Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

krebsonsecurity.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

691–700 of 1001 posts

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

#691

Post by steve_adams_86 »

dayvid wrote: post #670
I_am_tiberius wrote: post #510

I find it shockingly absurd how the All-In podcast hosts blindly support everything one of their own does. It’s obvious they treat Musk like a god. In the latest episode, they even made fun of concerns about privacy, claiming that all people care about is the state not wasting money. - completely dismissing worries about data exposure.

All-In declined quickly after the pandemic when they realized the value of their platform. They use it now to only milk their investments or push political agendas to milk their investments.

Absolutely, the decay of that podcast was palpable throughout 2020. I gave it an honest shot hoping it would come back around, but it became insufferable.

I particularly disliked listening to them openly talk about the clout they were developing and, I don’t know, bragging and boasting about their popularity. Ego is repulsive when it’s laid on so blatantly.

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

#692

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #503
TacticalCoder wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The 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? If it's working, why would it matter? The most curious thing in all these discussions is that the elephant in the room is never addressed: they already found on hundreds of billions of pure fraud and funding for extremely dubious endeavors. But nobody t…

You're just regurgitating conspiracy theories and political nonsense from the right. For example: '$8m to the supposedly independent "Politico"' is for subscriptions. So what? The rest is the same sort of nonsense: innuendo, smears and outright lies.

That’s just USAID.

It was 30-40 million for all depts to poltico.

You can not be “independent journalists” when your largest single client is the US Gov.

Politico running the Russia hoax, Hunter’s laptop, and dismissing the wuhan lab leak are three examples of them being on the Biden admin’s side.

Can you point to a single time Poltico backed up a theme or narrative that benefited Trump but turned out to be wrong?

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

#693

Post by johnnyanmac »

billy99k wrote: post #658
davesque wrote: post #344

Seems safe to assume that the DOGE kids probably scored copies of the data they had access to even if that access was or will be revoked, especially considering that some of them have a history of data theft as mentioned in the article.

Beyond speculation, how do you even know this? Everything I've seen so far related to this jumps to wild conclusions about the data these employees can allegedly access with absolutely no proof of anything. It's almost the same as the conclusion that the Dominion voting machines were illegally changing votes based on insecure security practices around the networks at the polling locations. There was no proof that thi…

> how do you even know this?

It's speculation based on the facts that Elon Musk is actively ignoring and even antagonizing the courts. At which point we have dozes of public reports on, including himself tweeting it out.

Even if he was ordered to delete the data, do you really think a person like that will comply? That's why people speculate that; Musk is not a credible actor.

>The government has been wasting hundreds of millions of our tax dollars and a good portion of it are going into the pockets of politicians and their supporters.

>There was literally no way to track the money or oversight.

Beyond speculation, how do you even know this?

Even if true, the answer to corruption isn't more corruption and kicking people out of their workplaces. Nor hacking into every citizen's private info. We have a process for a reason.

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

#694

Post by onetimeusename »

belorn wrote: post #114

It has been a fairly common story, and part rumor, that intelligence agencies like to recruit young people active in the cyber criminal scene, and that the IT security industry also adapted this approach. They basically becomes part informer and part subject expert, especially since IT security expertise seems to be a difficult subject matter to teach in universities. When I studied IT security in university, about 1…

Yes, I've seen a number of people with criminal records hired. I don't really want to present my comment as an argument against every point Krebs made. I don't really have an opinion on whether the individual mentioned is a suitable hire.

But in infosec a lot of people probably got into it because 'hacking' is cool and glorified by the media. It's rebellious and appeals to a lot of teens I think. I don't think it's as serious as Krebs suggested that you could be extorted or compromised. It seems like it's just a bunch of inexperienced people in a discord channel. Soliciting a DDoS on there, to me, just seems like youthful nonsense. If you were actually in some kind of criminal hacking enterprise I bet you would know not to make mistakes like leaving a paper trail to your identity in a discord channel where you solicited a crime.

I haven't seen the people with criminal records for cyber crimes be less trustworthy in the industry. Some of them just made stupid mistakes when they were younger and sometimes dumb kids get way overcharged for cyber crimes. For the most part I think it's fine for kids to go through a phase where they think it's cool but they don't really know what they are doing. A lot of people have done that. A lot of 13 yr old kids on the internet have talked about hacking banks and things like that and they aren't all going to be in a gang. Another analogy is how a lot of people get into chemistry because they like blowing things up. Not all those people are terrorists.

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

#695

Post by mmsc »

demosthanos wrote: post #565
impulser_ wrote: post #499

Earlier 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" is just zoomer-talk for "The Scene"

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

#696

Post by johnnyanmac »

culi wrote: post #532
fujinghg wrote: post #218

I used to hang around with the late 90s's versions of these guys. I grew up, had a family, have had a successful career. They went to prison. I expect the same will happen to this lot.

This lot has amassed a very large amount of political power and is part of the same group that's currently deconstructing the very mechanisms that were used to capture and imprison YOUR lot

Yes. But will they dismantle enough to beat the courts? Musk might, but I feel these kids will be thrown under the bus in the long term.

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

#697

Post by joe_the_user »

Kinrany wrote: post #358
relaxing wrote: post #16

Good reporting here. Clarifies why the kid was fired for leaking documents - it was specifically for leaking internal corporate documents to a competitor. The details about cybercrime discords involved in SWATting and DDOS attacks are fascinating. The idea that anyone involved in this would be fast-tracked for a clearance is beyond the pale.

This assumes that leaking is a compulsive behavior. The federal government has stronger incentives to offer for not leaking information. Getting fired is nothing.

The idea that the federal government is entity able to look after it's own interests has taken quite a hit in my mind with recent events.

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

#698

Post by johnnyanmac »

tonymet wrote: post #232
fujinghg wrote: post #218

I used to hang around with the late 90s's versions of these guys. I grew up, had a family, have had a successful career. They went to prison. I expect the same will happen to this lot.

Almost all the top tier infosec professionals had a grey-hat history. The successful ones are not likely cringe posting on LinkedIn so you wouldn’t have any idea of the successes, only the failures. Of course we all want to say : see, obedience and hard work pays off. I’m glad I didn’t do anything reckless. The truth is that the real successful people keep it to themselves.

Well here these kids are broadcating their black hats to the world. Seems like a good sign if this trend continues.

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

#699

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

throwaway292910 wrote: post #415
whatshisface wrote: post #165

Why isn't all government budgetary information public to begin with?

Public information can't be made more public when it is already public. Congress passes the federal budget, which is public. Contracts are public. Bid processes are public. The only exceptions are things that are considered PII and things that are classified. USAspending.gov contains public spending data thanks to the bipartisan bill Obama, Coburn, McCain, and Carper passed two decades ago. It's one of many places to…

When was the last budget passed?

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

#700

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

slimebot80 wrote: post #451

The confuddling thing to me is how did we have years of decay and no ability to head it off. If we are at a point where the FBI is being dismantled, where was the FBI this whole time during the build up? Even if you believed the FBI was some evil deep state entity - it turns out it was completely benign one because it couldn't even defend itself from an approaching enemy thousands of yards away.

[flagged]
Post reply on HN