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DOGE staffer 'Big Balls' provided tech support to cybercrime ring, records show
- fastball 2y agoDeja vu, or didn't we already know this? I remember allegations of cyber crime connections the first time I heard about "Big Balls".
- philamonster 2y agoThese fucking mediocre, feckless and otherwise ineffectual assclowns...
- PedroBatista 2y agoDOGE is the best thing to ever happen to foreign intelligence agencies. Also lawyers.
- buyucu 2y agotrial lawyers having a field day with everything Trump is doing.
- llm_nerd 2y agoTrump is, by executive fiat, literally banning any law firm that takes cases against him or his agenda from stepping foot in federal courthouses. The US is speedrunning to being a despotic dictatorship and people are just blissfully unaware.
- BLKNSLVR 2y agoDon't forget that some of them are cheering it on too.
- tialaramex 2y agoIt doesn't work out to be a lawyer in a lawless country.
- ggm 2y agoPutting to one side special cases would this disqualify you from security clearance? Or even.. federal employment?
- wil421 2y agoYes and you or I could be prosecuted for doing so. Unless you were able to get some kind of special permission, like other well known hackers who worked with the FBI and CIA, acknowledging that stuff would be a deal breaker for regular employment.
- Kapura 2y agoUnder a normal regime, yes, one would expect this avenue of employment to be open to you. But you see, Trump as appointed Elon to be godking with no oversight from any branch of government, so the odds of anything happening here are low until somebody hears "Big Balls" bragging at a bar and beats him to death for destroying the country.
- safety1st 2y agoThis just doesn't seem like much of a story to me when we have Kevin Mitnick being convicted for hacking crimes at 25 and being a consultant for the FBI after doing his time. It might be shocking to the general public but the shady hacker turned white hat thing is as old as the cyber security industry itself
- threetonesun 2y agoIt’s a very large leap to assume anyone at DOGE is doing anything “white hat”. I mean I can think of one “white hat” thing they might be involved with but it’s not related to hacking.
- fcatalan 2y ago"after doing his time" So then have BigBalls at least do his time before handing him the keys to the kingdom.
- brigandish 2y agoAnd what would be the crime?
- frereubu 2y agoAssisting cybercrime by the sounds of things: "Two years before becoming a DOGE staffer, Coristine provided network support to a cybercrime group." That enough for you?
- hypeatei 2y agoThe next administration is going to have to replace all these systems. You have inexperienced, sketchy, and hostile actors who've gained physical access to them. They can't be trusted anymore.
- jajko 2y agoThe idea that next admin will be dramatically different to current one... wishful thinking. Just because it would serve nicely our ideas of how world should be run doesn't mean it will.
- redeux 2y agoThe irony (which is not incidental) is that there was no deep state, but one is being installed before our eyes.
- ttyprintk 2y agoThe Deep State has such formidable opsec that they simultaneously are everywhere and nowhere. The Deep State has persisted in such a dangerous world, yet the current administration has defied learning their methods. Although the evidence of absence is mounting, the Paul Weiss deal is the clearest association of Deep State I’ve seen: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-is-not-dictating-legal-work-paul-weiss-deal-chairman-says-2025-03-23/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-is-not-dictating-lega... There’s almost an indulgent irony if Paul Weiss is forced by the President to represent Big Balls.
- redeux 2y agoPoe’s Law[0] prevents me from knowing if this is a serious statement. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law
- ttyprintk 2y agoYeah, sorry that’s muddled thinking. I was agreeing with you and trying to use their hyperbolic bases to make the point that a series of disconnected phenomena have justified the President targeting individual law firms.
- _jplc 2y agoUSA is in that final season that producers wanted but nobody asked for.
- brigandish 2y agoI’m going to take a wild guess that the incoming negative comments will be from those who haven’t read the article, as it strikes me as quite the non-story. His business provided a CDN to an (allegedly) criminal group for their a website. I can understand someone’s granny reading this and thinking it’s bad somehow, but this is HN, I’d expect people on these boards to known better.
- loudmax 2y agoHaving read the article, Coristine does not come across as blameless. When you run a business, you shouldn't be gathering criminals as your clients.
- BLKNSLVR 2y agoHe was hoping to get into the international banking game.
- acdha 2y agoThis is why federal jobs involve background checks and federal IT work is built around least-privilege. Before giving access to someone, they’d normally have provided a full disclosure of their past and things like this and his other ties to illegal activities would be investigated. That access when granted would have restrictions on what they get and how they do it (e.g. no personal devices, limited access to the specific data needed to perform their job, their activity is itself logged, other people oversee their work, etc.). Because some employees of a campaign donor were granted access without following any of those rules, it’s a huge story because were heavily dependent on Musk’s personal judgement as the only real protection for federal data.
- brigandish 2y ago> his other ties to illegal activities What illegal activities? The article mentions ties (we can ignore whether they are strong or weak) to people, not activities. Providing a CDN is not an illegal activity.
- olalonde 2y agoThat's borderline propaganda... By that logic, Cloudflare would be providing "tech support" to cybercrime rings just because some criminals used its DDoS protection. If we apply the same standard, every major tech company, from Google to Namecheap, would be guilty of offering "tech support" to cybercriminals on a daily basis.
- hypeatei 2y agoBut the article says they publicly posted about being "valued partners" with DiamondCDN. That seems to be more than just some criminals signing up and using the CDN. At the very least it creates more questions than answers, no?
- deweller 2y agoIs a public post from a cybercrime ring credible evidence? I get that the potential connection may warrant more investigation. But I don't see any real evidence of anything in this article other than they were a customer of DiamondCDN for an unknown amount of time.
- fastball 2y agoEmphasis on they (the cybercriminals) posting about it, right? Does it seem reasonable to take the word of the cybercriminals at face value? Usually a lot of this stuff is tongue in cheek anyway. e.g. if a cybercrime group puts out a public statement saying "thanks FBI for making your systems so easy to hack", a reasonable headline derived from that would be "FBI aids cybercriminals with hacking"?
- hypeatei 2y ago> Does it seem reasonable to take the word I don't know why you'd put your provider on blast like that unless you knew they'd resist any pressure or just not care about shady activities. It would just cause more issues for you (the criminal) if they cut service.
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- liberalsarecool 2y ago[dead]
- buyucu 2y agothis is absolutely hilarious to watch.
- TheNightman 2y agoI feel like I’m taking crazy pills, did anyone read the article? He ran a CDN. Unless I missed something, there doesn’t appear to be any reason to believe he knew it was a “cybercrime ring”.
- loudmax 2y agoOn Feb. 15, 2023, EGodly thanked Coristine's company for its assistance in a post on the Telegram messaging app. "We extend our gratitude to our valued partners DiamondCDN for generously providing us with their amazing DDoS protection and caching systems, which allow us to securely host and safeguard our website," the message said. This isn't about whether or not Coristine should go to jail for EGodly's criminal activities. This is about whether Coristine has the maturity and moral integrity to be accessing government systems.
- fastball 2y agoI extend my gratitude to my valued partner loudmax, who has been helping me commit cybercrime for the last 20 years.
- Havoc 2y agoSo I take it he isn't getting that top secret clearance after all? What a circus
- JumpCrisscross 2y agoClearances are an executive construct. Trump can give TS to every sea turtle if he wants.
- johnnyanmac 2y agoYes, but there's been a process for it for every other year before. Trump is clearly ignoring that process to great effect.
- JumpCrisscross 2y agoSure. My point is that’s a norm, not a law.
- fintechie 2y ago[flagged]
- piva00 2y agoTech grew since the inception of HN, we went through quite different generations of people, and nowadays tech seems to be the one of the most political industries given its power, reach, and wealth. It's impossible to disconnect from that, it's wishful thinking to expect a place attracting people from this industry to not have political content being discussed. It's tech who got political, not HN, I hate to see it too, I'd prefer to be living in the era where creating things was the main purpose of our careers but that ship has sailed, the ground shifted under our feet. The only reasonable grown-up thing to do is to accept the new status quo and deal with it, either by resisting or accepting that bygone era is done, it's no more.
- fintechie 2y agoYeah that may be true. But one can only ask who wins from all the polarisation. Co-workers at odds, friends at odds, even family members at odds. Tech is(was?) intended to be our "happy place".
- danaris 2y agoSilence only ever supports the oppressor.
- BLKNSLVR 2y agoThe realisation that the ability to ignore politics left the direction of politics up to the politicians.
- ttyprintk 2y agoThe exciting promotion of a hacker into the ranks of government belongs somewhere other than Hacker News?
- BLKNSLVR 2y agoThe problem is that there's not really much more important going on in the world than the US self-deconstructing. Many other things pale in comparison because the "other things that were important" were greatly facilitated by the US hegemony that's well on its way to burning to the ground. All intellectual pursuit will be negatively affected.
- josefritzishere 2y agoDOGE increasingly seems like a crime syndicate of some kind.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 2y agoNo Datadome Javascript: https://www.staradvertiser.com/2025/03/26/breaking-news/doge-staffer-big-balls-aided-cybercrime-ring-records-show/ https://www.staradvertiser.com/2025/03/26/breaking-news/doge... https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/03/26/doge-staffer-big-balls-edward-coristine/82667607007/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/03/26/doge...