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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'

#751

Post by zacharycohn »

onetimeusename wrote: post #694
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 a…

> 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.

I think a lot of the concern is that these kids aren't out of that phase yet.

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

#752

Post by redcobra762 »

rayiner wrote: post #727
dmbche wrote: 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?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/02/04/elon-musk...

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

#753

Post by zo1 »

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.

This love and reverence to "privacy" is not at all a majority opinion or, at the very least, not at all held by everyone. That is where I think a lot of the HN cohort goes wrong, as a lot of us see no problem with violating privacy (if that is even happening) in this way for this purpose of solving problems and reducing waste. The rest is just media hype.

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

#754

Post by rob74 »

chonkerz wrote: post #740
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…

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 k…

> Why can't Musk replace him?

Because, like Trump, he values loyalty above all else? That's the reason why he reinstated that other guy who resigned after his extreme-right social media posts were unearthed (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/07/musk-doge-st...). That's also the reason why Trump pardoned all January 6 rioters, even those convicted of violent crimes. If it's his people vs. some random cops, he will always favor his people.

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

#757

Post by KingMob »

treis wrote: post #682
jhp123 wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it all mirrors the Twitter takeover (fetishizing "hardcore coders", micromanagement, randomly breaking or cancelling things), so this might just be how Elon Musk approaches things.

He did cut Twitter's workforce by 80% and things seem fine absent his deranged heel turn.

I have no idea what proportion of Twitter's jobs were necessary or not, but it is DEFINITELY not fine.

From images routinely failing to load, to the current mess of logins that is the dualistic nature of x.com vs twitter.com (where which accts appear logged in fluctuates constantly), to my favorite bug, where it's always stuck in dark mode in mobile browsers...

And that's just technologically. Firing moderators, letting neonazis run rampant, and driving away advertisers and non-nazis...

Honestly, they might as well have brought back the Fail Whale.

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

#758

Post by matwood »

lmm wrote: post #522
derbOac wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally think it says volumes about how those in the Trump-Musk group (Musk group?) see this. They see the task as infiltrating an adversary, requiring someone with the technical skills to do so but who is also disposable. This in their mind is not about improving anything in the government for citizens, or with regard to US interests, it's about gaining access to a hostile entity without regard to their interes…

[flagged]

> No, whether misguided or not they're doing this out of patriotism. They care about US citizens and US interests, and believe the deep state is hostile to both.

This type of religious fervor following these two people is what concerns me the most. Trump and Musk are the deep state if such a thing even exists. The only thing they care about are themselves. When Musk details and cuts all government funding to his companies and Trump stops openly taking bribes, then maybe we can have a conversation about whose interests they care about.

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

#760

Post by torginus »

caust1c wrote: post #475
culi wrote: 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…

I still don't get how Discord can be secure - I suspect it can't. Just the fact that the forums are persistent, and controlled by a third party, and the client is closed source means people on there can be compromised at any point incredibly easily, VPN or not.

Just something as simple as using a cookie or local storage can leave permanent traces behind so all the access can be easily correllated.

I'm not even sure if serious infosec measures exist to stop this, and if they do, someone is bound to slip up and they need to do it just once, and expose the whole chatroom.

I'm not a hacker but this sounds like failing Opsec 101, and people getting by just with sheer luck.

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