Terry Thompson
U.S. intelligence agencies are on high alert after CNN reported that Iran is actively preparing cyberattacks aimed at critical government and military infrastructure. But the real threat may already be inside the wire — not from foreign hackers at a keyboard, but from mobile phones unknowingly or deliberately carried into the nation’s most sensitive facilities. The devices we carry every day are now among our greatest national security vulnerabilities.
Despite years of post-9/11 investments in hardened infrastructure, the federal government has been remiss in investing in a sensor network to keep pace with the risks of wireless technology now embedded in daily life.
When the first iPhone was introduced in 2007, it ushered in a new era of hyper-connected mobility. Since then, innovation has continued to explode, bringing countless benefits but also exposing serious vulnerabilities.
However, our most secure government facilities are wide open to wireless threats.
Today, up to 90% of secure government facilities rely on little more than the honor system and self-reporting to keep unauthorized wireless devices — mobile phones, smartwatches, rogue transmitters — out of Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities (SCIFs), Special Access Program Facilities (SAPFs), and other high-security zones. In an age of Pegasus spyware and remote malware, this should be interpreted as national security malpractice.
The modern smartphone is a traitor’s dream — portable, powerful, and everywhere. It records audio and video, transmits data instantaneously via WiFi, Bluetooth, and cellular networks, and it connects to everything — from commercial clouds to encrypted chat apps. And yet, these devices are routinely brought into facilities housing classified intelligence data, most often undetected and without consequence post-exfiltration.
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