Comment by simonh
8 months ago
Steve Witkoff was on the chat while he was in Russia.
There’s a vulnerability in Signal where you can set up linked devices that replicate your signal messages. You can do this by just scanning a QRcode. This is known to be used by Russian hackers.
What are the chances the Russians duped Witkoff into scanning a QR code while he was in Moscow?
> What are the chances the Russians duped Witkoff into scanning a QR code while he was in Moscow?
What are the chances this admin had him do it ON PURPOSE?
And why would they when they can pop Starlink and get a far bigger prize? https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/17/us/politics/elon-musk-sta...
Why must a Signal attack take place only in Russia? If Russia intelligence operations can operate freely in the US, they can attack US Officials in the US as well.
Good point. I was just thinking Witkoff must be dealing with Russian functionaries all the time in Moscow so they have near constant direct access. There’s nothing to stop them duping one of them in the US though, and it doesn’t seem like duping these guys would be a stretch.
Honestly, the Russians probably already have done so. It's just a matter of who's phone in that group has been compromised.
In a previous world, some three letter agency (FBI maybe?) would seize the phones in the chat to investigate the leak.
Man in the middle attacks require access to the mobile or networking infrastructure (so not necessary, but much more likely and easy)
> There’s a vulnerability in Signal where you can set up linked devices that replicate your signal messages.
You mean the desktop linking feature? If that's considered a vulnerability, then so is being able to chat with someone after getting their public key unverified from an overseas server, the primary mode in which everyone uses it (including the people in this chat, evidently, since no out-of-band key exchange was performed)...
Not to mention the "vulnerability" where you copy the phone's storage and get the key material onto another device to do with what you will, which may be harder or easier depending on the hardware but I'd trust any sufficiently funded security agency to be able to do this for common devices
If you're part of the US government, with access to the most sensitive information which will put people's lives at risk if compromised, then yes this is a vulnerability because "russian GRU agent nicks your phone and scans your signal QR code" is a real threat.
If you're part of the US government, you're not supposed to use signal to discuss this kind of stuff.
Bringing in a phone with decryption keys for this conversation is a risk, then, not just Signal's featureset...
I agree it could be hardening to allow users/organizations to disable this feature, and also other features such as automatic media decoding and other mechanisms that are trade-offs between security and usability, but simply does not meet the definition of a vulnerability (nobody will assign this a CVE number to track the bug and "resolve" it)
Totally! Probably for a restaurant menu or something. . . It also seems likely that they added Jeffrey Goldberg, (the Atlantic's editor-in-chief) to the chat as the outlet, so the whole thing would become public. . . .
How about a restaurant that doesn't have menus and requires patrons to scan a QR code?
Acrylic table menus have inserts which can be easily replaced.
You guys are forgetting that you have to scan the QR code from Signal's "link new device" menu, and then approve the new device, which is a somewhat uncommon thing for a restaurant menu to ask you to do.
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What are the chances Trump portrait[1] has a passive microphone? [2]
[1] "Putin gave Trump portrait to envoy, Kremlin confirms" - https://thehill.com/policy/international/5212691-putin-trump...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device)
Right. So the problem is not that everyone in the chat was using an unsanctioned app to exchange classified information, but these insidious Ruskies who tricked Witkoff and hacked his personal Signal account.
That's the White House line, apparently they did nothing wrong. It's that Journalists's fault. It can't be the Russians though, they're trusted allies now.