The Wi-Fi network at the Mar-a-Lago estate and a number of Trump properties could be hacked in "less than five minutes", according to a group of investigators.
A team of hackers have described how they managed to infiltrate networks at Mar-a-Lago, the Trump International Hotel and the Trump National Golf Club, using tools that “any half-decent hacker” would have access to.
President Donald Trump has made a series of visits to the locations since taking office and has hosted foreign leaders at Mar-a-Lago.
“We parked a 17-foot motor boat in a lagoon about 800 feet from the back lawn of the Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, and pointed a two-foot wireless antenna that resembled a potato gun toward the club,” Surya Mattu, Jeff Larson and Julia Angwin, who performed a handful of hacks on behalf of Gizmodo and ProPublica, said.
“Within a minute, we spotted three weakly encrypted Wi-Fi networks. We could have hacked them in less than five minutes, but we refrained.”
Since Mr Trump became president he has met with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at Mar-a-Lago.
“The cybersecurity issues we discovered could have allowed those diplomatic discussions - and other sensitive conversations at the properties - to be monitored by hackers,” the group added.
Mr Trump’s properties have a history of being targeted by hackers.
Prosecutors alleged that the Trump hotel chain had faced a cyber-attack, which resulted in a loss of more than 70,000 credit card numbers and 300 social security numbers, the New York Post reported.
