Chief Master Sergeant of Space Force’s Instagram hacked

Pro-Iran hackers gained access to the official Instagram account of John Bentivegna, the top enlisted guardian in Space Force, for several hours on Sunday evening.

Bentivegna’s account for his role as Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force included at least one profile post showing pro-Iranian art, and several Instagram stories showing anti-American and pro-Iranian messages were posted over the course of the evening of May 31. Photos of the hacked account and its posts spread around military social media and Reddit pages.

Among other posts, the Instagram stories included riffs on the Battle of the Bastards from “Game of Thrones” as well as footage of Ali Larijani, the late secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, who was killed on March 17 as part of the ongoing American and Israeli war with Iran. Another story featured audio from Trịnh Thị Ngọ, better known as “Hanoi Hannah,” who broadcast anti-American messages in English during the Vietnam War. That was captioned with a Farsi warning, which translated said “This is your fate if you get close to the Middle East.”

The hack lasted for several hours, with Bentivegna publicly acknowledging it. The hack appears limited to Bentivegna’s Instagram account, as he responded to the intrusion in a post on Facebook (Meta owns both social media apps), saying he was working to regain access.

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“If you receive any direct messages, requests, links, or unusual posts from that account, please do not engage with them,” Bentivegna said. “Experiences like this are a good reminder that cybersecurity isn’t just an issue for organizations, it’s something we all deal with in our daily lives.”

As of 1 a.m. Eastern Time on Monday, the stories and posts added by the outside forces have been removed. None of Bentivegna’s previous posts appear to have been altered.

It’s unclear how the pro-Iranian hackers were able to gain access to Bentivegna’s account, or if any other senior enlisted service members or heads of military branches were targeted. Space Force and the Department of the Air Force did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The hack of his account comes a few days after both Wired and Reuters both reported that service members deployed to war zones were being tracked and targeted by enemies using commercially available location data. A letter shared by Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden warned about the threat, saying that U.S. Central Command told Congress in April that it “received multiple threat reports concerning adversary exploitation of commercial location data to target or surveil U.S. personnel in theater.” As Wyden noted, it was the first time the Department of Defense acknowledged the use of commercial location data by adversaries to go after American troops. The letter noted that Pentagon officials have known about the risk for at least 10 years, with contractors showing how they can track special operations forces in Syria.

“DoD has known about this serious threat for over a decade, but has failed to adopt commonsense cyber defenses that are recommended by federal agencies,” Wyden wrote. The letter also noted that CENTCOM’s address to Congress in April said the Pentagon hadn’t adopted a policy of using an available opt-in privacy setting to disable unique tracking numbers on individual smartphones.