Covert Cyber Attack Targets US Military as Pentagon Confirms
Covert cyber attacks could gradually cripple the US military, according to a recent Reuters report, with US forces deployed to conflict zones becoming targets of cybercrime exploiting commercially available location data.
US military officials have revealed this, with the incident highlighting the critical role of the global surveillance economy in modern warfare.
In a letter shared with Reuters by US Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, US Central Command (Centcom) stated it has received numerous reports of threats regarding adversaries exploiting commercial location data to target or spy on US forces in operational areas.
The message sent on 14 April 2026 provided no further details, though Centcom’s area of responsibility includes the Middle East, where US forces face Iranian military forces in the Strait of Hormuz.
This disclosure marks the first official confirmation that US military personnel in combat zones are actively targeted by cyber attacks, according to the letter sent by Wyden and a bipartisan group to the Pentagon.
‘Commercial location data can be used to identify where US forces gather and their movement patterns, which adversaries could exploit to target missile, drone, and roadside bomb attacks, as well as counter-intelligence operations,’ the letter warned.
Wyden stated in a press release that it is time to ‘start treating the ad tech industry as a national security threat.’
The Pentagon said in an email it would coordinate immediately with policymakers but declined to comment further. Policymakers in the letter stated that efforts to gather additional information from military officials about the targeting reports have so far been unsuccessful.
The Peril of Commercial Location Data
As a point of reference, location data is widely used in the digital advertising industry, serving as a key revenue source for technology firms.
Such data is typically collected from mobile phones or other devices by apps or service providers before being sold to data brokers, who aggregate and resell it, sometimes through complex intermediary networks.
While the privacy risks inherent in selling daily movement details on open markets have long been a public concern, its potential as a national security threat has recently raised alarm.
Since 2016, a US defence contractor has reportedly used commercially available location data to track special forces from their US bases to sensitive transit points in Syria, according to a Wall Street Journal report that first revealed the details.
Recently, journalists at Wired and two German news outlets used billions of coordinates collected by data brokers to map movements and arrivals at around 11 US military and intelligence sites in Germany.
Two digital advertising groups, the Interactive Advertising Bureau and the Association of National Advertisers, did not respond to requests for comment.
The letter from US lawmakers to the Pentagon stated that, given military officials’ knowledge of location data trading, they should act more swiftly to protect personnel.
For example, by disabling unique ad IDs on issued military devices, automatically turning off location sharing on personnel’s phones, and directing staff away from Google’s Chrome browser towards more privacy-focused alternatives.
One of the letter’s signatories is US Representative Pat Harrigan, a Republican from North Carolina and former US Army Special Forces officer.
Harrigan said browsers like Chrome are ‘built from the ground up to collect and share user data’, adding that keeping such browsers on government-issued devices means ‘we hand weapons to our enemies to use against our own troops every day.’
In a statement, Google said Chrome has ‘industry-leading security’, adding it has ‘long advocated for stronger regulations on data brokers’.