Crucial Point founder Bob Gourley was cited in a post by Kimberly Dozier in the Daily Beast titled “Spooks: We Tried to Warn Trump About His Phone”
From the report:
President Donald Trump communicates to America directly, with tweets from the iPhones that don’t leave his side. And China is likely listening in.
“We briefed his chief of staff early in 2017 about the vulnerabilities of these phones,” said a frustrated former senior intelligence official. “It scared the crap out of Reince Priebus but that didn’t matter. It didn’t change the behavior of the president.”
The New York Times reported Wednesday that Trump is still using those vulnerable phones, and Beijing and Moscow are listening in on the president’s calls from “human sources inside foreign governments and intercepting communications between foreign officials.”
That’s exactly what intelligence officials feared when they first briefed the tech-reliant commander-in-chief’s staff, the former official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive briefings.
Cyber experts have long warned of the vulnerability of cellphones to interception especially via WiFi, when the hacker can ride the signal into the phone and plant a program that turns the phone into a recording device—just one of many ways a standard cellphone can be compromised.
“Communications over commercial cell service can be intercepted and listened in on. It takes specialized equipment, but any country or criminal group could do it,” said Bob Gourley, former chief technology officer for the Defense Intelligence Agency. “You have to assume that 100 percent of the embassies in D.C. are striving to collect what they can.”
On a related note: we have recommendations you can put in place to make your voice calls much more secure. To reduce your risk see the Crucial Point Cybersecurity Recommendations.