LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: More than a month after the Atlantic broke the story that top U.S. officials were using the commercial messaging app Signal to share military attack plans, the Trump administration's handling of sensitive data is still under scrutiny.

Hackers targeted another app used by high ranking Trump officials known as TeleMessage, and also stole passenger information from one of the main airlines used by the White House to deport migrants.

Joseph Cox is the co-founder of 404 Media, which has investigated these hacks.

Joseph, thanks so much for joining us.

JOSEPH COX, Co-Founder, 404 Media: Thank you so much for having me.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: So let's start with your investigation into the hack on the deportation flights.

What information was accessed and why is it valuable?

JOSEPH COX: So GlobalX is one of the primary airlines that ICE uses to deport people.

It did this during the previous administration, is doing it during this one as well.

When a hacker recently targeted GlobalX, it took flight information which is not that valuable because that's already publicly available.

But some really interesting details that it did manage to get were these passenger lists which actually tell us who was on each of these flights.

And of course, that is not publicly available information.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: So that means information about the specific passengers.

JOSEPH COX: Yeah, information about the specific passengers on each flight is what the hacker obtained then sent to us and other journalists as well.

Well, and that allows us to determine, well, who exactly has been sent to each individual country.

And for example, there was a internal government list of people sent to the El Salvador mega prison that was published by CBS.

But if we go through the flights like we did at 404 Media, we actually get more names of people who've been sent to the country as well on those same dates.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: You've also reported on the hacking of TeleMessage, an app used by Trump administration officials to back up copies of their chats.

What can you tell us about that?

JOSEPH COX: Yeah.

So over the weekend, a hacker targeted TeleMessage, which is a clone of Signal, this very popular secure messaging app that lots of people may be familiar with.

To be clear, it's not exactly the same as Signal.

Signal remains very much secure and people use that for secure communication all of the time.

This was making copies of all of the messages used by whichever Trump officials happened to be using it to comply with government regulations over keys keeping copies of their messages.

A hacker managed to break in and actually get the content of group chats, direct messages, and then send them to us as journalists as well.

I haven't seen for example, Mike Waltz's then National Security Advisors messages, but we did see messages belonging to other users of TeleMessage and just goes to show really how sensitive this data is.

And it could easily fall into the wrong hands.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Meanwhile, I also want to ask you about the Department of Government Efficiency known as DOGE, run by Elon Musk, because they're trying to create a centralized hub of personal data about millions of Americans.

And security experts have raised alarms about this and the collection of this information because they say it potentially bypasses data sharing protocols.

Would this make Americans personal information more susceptible to hacks?

JOSEPH COX: I think there's an inherent risk in bringing more data together that's usually siloed.

It could be secure in one location and another if you break down those firewalls between different agencies and then make it much more easily accessible to DOGE or agencies working with DOGE, that does potentially introduce more security risk and vulnerabilities.

So either DOGE itself or outside hackers could potentially get into as well.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: And lastly, big picture, Joseph, when we're looking at all this, the hacks as well as what DOGE is doing, what does it say about the handling of sensitive data and Americans personal data by this administration?

JOSEPH COX: I think a lot of this shows the data is being handled in a pretty sloppy fashion, to be frank, with the DOGE stuff.

Breaking down these firewalls with Mike Waltz and other national security officials using Signal, then using this insecure version and then hackers targeting those systems and GlobalX, I mean it's very concerning that this really sensitive information and communications, I mean it already is falling into the hands of third parties as well.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Joseph Cox of 404 Media, thank you for your time.

JOSEPH COX: Thank you so much.