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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'

#731

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm thinking 2/3, but the part you're missing is that the process will destroy US influence around the world. Which may be the real point of all this. It's hard to know where Musk's allegiances really lie. With that said, the US has been in the dominant world position for so long, it's like they forget what it takes to be there. Soft power, by giving people food and support - like USAID does, is part of what helps ke…

I hear this argument a lot and I have two thoughts about it: 1. USA is a rich country, and that's why it can afford helping other countries. But what if you overspend? Now your economy is weak, you lag behind, and sooner or later competitors help more than you (if it's really the best thing to do to rule the world). So maybe optimizing spending is in order? And I think one strategy to optimize an overgrown system is…

1. If you want to get the budget under control then we have to raise taxes in addition to spending cuts. The Trump tax cuts expire this year and they have said they want to get them extended.

2. No, if the US makes such drastic changes in policy every four years then it's much harder to forge any long term relationships. The vacuum also lets other countries like China step in. Wasn't everyone just losing their mind about a Chinese company working with the Panama Canal?

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

#732
post #440

Here's my attempt at contributing something meaningful to this discussion, since I'm tired of seeing the same kinds of responses to these threads over and over again. Feel free to disagree, the idea is to try to move the conversation past knee-jerk reactions. This is an FAQ of sorts. Q1: What's wrong with making the government more efficient? My tax dollars are being wasted by Agency X, spending billions of dollars a…

Very well written, and more or less aligns with my own thinking.

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

#733
post #626

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…

but the question is why operate on such insecure, backdoored, government friendly platforms? if they're smart enough to commit cybercrimes, why make such a basic opsec blunder? or are the skiddie tiers of these networks all that's visible/accessible to reporters?

> if they're smart enough to commit cybercrimes, why make such a basic opsec blunder?

Why do you assume that they have to be smart to commit cyber crimes? As a general rule, most criminals are as dumb if not dumber than most regular people. Cyber crime is no different. Consider that cyber crime is not (just) hacking, it includes things like calling someone's grandma to convince her she needs to wire you $40k now or someone might go to prison for a car accident. Or at least texting this over WhatsApp.

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

#734
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…

> that intelligence agencies like to recruit young people active in the cyber criminal scene Just linking this back to the story, am I mistaken in saying that DOGE is not an intelligence agency? (It certainly is a great position to exfiltrate information however.)

It's not even an agency.

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

#735
post #719

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjw4g2q62xqo Ordering them to delete everything they got copies of, and the subsequent frustration from Musk. Why cares who personally violated federal law? However he managed to, Musk got unlawful access to restricted data.

> Why cares who personally violated federal law? However he managed to, Musk got unlawful access to restricted data. Can you articulate what federal law you think that order says was violated?

[flagged]

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

#736

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's so strange to see this become a Partisan Issue so quickly and easily, when just a few short years ago everyone on the Internet cheered on Ron Paul's cries to Audit The Fed. (Yes, I know, “the Fed” means the Federal Reserve, and not the federal government—but that's clearly in the cards, too.)

And it's not as though the pre-smartphone Internet was majority Republican, of course—quite the opposite, if anything!

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

#737

The more advanced AI gets and the more power that is at stake, the more these tech CEOs are going to drop their nice-guy acts and reveal their true intentions. The drama is going to get much worse over the coming years.

Uhh they've been openly talking about dismantling democracy and creating nation-states rules by corporations for literally almost a decade. JD Vance is their man in DC when trump is gone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RpPTRcz1no

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

#738

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]

We knew this was going to happen. That doesn't make it acceptable. The correct response in this situation is not to say "well, they were mean to him, therefore he gets to hit them back". It's to notice that he committed crimes, too many to count, and came very close to actually facing the bare minimum of consequences for them - and now he's throwing a fit and turning himself into a dictator so that that can never happen again. There is no tit-for-tat, both-sides-do-it in this situation. It's a criminal continuing his criminal enterprise, but now even more blatantly.

> Russia Hoax

There was no Russia "hoax". There are a few basic facts that no serious person disagrees with:

1. Russia very clearly interfered in the 2016 presidential election, in a number of ways, including internet disinformation and an actual hacking campaign to steal and then selectively leak DNC internal documents.

2. Said interference was blatantly in favor of Trump.

3. At least some members of the Trump campaign were aware of and encouraged, if not actively participated in, those attacks. Several high-ranking campaign officials, including Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, and George Papadopoulos either pled guilty or were convicted at trial for related felonies.

4. According to Robert Mueller, a lifetime Republican and respected investigator, as detailed in the entirety of volume II of his report, Donald Trump personally obstructed justice - that is, perpetrated a cover-up - in an attempt to prevent American law enforcement from determining the truth or extent of Russia's involvement in his election victory.

Had Trump not been president, he would have been indicted at the time. Had Republicans in Congress not been either spineless or implicated in the same corruption, he would have been impeached and removed from office. Had he not spent four years stacking the justice system with unqualified political hacks, or had Merrick Garland had a proper grasp on the severity of the situation, he would have been indicted and convicted immediately upon leaving office.

You can find people on the left making statements that are not in evidence, like "Trump and Putin conspired together to..." or "Trump didn't really win in 2016 because Russia hacked the voting machines", etc., etc. Many of those things go too far. But the idea that there was Russian interference in the election, and that the Trump campaigns were not just beneficiaries but willing participants in it, is not in any way a "hoax". It's as close to a proven fact as it is possible to get.

> raided Trump’s properties

With a duly granted warrant, after a lengthy period of requesting that he return stolen national security documents peacefully.

> refused to release any details about his assassination attempts

I don't know what this is possibly referring to. The FBI gave statements when they learned things - see e.g. https://www.fbi.gov/news/speeches/fbi-pittsburgh-special-age.... There just wasn't that much to know.

> I just think it’s hilarious that no one thought of Trump won that he wouldn’t go after them.

Well yeah, but again, that's not because he's justified, it's because he's both a criminal and a petty, vindictive egomaniac. It's unprecedented for the FBI to spend so much time attacking a president, but that's because it's unprecedented for a president to spend his entire campaign and time in office doing nothing but constantly commit crimes.

If we lived in a society governed by functioning rule of law, there would be no way for Trump to "go after" FBI agents. The mere idea of firing someone for having investigated you fairly in the past should itself be disqualifying from any position of power. Of course, Trump is now going to instruct the FBI and the rest of the DOJ to actually go perform witch hunts, so the next Democratic administration (presuming there is such a thing) will have to fire his appointees and unwind all of those investigations... and the media will dutifully report on it as just a thing that happens now between political parties, and the neutrality of the justice department will be a thing of the past.

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

#739
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…

Equating script kiddies to some genius cyberhackers worth recruiting is laughable when we literally have PHDs and 6 figure salary professionals willing to be recruited legally with zero baggage. Why are the top digital safety institutions hiring the very bottom of the barrel?

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

#740
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…

I think the difference is in the kind of positions the "second chance" people get hired to. They aren't put in positions where they could cause significant wide scale harm with no auditing or barriers.

The debate isn't whether he should go to jail. The debate is whether he should get a clearance for some of the most powerful access someone can possibly get. He's not suitable. Why can't Musk replace him? He's just a kid.

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