741–750 of 1001 posts
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.
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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.
Just look in this thread for how many posters here are 100% certain that irreparable damage is being done - because they want to feel mad. There is no proof of anything bad. Regardless how many people want that to be false, oddly. So I guess tough to not think that the worldwide media that has been receiving government money would be mad and willing to focus on ”a handful of 20 year olds” as a means to discredit. Wha…
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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…
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…
To what degree is this common knowledge? After 20 years of being highly online I'm surprised to be so blindsided. Not that I work in security or anything.
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?
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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.
D&D Alignment aside, one has to admit this kid has impressive skills and impressive energy. Sidestepping any argument whether criminals should be hired or have access to sensitive data, I do think he's too immature (demonstrably) to be allowed access to all this information.
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?
Roughly half of the commenters on relevant HN forums are asking exactly that.
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…
I guess as hackers we instinctively distrust authority, so it is difficult for us to defer to experts in the government and accept that they might know a lot that we don’t.
I don’t understand why the article is flagged as per Dang’s posts. Is it because a lot of HN folks think DOGE is good? I’ve seen some supporting tweets from senior YC people. Or is it just because people are worried posts like this will cause flame wars and be unproductive?
Aside: Some of the DOGE supporting posts from YC have made me sad. Would appreciate it if anyone can provide a perspective that reconciles those posts with a positive view of YC.
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’d also distinguish between the hacker to gets access to a forbidden system out of curiosity or for a challenge, from a person who pays a ddos service to attack someone they don’t like (one of the accused actions of this kid). The latter displays no competency in hacking or cybersecurity, only the attempt to harm another. My concern in their access to secure government systems is not their hacking competency (which…
The issue here is that these kids seem to fail upwards, and as you say, get rewarded for anti-social behavior, which sets them on a terrible path for the future. In the Com chat log shared in the article, they made fun of Edward Coristine for his complete lack of programming skills, and the other "doxxed" members of the DOGE team have some smaller projects online as well. If that's the kind of code SpaceX and Tesla run on, I'd give all of their projects a very wide berth.