A political row has kicked off in the US after a journalist was added to a Signal messaging group where senior officials shared plans for an airstrike.

The Atlantic magazine’s editor Jeffrey Goldberg said he was unexpectedly added to the chat - which included discussions of action against Houthi rebels.

The chat included US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, Security Advisor Mike Waltz and Vice President JD Vance.

After demands from Democrats, the White House is now investigating the leak.

Host of the For Tech’s Sake podcast Elaine Burke told Moncrieff that Signal is fairly similar to WhatsApp.

“WhatsApp is in the billions of users, whereas Signal is about 40 to 70 million monthly users,” she said.

“It’s mostly popular with people who are privacy conscious users, also people who are looking to move to alternatives from big tech spaces – Signal is seen as an alternative messaging app in that space.

“Cyber security professionals tend to prefer Signal and journalists as well who are trying to have safe discussions with sources and things like that.”

Man wearing headphones and using his phone

However, Ms Burke said the app would not be recommended to people who are “sharing war plans, essentially”.

“The end-to-end encryption only protects you are far as your ends are secure,” she said.

“If the person on one end has made a mistake in adding the wrong person to the chat, that’s kind of an insecurity.

“Also, that means that they were probably messaging while they were off-site and there’s risk to that.

“If your end is a device that you are walking around with, that you are mobile with, that’s very convenient for people who want to message each other.

“[But] it just means that if someone gets their hands on that device, they just need to crack into the device in order to get access to the app that then has access to these messages.”

According to Ms Burke, end-to-end encryption means that only the person sending and receiving messages through the app can see their contents.

Mr Hegseth he has denied anyone was texting war plans.

“You're talking about a deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist who's made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again,” he said.

Main image: Signal app (L) and U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (R).