TeleMessage 410GB dump available to journalists

3 days ago 2

Published on 2025-05-19

Thousands of heap dumps taken May 4, 2025 from TeleMessage, which produces software used to archive encrypted messaging apps such as Signal and WhatsApp. The service came to public notice in 2025 when it was reported that former national security adviser Mike Waltz used TeleMessage while communicating with members of the Trump administration, including Vice President JD Vance and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. TeleMessage has been used by the federal government since at least February 2023.

Some of the archived data includes plaintext messages while other portions only include metadata, including sender and recipient information, timestamps, and group names. To facilitate research, Distributed Denial of Secrets has extracted the text from the original heap dumps.

404 Media reported that they were unaware of the identity of their source, with NBC News later reporting that a second hacker had breached TeleMessage's servers. Reporting by Wired and Unicorn Riot indicate that the breaches were due to a misconfiguration in server settings and poor programming choices.

Due to PII in the dataset and the inclusion of groups and messages unrelated to government or corporate behavior, the data is currently only being offered to journalists and researchers. Request access