Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
US soldiers stationed in Europe may have accidentally exposed information about the United States’ nuclear weapons stockpile when they used flashcard apps to help them remember details about the information, according to a report from open-source intelligence outlet Bellingcat.
Foeke Postma, a researcher with Bellingcat, wrote that the soldiers used study apps such as Chegg, Cram, and Quizlet to create flashcards where they stored information about bases in Europe where US nuclear weapons were likely located, secret codes, passwords, and other details about security. It appears that they forgot to set the settings for the apps to “private,” so that their usernames and photos were public-facing, and since some of the soldiers used the…
