(Ben Sellers, Headline USA) A far-left news site supposedly known for its hard-hitting investigative reports left its anonymous tipsters exposed for months due to the hack of an unmonitored Signal chat.
A recent cover story from The Intercept offered a flattering portrayal of alleged Nazi domestic abuser Graham Platner, the Democratic senatorial candidate in Maine. The site also has celebrated the socialist capture of cities such as New York.
But despite the sensitivity of the subject matter, which often relies on anonymous sources, the site itself seems to have no clue as to who has been monitoring its tipline, with some fearing that the messages were being, well, intercepted.
The word of a hack first broke on June 30, when the outlet issued a post claiming that it had “updated” the account for its encrypted Signal chat while urging users not to use the previous one.
In keeping with security best practices, we have updated our Signal tip line. If you want to contact The Intercept, please get in touch with our reporters individually or use the Signal account Theintercept_tips.01. Please do not use the username TheIntercept.01.
— The Intercept (@theintercept) June 30, 2026
However, as Drop Site News revealed, red flags have been present since at least February, when a linked X account describing itself as the “investigative intake” for the Intercept first began actively posting and commenting on the posts of high-profile policymakers.
Drop Site explained that Signal allows chats that have gone “dormant” to be reclaimed by other users, which may have happened if The Intercept had not actively monitored its tipline. Nonetheless, the inactive chat remained posted as a means of contact on its website until recently.
Dave Bralow, The Intercept’s chief legal officer, acknowledged in a statement to Drop Site that it had responded after “learning about an effort to impersonate The Intercept on social media.”
But when Drop Site reporters reached out to the old account, the person responding continued to act as if working on behalf of The Intercept.
“I’m happy to take tips directly, so just send me what you’ve got,” said the responder, who went on to indicate an interest in tips on “surveillance, corporate fraud, human rights, environmental crimes, and government accountability.”
Libertarian journalist Glenn Greenwald, who was one of The Intercept’s original 2014 cofounders before leaving in a high-profile rift just before the 2020 U.S. election, slammed the outlet’s security breach, saying it “should have already died a mercy death.”
Yet another glorious journalistic episode for @TheIntercept, which should have already died a mercy death. It's long overdue.
They urged whistleblowers to give them information through their Signal channel, repeatedly publishing it. It somehow got hacked (!) and they had no idea… https://t.co/1zOjMixWfu
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) July 2, 2026
Greenwald noted that the site’s management had followed a familiar pattern of refusing to take accountability and publicly downplaying concern.
“Who knows how many people were endangered and compromised by this, or what the intentions were of the person able to successfully impersonate them due to The Intercept’s long-standing managerial recklessness and ongoing contempt for the journalistic duty to protect sources,” Greenwald wrote.
Reliance on Signal has led to problems in the past, most notably after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other top defense officials inadvertently revealed sensitive information about a planned strike on Yemen in a chat being surreptitiously monitored by Jeffrey Goldberg, a reporter for the far-left Atlantic.
As part of its extensive coverage of the Pentagon leak, The Intercept chided, “Despite the high level of protection that end-to-end encryption provides in transit, however, the group chat also raised serious security issues. Even secure messaging apps cannot solve the problem of hackers who have compromised the device running them. Nor can they keep information secret in the event of human error …”
Ben Sellers is a freelance writer and former editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/realbensellers.
