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Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'

krebsonsecurity.com

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Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'

#91

Post by amazingamazing »

wnevets wrote: post #85
amazingamazing wrote: post #61

The biggest irony to me is that Musk wanted to reneg on the Twitter sale. It's interesting to consider the timeline where he was allowed to not buy it. Truly a "canon" event, that one. I'm also not convinced this is a "security breach." They're being allowed to do it. It's more like an unforced error, if anything. Not that it changes anything material about the situation. That said - a small majority of congress is c…

> The biggest irony to me is that Musk wanted to reneg on the Twitter sale With everything he has lied about why assume he wasn't also lying about that? He has been caught lying about being good at videos games.

He went through great lengths to try to get out of it. I suppose it's possible that was a charade, as well, though.

Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'

#92

Post by mbrumlow »

wobblyasp wrote: post #20

Say what you will about the cuts, you can't have people with zero clearance being given access to all of this data.

All this data?

We really don’t know what data is being accessed. We have a lot of people saying lots of things about the access. Such as he will block payments or tarter people based on how they vote. You have not claimed those so I won’t rebuttal then here. But “all this data” I will.

The systems bending accessed are the ones which handle money approved by congress to be spent in a specific way.

As a tax payer I am appalled that this data is not already public and broadcasted live. Even more so that the specific legislation that granted the money was already public.

Now let’s say there are social security numbers and maybe even social security numbers tied to addresses or even names. This is still not a reason to not allow an audit.

You might say. Okay let’s audit. But people need to be verified. And at this point your argument is watered down to “I don’t like who is doing this”, which is the same bullshit politics we deal with in any tech company and the same bs that only delays results.

If people were actually worried they would not be trying to stop musk. What they would actually be doing is asking for somebody who they politically align with to also have access to the data and perform their own audit, on top of making much if not all of the data public so those with real trust issues can draw their own conclusions.

Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'

#93

Post by threeseed »

9283409232 wrote: post #79

Why are high level figures in these departments just letting them walk in and have access? Tell them to kick rocks until they have proper clearances.

Because Elon has the authority of the President who can override clearances.

US government was simply never designed for scenarios like this.

Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'

#94

Post by ineptech »

fabian2k wrote: post #47

Ignoring the horrifying political parts, I think one aspect here about data access that is inherently worrying is that it seems like all usual controls were bypassed and the DOGE people had very low level access to systems. So there are probably copies of sensitive data now in their possession, and nobody knows exactly what was copied and where it is stored. This kind of access would be dangerous even in the hands of…

What's more worrying is whether the access can realistically be revoked. As a general rule, when a security even rises to the level of root access to internal systems, you don't even try to remove them - you just rebuild the affected VMs from scratch because it's the only way to be sure the attacker didn't leave anything behind. For the systems we're talking about, payment processing stuff at Treasury and Social Security and so forth, one wonders if they can even be rebuilt on a reasonable timeframe?

Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'

#95

Post by Trasmatta »

retskrad wrote: post #75

When Elon stripped the Twitter organisation down to its fundamental parts, saved tons of money and the service is still ran like usual, people said the he’s a moron and the service couldn’t possibly run without a bloated and inefficient workforce. They were wrong. Now that Elon is applying the same philosophy to all of his companies and now the federal government, people are once again saying he doesn’t know what he’…

Twitter as it stands post Musk is a disaster, though. Revenue has dropped off significantly. How is that a success?

Not to mention the absurdity of comparing something like Twitter to the federal government. It shows the staggering arrogance and ignorance of people in tech who think that.

Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'

#96

Post by 9283409232 »

tristan957 wrote: post #84
9283409232 wrote: post #79

Why are high level figures in these departments just letting them walk in and have access? Tell them to kick rocks until they have proper clearances.

USAID employees did and were fired for it.

Refuse to leave then. It is the entire point of civil disobedience. Make a spectacle of being dragged out.

Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'

#97

Post by dkjaudyeqooe »

fabian2k wrote: post #47

Ignoring the horrifying political parts, I think one aspect here about data access that is inherently worrying is that it seems like all usual controls were bypassed and the DOGE people had very low level access to systems. So there are probably copies of sensitive data now in their possession, and nobody knows exactly what was copied and where it is stored. This kind of access would be dangerous even in the hands of…

The amount of commercially and politically valuable information there is in these systems is incredible.

If these people are scooping up this information you can imagine they might be tempted to monetize or weaponize it at some point, or use the threat of such for their own gain.

This is absolutely chilling when you think about it.

Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'

#98

Post by FranzFerdiNaN »

beart wrote: post #70
fabian2k wrote: post #47

Ignoring the horrifying political parts, I think one aspect here about data access that is inherently worrying is that it seems like all usual controls were bypassed and the DOGE people had very low level access to systems. So there are probably copies of sensitive data now in their possession, and nobody knows exactly what was copied and where it is stored. This kind of access would be dangerous even in the hands of…

Agreed. The political motivations need not even be a factor. Data privacy and access policies were bypassed by unauthorized actors.

[flagged]

Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'

#99

Post by JumpCrisscross »

9283409232 wrote: post #79

Why are high level figures in these departments just letting them walk in and have access? Tell them to kick rocks until they have proper clearances.

> Why are high level figures in these departments just letting them walk in

The better question is what are all the Congressmen doing cozily on Capitol Hill. Like, not one has walked over to these departments to try and physically stop these kids from gaining the keys to the kingdom?

(EDIT: Whoops, they have.)

Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'

#100

Post by throwaway173738 »

SamBam wrote: post #60
wahnfrieden wrote: post #21

Another DOGE member created a tool that generates ballot images to be used by counting machines to satisfy any statistical outcome requirements: https://bsky.app/profile/denisedwheeler.bsky.social/post/3lh... He worked in contact with Musk and his sponsorship to create this tool Interesting cybercrime research credentials Yes there's not evidence available that this research was used for crime, just that the project…

That thread seemed low on evidence. It seemed reasonable that that code could be part of a test suite.

Yeah— when I needed to test an integration with a cash recycler of the kind found in atms I asked if there were any fake or test bills I could use. It’s a reasonable thing to do in embedded systems, and frankly you’d be surprised at what tools are out there and how hard they would be to actually use the way you say. Physical controls are paramount in this case.
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