Lately, the Trump administration has been having some trouble with security (actually, the Trump administration has been having trouble with literally everything, but security is the focus for this story). Most of the issues have been centered around private email servers, the use of which seemed like an inexcusable offense to Trumpers last year, but the latest security issue has the potential to be a bit more disastrous. According to Politico, White House chief of staff John Kelly recently gave his personal cellphone to the White House tech support team, complaining that certain features weren’t working properly, and after they looked at it for several days, they determined that it has been “compromised.”
As far as anyone can tell, hackers could’ve had access to Kelly’s phone for months, possibly as far back as December, and it’s “unclear what data might have been accessed.” Kelly supposedly hadn’t been using the phone very much since joining Trump’s team, but now White House officials are looking into his travel schedule since January to try and determine when his phone could’ve been breached. Either way, he has surrendered the phone and now has a new one, but the White House won’t say what they’ve done with the old phone.
According to an expert that Politico contacted, the “worst-case scenario” here is that someone was able to gain full access to Kelly’s phone, which would’ve allowed them to control its microphone or camera and also look at any information that might have been stored on it.