So from what I can understand, the new regime doesn't trust the outgoing one and wants to use its own independent people to look for signs that they have been unfairly treated by the govt and/or its institutions? Would this be a reasonable observation? I can make a few guesses about how they would react if they could compile such a list of grievances. Congrats to krebs for this article.
Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'
591–600 of 1001 posts
Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'
#592The question no one asking is why Elon is sending a team of teenage programmers and not a team of financial auditors if he really wanted to cut government spending?
> not a team of financial auditors There is a claim that many federal payments do not have information necessary for traditional financial audits. Maybe a team of forensic auditors would be more apt?
Given how transparent government spending is and how frequently it’s audited, I think that’s begging the question of how scientific that claim is. The DoD is the only federal agency which hasn’t been able to have a clean audit[1] so it would be reasonable to question them – taking into consideration their unusual size and distribution, of course – but that doesn’t say anything about the rest of the government, or even distinguish between issues with payments vs. things like physical inventory when you have thousands of facilities around the world.
Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'
#593The question no one asking is why Elon is sending a team of teenage programmers and not a team of financial auditors if he really wanted to cut government spending?
Easy: this is political retribution. USAID: 0.6% of the budget CFPB: 0.011% of the budget It has nothing to do with saving money and is well beyond the executive order than instantiated the agency. If all they do is disrupt things enough for some crypto dorks and Russians to make a play it was all worth it.
USAID was the most resistant to an audit which is why they’re getting scrutinized early. Trump literally said today on an interview aired before the superbowl that a department of defense audit is coming up and he expects it to turn up billions to hundreds of billions in waste.
Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'
#594Earlier quoted context omitted.
I recommend Marc-André Argentino's research on the Com; he's a conspiracy researcher who got his PhD on QAnon. He leans left, if that's a factor for you. His general overview: https://www.maargentino.com/the-pillars-of-the-com-network/ That piece doesn't get specific at all about Com activities but be aware that some of the manifestos and other material he discusses is quite disturbing.
He cites same journalist Krebs that has no cybersecurity background. Even Marc-André Argentino himself is a master of arts in theology and not a real cybersecurity specialist.
Nah, he has a PhD from Concordia’s individualized program, supervised by professors from both Theological Studies and Information System Engineering. But it’s true that he’s not coming at this from a cybersecurity perspective, he’s an extremism researcher.
I wouldn’t rely on him to evaluate how good someone is at exploits and so on. I do respect his research skills and his ability to evaluate weird cult manifestos.
Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'
#595The question no one asking is why Elon is sending a team of teenage programmers and not a team of financial auditors if he really wanted to cut government spending?
People mentioned Elon's DOGE team is about 200 people including lawyers and accountants. I am guessing the focus on the 6 youngsters is mainly because here's a bunch of former Deloitte lawyers/accountants is not a newsworthy thing to focus on especially if your angle is to discredit the effort.
You're telling me 200 ALLEGED adult professionals are involved in a scheme where some 19 year old cybercriminal has access to classified nuclear weapons systems as if that's any indication of a better situation than critics allege and you think you've got sober and thoughtful take to offer on this situation, do you?
Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'
#596Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Com is just a general term for crime communities on the Internet. Its not a specific group. The Com includes groups that commit crimes stretching from cybercrime to literally the worst crimes you can think of and the vast majority of this is done on Discord and Telegram. You can go down a really dark rabbit hole if you really dig deep into some of these groups within The Com. This is where the worst of the worst…
So is "The Com" an actual distinct concept that exists outside of security blogs, or is it more or less the same as "the scene" is used in other communities—just a generic term for all the unaffiliated people who happen to participate in a particular (in this case nefarious) hobby? The way Krebs uses this first makes it sound like The Com is the name of a specific gang, but when I dig into the details the definition…
"The Com" isn't a specific group of people despite what people say.
It's just what people who investigate call these crime communities because it easier to just have a general name for all of them then to name each and every one of them because their are literally hundreds of them and members move between them so a single member of "The Com" can be part of many communities within "Com"
Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'
#597Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am genuinely more concerned by Elon Musk himself having access then one of these with skeletons in the closet. USA adversaries are no more dangerous then USA is to itself.
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Do you know how clearance works? It doesn't mean that you suddenly have access to every secret in existence.
Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'
#598FYI: This guy already has a Wiki page. You can find it deep in the article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Coristine
Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'
#599Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'
#600Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Com is just a general term for crime communities on the Internet. Its not a specific group. The Com includes groups that commit crimes stretching from cybercrime to literally the worst crimes you can think of and the vast majority of this is done on Discord and Telegram. You can go down a really dark rabbit hole if you really dig deep into some of these groups within The Com. This is where the worst of the worst…
no it isn't. What a blind take. As someone who has ventured down these forums when I was younger. Its a mix of gamers/programmers/online hustlers. Some of it is grey area, some if it is renting out RDP's/VPNS for malicious users acting as middlemen for the criminals. The mob mentality of rule following software engineers on here who are throwing out the accusation that these are all hardened criminals that want to bu…
If you think these are "forums" then you have no idea what you're talking about.