Live data from Hacker News

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

krebsonsecurity.com

471–480 of 1001 posts

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

#471
I just hope they post everything they found. I don't care about their credentials and neither do I care about security -- those damned companies already had them 10 times anyway.

But it's very interesting if they can release all information. I mean it's a democracy, right?

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

#472
post #454

> the DOGE teen is a former denizen of ‘The Com,’ an archipelago of Discord and Telegram chat channels that function as a kind of distributed cybercriminal social network for facilitating instant collaboration To be honest, this is my first time hearing about The Com. Does anyone have any more reading on this? You'd think they'd use something more secure than Discord (which has 0 encryption) and Telegram which doesn'…

Krebs has written other articles about it: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2024/09/the-dark-nexus-between-h...

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

#474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> He cofounded paypal which is payment system. Presumably he knows about things like payment systems, fraud, etc... No, he didn't. He founded x.com as a payment system which was substantially less popular then paypal. Due to a bunch of mergers of parent companies, x.com and paypal had to merge. Musk became CEO and the whole thing was later sold to ebay, he left and cashed out big. That whole timeline unfolded in just…

You’re leaving out that he was ousted by Thiel and the board because they thought he was about to fuck up the whole thing. By the time they sold to eBay, he was the largest shareholder, but no longer involved with the operation of the company.

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

#475
post #454

> the DOGE teen is a former denizen of ‘The Com,’ an archipelago of Discord and Telegram chat channels that function as a kind of distributed cybercriminal social network for facilitating instant collaboration To be honest, this is my first time hearing about The Com. Does anyone have any more reading on this? You'd think they'd use something more secure than Discord (which has 0 encryption) and Telegram which doesn'…

Discord is very popular with skiddies and real criminal organizations alike. It's got pretty basic KYC controls in place, meaning essentially anyone with just an email can sign up. It can be accessed from behind VPNs without any issues, so effectively it doesn't matter that it's not e2e encrypted.

I feel that discord the company probably let's it slide because:

1. Moderation at scale is incredibly difficult. 2. They work with law enforcement agencies to execute warrants and subpoenas.

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

#476
post #454

> the DOGE teen is a former denizen of ‘The Com,’ an archipelago of Discord and Telegram chat channels that function as a kind of distributed cybercriminal social network for facilitating instant collaboration To be honest, this is my first time hearing about The Com. Does anyone have any more reading on this? You'd think they'd use something more secure than Discord (which has 0 encryption) and Telegram which doesn'…

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2024/09/09/soc..., https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2024/12/10/dis..., https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/20...

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

#477

All I can think of when I hear about DOGE is Robert McNamara's Department of Defense, where the "Whiz Kids" from industry and academia were supposed to magically fix all sorts of problems with the military's bureaucracy. After all, they went to the right schools, and really, how hard could war-making be? We lost in Vietnam and there are people being born there with birth defects from Operation Ranch Hand to this day…

> After all, they went to the right school The selection process here appears to have been the opposite of traditional credentialism

Actually, is it known by which criteria Musk picked these people? Or do we just have speculation? I haven’t read any detailed reporting about that.

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

#478
post #185

I realized I’m treading in extremely hostile waters here, but the stories I hear from folks working in DOGE are closer to “I spend 8am to 2am with the leaders of department X going through all contracts and outflows and identifying what is important versus wasteful given a target of saving $X million per day, and there are some great people in this department who really know what’s been going on and it’s been great t…

So why is their boss tweeting out outrageous lies about what they've found? Don't they feel any moral compunction to say publicly, actually that is a complete misrepresentation of what we've found?

the entire situation, on all sides, is misrepresenting and has been for decades.

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

#479
post #184

As all the intelligence agencies see DOGE coming their way to look into how they spend money, I think we will see many of those stories in the coming weeks.

True, I would have tried to hit multiple agencies at the same time. Now everyone has time to get their PR in order before doge starts poking around. For the record I’m all for doge. I know if it were democrats doing this as part of Kamala’s administration it would be applauded as a bold move to hold feet to fire or some other nonsense.

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

#480
Can anyone recommend a journalist who is reporting the facts of what’s happening on this subject?

From what I can tell, it’s widely been reported that

- Elon Musk was allowed into the Department of Education

- “Big Balls” accessed Treasury computers

- etc…

But I have not been able to find any first person testimony that confirms those statements.

From what I can tell Tom Krause is actually the one who was given access by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. And Tom Krause is an employee of the Treasury and has security clearance.

I see a lot of people claiming there was some sort of illegal access, but I would love to read a source that explains exactly who accessed exactly what system improperly.

Can anyone point me at that source?

Post reply on HN