by some absolute muppets.

Bad setups get exploited in natsec.

A bad setup exploited.

Sounds like a brutal US natsec leak is brewing.

metadat• 1 year ago

It’s probably against the rules to self-link old comments

It's not against the rules to link past comments - in fact it's preferred to repeating the same or similar content across stories.

At the same time, does 'look, I had the right take once in the past' make for interesting conversation? I'm keen to see it unfold!

Bilal_io• 1 year ago

I think it's good to compare and contrast the items you got right and wrong in the take and discuss why it did or did not play out that way.

dogman1444• 1 year ago

No, I rarely think self-referential comments are useful, let alone interesting.

I do think it’s useful however to claim information space on a serious topic before, interestingly, various apologists show up as is happening ITT now.

whatshisface2• 1 year ago

Brewing? This is it. All of these messages have been leaking; that's what the article is about.

dogman1444• 1 year ago

Have you found info on the chat texts?

Referring to “a leak” as in these chats go public in some form vs into a RU SCIF somewhere, and that there’s some verification of what the clear text chats were/who’s in it.

I am speculating it’ll be the latter scenario, with periodic strategic leaks.

mersorion• 1 year ago

Stories like this are why we started the gospl.chat project I've been part of. Most so called “secure” systems sabotage themselves not by accident, but because of compromises. There's always an attempt to “secure the system” for the system which often results in architectures that fail the people they're supposed to protect. Industry headliners often focus on encryption protocols, but E2EE alone doesn’t guarantee safety. If a user or business finds themselves in a life-threatening situation most messaging platforms will do nothing to protect them and may even become part of the threat. We approached gospl.chat from the opposite direction - modeled real world threats and built a communication system that minimizes the risk of harm, even in worst-case scenarios. Security isn’t just about math. It’s about context. It’s about the environment where an app is used and how it behaves when things go wrong. Our goal isn’t to win a crypto audit. It’s to make sure no one loses their freedom, safety, or life because of a message.

TeleMessage, used by Trump officials, can access plaintext chat logs

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