A staggering 13,000 federal employees were on the receiving end of a colorfully-worded email late last week after a newly-launched broadcast system was almost instantly compromised and exploited, according to reporting.
The email featured a subject line that simply read “Resign” and was sent out to all 13,000 federal employees of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, with a message that read, “Aren’t you tired of working for a complete c*nt?”
NOAA Deputy Director of Communications Scott Smullen responded to the disturbing mass email with a memo to staff: “I’m sorry this happened to us. I will report it.”
The unsettling incident shed a bright spotlight on just how easy it was to hack, compromise, and exploit a brand-new broadcasting system installed by the Trump Administration.
One NOAA employee told journalist Ken Klippenstein, who was the first to break the disturbing news. “Goes to show you how fast this [new comms system] was cobbled together – no security or screening on this address.”
To make matters look that much worse still for the Trump Admin, Klippenstein was able to personally breach and exploit the communications system, easily sending a link to his own newsletter to all 13,000 federal employees.
“I just sent this email to all 13,000 federal employees of the NOAA lol,” Klippenstein wrote in a post on X. “The Trump administration’s changes to their communications system made it so literally anyone can blast messages out to the entire agency.”
I just sent this email to all 13,000 federal employees of the NOAA lol. The Trump administration’s changes to their communications system made it so literally anyone can blast messages out to the entire agency pic.twitter.com/GmT4W2bwpd
— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) January 31, 2025
As one of his first moves following his return to the US presidency, the Trump Administration launched a communications system that allowed all 2.3 million federal government employees to be emailed from one single email address.
This program resulted in multiple agencies beginning to send out agency-wide emails, which many federal employees initially interpreted as nothing more than junk and spam.
Featured image via Flickr/Gage Skidmore, under Creative Commons license 2.0