I don’t see the comparison to leaving a violent street gang—most grow out of these communities and with good opsec you keep identities and profiles completely separated; the best people I work with had a mischievous past but realized the most sustainable way to do cool things is on the good side, and those who pass background checks without hiding their past stand out as the good ones—though actions like swatting, extortion, or threats of violence go far beyond mischievous.
Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'
771–780 of 1001 posts
Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'
#772> 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'…
Read about it from Europol: https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/law-...
> Violent online groups are targeting and manipulating vulnerable children and young people across widely accessible online platforms. There are multiple groups, associations and evolving subgroups that make up the online network known as The Com – short for community. The Com is a virtual community of groups and individuals who conduct illicit activities that glorify serious violence, cruelty, and gore.
> Elements of The Com network are known to have extreme ideological views and victimise children, coercing them to commit violent acts. Predators groom their victims through different methods – one approach is establishing friendships based on trust or romantic relationships. Another technique involves the use of power or coercive tactics with one goal – taking control over the victims, while getting them to engage in serious violence, self-harm, or other gruesome. It’s a vicious cycle - the predators in this network influence children or young people into conducting acts that increasingly shame, incriminate, or isolate them, this in turn makes them more vulnerable to further exploitation.
Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'
#773Earlier quoted context omitted.
Krebs has written other articles about it: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2024/09/the-dark-nexus-between-h...
Yes and he’s literally just a journalist with no real cybersecurity background
read more about it from the people on the field: https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/law-...
Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'
#774I 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.
Unfortunately, it seems that everyone does it. Can you point to anyone who doesn't? I find it shocking and absurd too, but in moments of self-honesty I notice myself doing it too. My sense is that the only contribution one can make to changing this pattern is to notice it in oneself and then shift a bit. That's the only place one has a chance to modify anything. Getting mad at other people for doing it doesn't change…
Surely that was supposed to be a reply to something else?
"It’s obvious they treat Musk like a god."
"Unfortunately, it seems that everyone does it. Can you point to anyone who doesn't?"
^^
Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'
#775It 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…
People get clearances even if they've used hardcore drugs such as cocaine and various more serious crimes than computer crimes. The adjudication guides for clearances explain this in more detail. I have a friend who exploited RCE full-chain exploits on productions servers and used to DDoS. He got a TS/SCI clearance no problem and didn't even finish college. I interviewed too and admitted to that stuff. They cared mor…
taking cocaine is a more hardcore crime than computer crime?
Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'
#776The 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?
> 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…
It isn't limited to left-wing causes. An NGO affiliated with Bill Kristol was similarly cut.
The media is portraying it as a left-right issue. This is presumably because it is easier to incite the opposition party.
This is an opening salvo on what has been termed "the deep state", "permanent Washington" or "the swamp".
Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'
#777The sad part is that a lot of people here are complicit, too. I'm sorry, but that's the truth. So many were either brainwashed or put to believe that Kamala is bad ... as bad as Trump. So many in the US showed inaction. You couldn't vote for the "lesser evil" and were happy to let the real evil in the house instead. And now it seems too late. It might be too late. I would bet money that the US won't be able to get ri…
Please don't spread doomspeak (aka Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt: FUD).
Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'
#778[dead]
Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'
#779It 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…
People get clearances even if they've used hardcore drugs such as cocaine and various more serious crimes than computer crimes. The adjudication guides for clearances explain this in more detail. I have a friend who exploited RCE full-chain exploits on productions servers and used to DDoS. He got a TS/SCI clearance no problem and didn't even finish college. I interviewed too and admitted to that stuff. They cared mor…
Maybe the US 3-letter agencies are a bit more forgiving, but when I worked in intelligence there were three deadly sins that would make you untouchable as a candidate:
- Drug use
- Financial crimes
- Close ties to hostile countries (China, Russia, Pakistan, Iran, North-Korea, etc.)
And at least in my country, it's not the intelligence agencies themselves that handle the security clearance, but rather a dedicated agency/authority that processes all the security clearances in the country.
Now, if you've never been arrested / charged / convicted on the two first points - who would know? I'm 100% some candidates would simply lie.
Re: Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'
#780All I can think of when I hear about DOGE is Robert McNamara's Department of Defense, where the "Whiz Kids" from industry and academia were supposed to magically fix all sorts of problems with the military's bureaucracy. After all, they went to the right schools, and really, how hard could war-making be? We lost in Vietnam and there are people being born there with birth defects from Operation Ranch Hand to this day…
Wow, first time I heard of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbicidal_warfare / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ranch_Hand
Strangely, there's a dearth of links between that and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiz_Kids_(Department_of_Defen... / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_McNamara