White House investigating how Trump's chief of staff's phone was hacked
The White House is investigating after one or more people reportedly accessed the contacts from the personal phone of White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, and used the information to contact other top officials and impersonate her.
Wiles reportedly told people that her phone was hacked. The Wall Street Journal first reported the hack of Wiles' phone. CBS News also confirmed the reporting.
The hacker or hackers are said to have accessed Wiles' phone contacts, including the phone numbers of other top U.S. officials and influential individuals. The WSJ reports that those who received phone calls impersonating Wiles used AI to impersonate her voice and sent text messages from a number not associated with Wiles.
White House spokesperson Anna Kelly would not say, when asked by TechCrunch, if authorities had determined if a cloud account associated with Wiles' personal device was compromised, or if Wiles' phone was targeted by a more advanced cyberattack, such as one that involves the use of government-grade spyware.
In response, the White House said it 'takes the cybersecurity of all staff very seriously, and this matter continues to be investigated.'
This is the second time Wiles has been targeted by hackers. In 2024, The Washington Post reported that Iranian hackers had attempted to compromise Wiles' personal email account. The Journal said Friday, citing sources, the hackers were in fact successful in breaking into her email and obtained a dossier on Vice President JD Vance, then Trump's running mate.
This is the latest cybersecurity incident to beset the Trump administration in the months since taking office.
In March, former White House top national security adviser Michael Waltz mistakenly added a journalist to a Signal group of top White House officials, including Vance and Wiles, which included discussions of a planned military air-strike in Yemen.
Reports later revealed that the government officials were using a Signal clone app called TeleMessage, which was designed to keep a copy of messages for government archiving. TeleMessage was subsequently hacked on at least two occasions, revealing the contents of its users' private messages.
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