French navy personnel revealed classified information about submarine patrols through the fitness app Strava, according to an investigation by newspaper Le Monde.
Crew members of French nuclear submarines unwittingly communicated sensitive information about their positions and patrol schedules by sharing their workouts on the fitness app Strava, according to an investigation by French newspaper Le Monde .
The crew members reportedly used the app to record their runs while based at the Ile Longue naval site in Brest, western France. This site is home to the country’s four nuclear ballistic missile submarines, each capable of carrying 16 nuclear missiles.
Although more than 2,000 employees are subject to high-level security checks to enter the premises – passing through facial scanners and handing over their phones at specific checkpoints – smartwatches were reportedly not caught. counts in the process.
These devices, which can store data without being connected to a smartphone or the internet, have escaped the attention of senior military officials. According to Le Monde, when the crew members left the base, their movements on the site were uploaded to Strava.
Many crew members had used their real names and had public profiles on Strava, which allowed Le Monde to identify several staff members, raising concerns about a threat to national security.
Information uploaded to Strava shows how nuclear submarine patrols are carried out, with patrol schedules and training program routes, Le Monde reported. Time intervals between workouts uploaded to Strava also indicated when users were at sea.
Contacted by Le Monde, the French navy recognized “a problematic situation”but declared that it did not represent “not a major risk”. She said the revelations did not present “no shortcoming likely to affect the activities of the Île Longue operational base”.
In 2018, local newspaper Le Télégramme published a similar investigation into military personnel using Strava on the same base, but it appears little has changed since then.
In October, Le Monde published another investigation linked to Strava, revealing that the whereabouts of French President Emmanuel Macron and US President Joe Biden could be traced because their security agents used the app when they were in assignment.