President Donald Trump stated that his administration has learnt from Signalgate. "I think we learnt: Maybe don't use Signal, okay?" Trump spoke about the messaging app in an interview with The Atlantic published Monday.
"If you want to know the truth. I would frankly tell these people not to use Signal, although it's been used by a lot of people," US president added. "But, whatever it is, whoever has it, whoever owns it, I wouldn't want to use it.”
Last month, The Atlantic's editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, revealed that he had been inadvertently included in a Signal group discussion by White House national security adviser Mike Waltz. Goldberg stated that the group chat was called "Houthi PC small group" and included other officials such as Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. "PC" stood for "principals committee."
"In the chat, Waltz and the other Trump officials were talking about specifics of a planned U.S. strike on Houthi rebels," Goldberg claimed. The authenticity of the group discussion was later verified by the National Security Council to Business Insider. At first, Trump denied knowing about the security failure. After the incident, he defended Waltz and Hegseth, stating that he would not fire them.
Signal, which was first launched in 2014, is a non-profit, open-source encrypted messaging application. Last month, Signal stated in an X post that misinformation was "flying around that might drive people away from Signal and private communications.”
"One piece of misinformation we need to address is the claim that there are 'vulnerabilities' in Signal," it stated on March 25, citing an NPR report that quoted a Pentagon memo it received, alerting staff of a possible vulnerability in the messaging app.
“The memo used the term 'vulnerability' in relation to Signal — but it had nothing to do with Signal's core tech. It was warning against phishing scams targeting Signal users,” Signal wrote in its post.