U.S. troops stationed at various European bases accidentally revealed sensitive information related to the storage of American nuclear weapons by unprotected flashcard applications that they used to memorize confidential secrets, according to an astonishing new report.
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In what appears to be the mental negligence of critical U.S. security data, the military accidentally identified "not only bases" in monasteries but, in two cases, as well as "hot rooms' that may contain nuclear weapons," wrote Foeke Postma, a research analyst. at OSINT Bellingcat. They also disclose all other data, from information about secret codes, passwords and local security settings.
Surprisingly, the military has used standard learning apps such as Chegg, Cram, and Quizlet to store highly sensitive data about European nuke bases and seem to have forgotten to change the settings of applications from public to private, Postma's study said. Some of the same soldiers also apparently left their usernames public, "including the full names of the people they created," while using the same images they had stored in their LinkedIn profiles - making it easier to track.
It is not clear in the report why they did this.
Postma claims to have been able to obtain much of this information only through the official Googling names and acronyms associated with the U.S. nuclear weapons program. In doing so, he found a set of 70 flashcards for the public entitled “Study!” reveals details about the nuclear collection that is visible at Volkel Air Base in the Netherlands (a long rumored U.S. stock nuke). What is even more shocking, is that Postma claims that subsequent open-source searches found many caches, presenting together "details of defense zones on all other European bases that reportedly contain nuclear weapons."
Some flashcards describe the number of security cameras and their location in various locations, information about sensors and radar systems, the unique identifier of the restricted location badges (RAB) in Incirlik, Volkel, and Aviano foundations.
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"The extent to which soldiers have infiltrated and indirectly shared security information represents a major security failure," Postma said. "In view of the potential impacts on public safety, Bellingcat contacted NATO, the US European Command (EUCOM), the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and the Dutch Department of Defense four weeks before this publication." Since then, flashcards related to the leak have been removed, writes Postma, although Motherboard reports that some are still available on the Wayback Machine.
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