Personal contacts of Waltz, Hegseth, and Director of US National Intelligence leak online – Spiegel

To gather this information, the journalists used commercial search engines as well as data from clients that had been publicly leaked. As a result, they were able to identify mobile phone numbers, email addresses, and even some passwords of the US officials.

For Hegseth’s information, journalists used a commercial contact information provider, typically used by companies for sales, marketing, and recruiting. By providing a link to Hegseth’s LinkedIn profile, they received his Gmail address, mobile number, and other details.

The journalists found that the email address was active just a few days ago, but the name and password for this account appeared in over 20 publicly available data breaches.

Additionally, Hegseth’s phone number was linked to a WhatsApp account that was recently deleted. The profile picture showed the Defense Secretary without a shirt, wearing a baseball cap, surrounded by his children.

Similarly, they found Mike Waltz’s phone number, email address, and his passwords for popular services.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard had apparently blocked her information in commercial contact search systems that contained Hegseth’s and Waltz’s data, but her email address could be found on WikiLeaks and Reddit.

The German publication also discovered that the private and publicly available phone numbers of Gabbard and Waltz were linked to their Signal accounts.