5 ms·

This part is really damning: a real efficiency audit might need a lot of access to look for signs of hidden activity, but they’d never need to hide traces of wh

by acdha 2y ago

This part is really damning: a real efficiency audit might need a lot of access to look for signs of hidden activity, but they’d never need to hide traces of what they did: > Meanwhile, according to the disclosure and records of internal communications, members of the DOGE team asked that their activities not be logged on the system and then appeared to try to cover their tracks behind them, turning off monitoring tools and manually deleting records of their access — evasive behavior that several cybersecurity experts interviewed by NPR compared to what criminal or state-sponsored hackers might do. The subsequent message about Russian activity could be a coincidence–Internet background noise-but given how these are not very technically skilled and are moving very fast in systems they don’t understand, I’d be completely unsurprised to learn that they unintentionally left something exposed or that one of them has been compromised.

atkailash 2y ago
[dead]
avs733 2y ago
>A real efficiency audit might need a lot of access to look for signs of hidden activity, but they’d never need to hide traces of what they did In fact I would imagine they would do exactly the opposite because they would look at the mere ability to hide what they did as an audit finding.
- Terr_ 2y ago
  "The new bank-manager has hired some friends of his to improve the security of the bank vault." "We already have an audit from last year, we just need the funding to improv--" "Oh, and they want to turn off all the security cameras next weekend. You'll know it's them because they'll be wearing masks." "Sir, we have a responsibility to our customers, we can't ju--" "Do it or you're fired."
  - avs733 2y ago
    monday morning: manager: "the auditors found all of our money missing" ::silence:: manager: "they are clearly doing an amazing job, and you are all fired for allowing such fraud waste and abuse"
ndsipa_pomu 2y ago
> criminal or state-sponsored hackers It looks to be both
tjpnz 2y ago
Everything's going to have to be replaced and it's going to be hugely expensive. But that's not going to happen until at least 2029 - plenty of time for bad actors to get settled in and cause real damage.
- c-linkage 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - aftbit 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - Angostura 2y ago
      > Do you honestly believe there have ever been _fair_ elections in America? Yes.
      - baconbrand 2y ago
        Yes for part of the country. Gerrymandering, long lines, distant polling locations... Voting day isn't a holiday, voting hours aren't 24/7, and not all states have laws requiring time off of work to vote. For a lot of red states, elections simply are not fair.
    - johnnyanmac 2y ago
      >Do you honestly believe there have ever been _fair_ elections in America? With a confidence level of some 99.9%+ of votes being legitimate, yes. with 155 million voters in 2024 nationals, that leaves a margin of about 155k illegitimate votes. Elections can be super close (see 2000), but any fraud that went undetected would not sway most American elections. At least not with this electoral college system. >Do you honestly believe there will not be at least _some_ kind of election in 2028? Yeah probably. I'm not even sure if Trump will get that far, though. we'll have to see how damning this SAVE act is on women first and if the courts strike this down in the next 18 months or so. >Even if it's staged, form must be respected. When has Trump ever done that? most other leaders I disagree with still did this. But not him.
throw0101c 2y ago
> This part is really damning: a real efficiency audit There were already people auditing departments, but they got fired early on: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inspector_general#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inspector_general#United_State... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_dismissals_of_inspectors_general https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_dismissals_of_inspectors_... There's even an entire agency devoted to auditing: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Accountability_Office https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Accountability_Offi... Trying to find efficiency by bringing in the private sector is not a new thing: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Commission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Commission * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownlow_Committee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownlow_Committee * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoover_Commission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoover_Commission * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Partnership_for_Reinventing_Government https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Partnership_for_Reinv...
- actionfromafar 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - asciii 2y ago
    We let the word PayPal Mafia get to their head
  - rsynnott 2y ago
    Not entirely, though under rather different circumstances: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Underworld https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Underworld
  - throw0101d 2y ago
    > But bringing in the mob sector? Is that new? No. But getting rid of cronyism/nepotism did happen at one point: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_service_reform_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_service_reform_in_the_Un... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoils_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoils_system
Applejinx 2y ago
Compromised implies they're not the Russian team to start with. I'd be looking for one of them to lose nerve and betray that ALL of them are the Russian team.
- dionian 2y ago
  I'm going to wait a while and see if this information pans out. Remember when there was a huge scandal about Trump communicating with Russia but then it just turned out to be a spam email? https://theintercept.com/2016/11/01/heres-the-problem-with-the-story-connecting-russia-to-donald-trumps-email-server/ https://theintercept.com/2016/11/01/heres-the-problem-with-t...
z3c0 2y ago
The use of DNS tunneling and skirting logs makes my head spin. Even if justification of exfiltrating 10GB of sensitive data could be made, there's widely available means of doing so that aren't the methods of state-sponsored hackers and the like.
- codedokode 2y ago
  "DNS tunneling" (abnormal number of DNS requests) actually might be caused by a software that doesn't use DNS cache. I was once banned by 8.8.8.8 (Google's DNS server) for sending too many requests because youtube-dl was making a DNS request for each tiny segment of a video (and there were thousands of them). Well, maybe one shouldn't be using Google DNS server when violating ToU to download Google's video.
  - z3c0 2y ago
    But an abnormal number of DNS requests AND recorded outbound data totaling 10GB, with no other obvious indication of a less-subversive means of data transfer? I'd be very surprised if youtube-dl could come close to even 10MB of DNS requests at its chattiest
freejazz 2y ago
It also contradicts the idea that they are acting transparently.
Aurornis 2y ago
> The subsequent message about Russian activity could be a coincidence–Internet background noise These weren't random login attempts. It says the Russian login attempts had the correct login credentials of newly created accounts. If the article is correct, the accounts were created and then shortly afterward the correct credentials were used to attempt a login from a Russian source. That's a huge issue if true. Could be that someone's laptop is compromised.
- acdha 2y ago
  It certainly needs a full investigation but I don’t want to presume the results. It wouldn’t be the first time some tool reported a wildly incorrect location for an IP address and the focus should be on DOGE breaking a number of federal laws and doing things which no legitimate auditor ever needs to do.
  - lostlogin 2y ago
    The login attempt was made by someone 115 years old, receiving social security payments and living in Russia.
- not_kurt_godel 2y ago
  Is it really a compromise if the opps (or should I say: "opps") are deliberately welcomed in with open arms? Granting Russians access here wouldn't even crack the top 10 gifts this administration has given to Putin in the last month.
  - DrNosferatu 2y ago
    Then not “opps”, but instead “ooops”.
  - Terr_ 2y ago
    Reminder that Trump wanted the US to partner with a foreign country to protect American elections (!?) and the country he wanted to help "secure" fair elections was the Russian dictatorship. (!!) https://www.politico.com/story/2018/07/16/trump-putin-russia-cybersecurity-689470 https://www.politico.com/story/2018/07/16/trump-putin-russia...
chrisweekly 2y ago
"Interviewed by NPR" -- ok we can stop right there. Remember, they're dangerous enemies of the state, along with PBS and Fred Rogers.
- acdha 2y ago
  Sarcasm isn’t appropriate for something this serious.
  - mindslight 2y ago
    Sarcasm isn't the problem per se. But it's very important to remember Poe's law, and to avoid adding to the noise. If what you're going to say is just a parody of something a Kool-aid drinking anti-American destructionist might say, there's no need.
    - chrisweekly 2y ago
      Sorry, I'm sure you're both right. I'm just having a very hard time figuring out how to respond to the awful / obscene / insane / absurd nightmare unfolding in this country I love. It's destroying things I care deeply about. My sarcasm was probably the wrong response. I wish I could better approximate the heartfelt, erudite, conflicted brilliance of pieces like this: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/twilight-of-the-edgelords https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/twilight-of-the-edgelords At least I can share it. And wait. And hope.
      - Nevermark 2y ago
        I am learning whole new levels of not “caring”. By which I mean, stoicism is really becoming a survival stance for me. And I recommend it for others. Some people will retreat from the news, but that’s not me. What is happening is going to cause a great deal of lasting mental hardships, as well as the practical damage. Second tack: remember we are still in history. History has always been crazy, with only short periods of less crazy. A third tack is considering how to support other people, instead of needing support. Best to find a way to reliably maintain internal peace and health right now. Things are unlikely to stabilize soon, without a miracle. Or eventually bounce back. But that could take a long time. And this could just be the preamble for much worse disasters. Gulp. At least, this is how I am prepping myself! Scary times.
jmyeet 2y ago
So NLRB handles confidential complaints. The complainant's idenity might be kept confidential. Exact details may be kept confidential. Why aren't we to believe that this is Elon Musk going after anyone filing a complaint to the NLRB (from X, Twitter or SpaceX) or, worse yet (from Elon's POV), anyone potentially organizing any unionization effort? There's absolutely no reason DOGE should have access to this information. There's absolutely no reason their activity, such as what information they accessed, should be hidden.
tomaskafka 2y ago
It appears that “appearing dumb and clumsy while opening the doors for enemies” is a plausibly deniable mode of whole Trump’s administration.

by acdha 2y ago

atkailash 2y ago

[dead]

avs733 2y ago

>A real efficiency audit might need a lot of access to look for signs of hidden activity, but they’d never need to hide traces of what they did In fact I would imagine they would do exactly the opposite because they would look at the mere ability to hide what they did as an audit finding.

Terr_ 2y ago
"The new bank-manager has hired some friends of his to improve the security of the bank vault." "We already have an audit from last year, we just need the funding to improv--" "Oh, and they want to turn off all the security cameras next weekend. You'll know it's them because they'll be wearing masks." "Sir, we have a responsibility to our customers, we can't ju--" "Do it or you're fired."
- avs733 2y ago
  monday morning: manager: "the auditors found all of our money missing" ::silence:: manager: "they are clearly doing an amazing job, and you are all fired for allowing such fraud waste and abuse"

ndsipa_pomu 2y ago

> criminal or state-sponsored hackers It looks to be both

tjpnz 2y ago

Everything's going to have to be replaced and it's going to be hugely expensive. But that's not going to happen until at least 2029 - plenty of time for bad actors to get settled in and cause real damage.

c-linkage 2y ago
[flagged]
- aftbit 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - Angostura 2y ago
    > Do you honestly believe there have ever been _fair_ elections in America? Yes.
    - baconbrand 2y ago
      Yes for part of the country. Gerrymandering, long lines, distant polling locations... Voting day isn't a holiday, voting hours aren't 24/7, and not all states have laws requiring time off of work to vote. For a lot of red states, elections simply are not fair.
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    >Do you honestly believe there have ever been _fair_ elections in America? With a confidence level of some 99.9%+ of votes being legitimate, yes. with 155 million voters in 2024 nationals, that leaves a margin of about 155k illegitimate votes. Elections can be super close (see 2000), but any fraud that went undetected would not sway most American elections. At least not with this electoral college system. >Do you honestly believe there will not be at least _some_ kind of election in 2028? Yeah probably. I'm not even sure if Trump will get that far, though. we'll have to see how damning this SAVE act is on women first and if the courts strike this down in the next 18 months or so. >Even if it's staged, form must be respected. When has Trump ever done that? most other leaders I disagree with still did this. But not him.

throw0101c 2y ago

> This part is really damning: a real efficiency audit There were already people auditing departments, but they got fired early on: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inspector_general#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inspector_general#United_State... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_dismissals_of_inspectors_general https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_dismissals_of_inspectors_... There's even an entire agency devoted to auditing: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Accountability_Office https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Accountability_Offi... Trying to find efficiency by bringing in the private sector is not a new thing: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Commission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Commission * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownlow_Committee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownlow_Committee * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoover_Commission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoover_Commission * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Partnership_for_Reinventing_Government https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Partnership_for_Reinv...

actionfromafar 2y ago
[flagged]
- asciii 2y ago
  We let the word PayPal Mafia get to their head
- rsynnott 2y ago
  Not entirely, though under rather different circumstances: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Underworld https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Underworld
- throw0101d 2y ago
  > But bringing in the mob sector? Is that new? No. But getting rid of cronyism/nepotism did happen at one point: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_service_reform_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_service_reform_in_the_Un... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoils_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoils_system

Applejinx 2y ago

Compromised implies they're not the Russian team to start with. I'd be looking for one of them to lose nerve and betray that ALL of them are the Russian team.

dionian 2y ago
I'm going to wait a while and see if this information pans out. Remember when there was a huge scandal about Trump communicating with Russia but then it just turned out to be a spam email? https://theintercept.com/2016/11/01/heres-the-problem-with-the-story-connecting-russia-to-donald-trumps-email-server/ https://theintercept.com/2016/11/01/heres-the-problem-with-t...

z3c0 2y ago

The use of DNS tunneling and skirting logs makes my head spin. Even if justification of exfiltrating 10GB of sensitive data could be made, there's widely available means of doing so that aren't the methods of state-sponsored hackers and the like.

codedokode 2y ago
"DNS tunneling" (abnormal number of DNS requests) actually might be caused by a software that doesn't use DNS cache. I was once banned by 8.8.8.8 (Google's DNS server) for sending too many requests because youtube-dl was making a DNS request for each tiny segment of a video (and there were thousands of them). Well, maybe one shouldn't be using Google DNS server when violating ToU to download Google's video.
- z3c0 2y ago
  But an abnormal number of DNS requests AND recorded outbound data totaling 10GB, with no other obvious indication of a less-subversive means of data transfer? I'd be very surprised if youtube-dl could come close to even 10MB of DNS requests at its chattiest

freejazz 2y ago

It also contradicts the idea that they are acting transparently.

Aurornis 2y ago

> The subsequent message about Russian activity could be a coincidence–Internet background noise These weren't random login attempts. It says the Russian login attempts had the correct login credentials of newly created accounts. If the article is correct, the accounts were created and then shortly afterward the correct credentials were used to attempt a login from a Russian source. That's a huge issue if true. Could be that someone's laptop is compromised.

acdha 2y ago
It certainly needs a full investigation but I don’t want to presume the results. It wouldn’t be the first time some tool reported a wildly incorrect location for an IP address and the focus should be on DOGE breaking a number of federal laws and doing things which no legitimate auditor ever needs to do.
- lostlogin 2y ago
  The login attempt was made by someone 115 years old, receiving social security payments and living in Russia.
not_kurt_godel 2y ago
Is it really a compromise if the opps (or should I say: "opps") are deliberately welcomed in with open arms? Granting Russians access here wouldn't even crack the top 10 gifts this administration has given to Putin in the last month.
- DrNosferatu 2y ago
  Then not “opps”, but instead “ooops”.
- Terr_ 2y ago
  Reminder that Trump wanted the US to partner with a foreign country to protect American elections (!?) and the country he wanted to help "secure" fair elections was the Russian dictatorship. (!!) https://www.politico.com/story/2018/07/16/trump-putin-russia-cybersecurity-689470 https://www.politico.com/story/2018/07/16/trump-putin-russia...

chrisweekly 2y ago

"Interviewed by NPR" -- ok we can stop right there. Remember, they're dangerous enemies of the state, along with PBS and Fred Rogers.

acdha 2y ago
Sarcasm isn’t appropriate for something this serious.
- mindslight 2y ago
  Sarcasm isn't the problem per se. But it's very important to remember Poe's law, and to avoid adding to the noise. If what you're going to say is just a parody of something a Kool-aid drinking anti-American destructionist might say, there's no need.
  - chrisweekly 2y ago
    Sorry, I'm sure you're both right. I'm just having a very hard time figuring out how to respond to the awful / obscene / insane / absurd nightmare unfolding in this country I love. It's destroying things I care deeply about. My sarcasm was probably the wrong response. I wish I could better approximate the heartfelt, erudite, conflicted brilliance of pieces like this: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/twilight-of-the-edgelords https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/twilight-of-the-edgelords At least I can share it. And wait. And hope.
    - Nevermark 2y ago
      I am learning whole new levels of not “caring”. By which I mean, stoicism is really becoming a survival stance for me. And I recommend it for others. Some people will retreat from the news, but that’s not me. What is happening is going to cause a great deal of lasting mental hardships, as well as the practical damage. Second tack: remember we are still in history. History has always been crazy, with only short periods of less crazy. A third tack is considering how to support other people, instead of needing support. Best to find a way to reliably maintain internal peace and health right now. Things are unlikely to stabilize soon, without a miracle. Or eventually bounce back. But that could take a long time. And this could just be the preamble for much worse disasters. Gulp. At least, this is how I am prepping myself! Scary times.

jmyeet 2y ago

So NLRB handles confidential complaints. The complainant's idenity might be kept confidential. Exact details may be kept confidential. Why aren't we to believe that this is Elon Musk going after anyone filing a complaint to the NLRB (from X, Twitter or SpaceX) or, worse yet (from Elon's POV), anyone potentially organizing any unionization effort? There's absolutely no reason DOGE should have access to this information. There's absolutely no reason their activity, such as what information they accessed, should be hidden.

tomaskafka 2y ago

It appears that “appearing dumb and clumsy while opening the doors for enemies” is a plausibly deniable mode of whole Trump’s administration.