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Whistleblower: DOGE Siphoned NLRB Case Data
- dudefeliciano 2y agoanyone else getting a 403 on that link?
- cruzcampo 2y agoThe whole thing reeks of a ploy to undermine the government for oligarchic interests, including selling it out to Russia: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/us/doge-breach-sparks-cybersecurity-crisis-as-russian-ip-tries-to-access-federal-labor-systems-senate-receives-urgent-complain/articleshow/120350816.cms?from=mdr https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/us/d...
- zakki 2y agoIf Russia accessing US data using Russia IP, that is weird. I mean why don't Russia use let's say TOR network?
- Gigachad 2y agoWhy would they even care. There will be no consequences for getting caught.
- teknopaul 2y agoThis. Trump will pardon anyone on his team. The existence of Presidential pardons is a disgrace. There is no pretence of the rule of law.
- raverbashing 2y agoYou mean, his friends and the top levels Make no mistake the 'kids' in doge will be the first to be thrown under the bus
- jfengel 2y agoPresidential pardons were a crucial check on the power of the courts. The Constitution was written to curb excesses of 18th century England. I'd say we didn't use them nearly enough. And now they're being used exclusively for crime. Yet another sound idea turned against us. There just isn't any way to govern a nation which has a majority in favor of destroying democracy.
- mapcars 2y agoIt depends, no consequences is one thing and not being detected at all is another.
- a_bonobo 2y agoIt's kind of like Russians throwing their oligarchs out of windows and then saying it's suicide: everybody knows who did it, and there won't be consequences. That in itself sends a signal: 'we can do this, what are you going to do about it? Nothing.'
- diggan 2y agoI feel like "Being detected, making it obvious and still no consequences" is the Russian playbook, if we look at previous instances. It seems to be on purpose as far as I can tell.
- StopDisinfo910 2y agoWho said it was Russia? The article only mentions a Russian IP.
- freen 2y agoYeah, well, then DOGE employees are routing all of their traffic through Russia? That’s a great idea!
- Muromec 2y agoso we would be busy arguing about the meaning, while they do something obviously terrible again
- bogantech 2y agoSelling out to Russia by checks notes running a docker container
- Dildonics4All 2y ago[flagged]
- honeybadger1 2y agoit's beautiful
- candiddevmike 2y agoYou can ship a lot of things in a container, especially in air gapped environments, including very malicious things.
- tremon 2y agoIn this specific case, I think it's more likely that they want a return to these good times: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_worker_deaths_in_United_States_labor_disputes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_worker_deaths_in_Unite...
- Longwelwind 2y ago> Berulis found that on March 3 one of the DOGE accounts created an opaque, virtual environment known as a “container,” which can be used to build and run programs or scripts without revealing its activities to the rest of the world. Berulis said the container caught his attention because he polled his colleagues and found none of them had ever used containers within the NLRB network. This feels funny to read, for some reasons.
- honeybadger1 2y agoit's written in a way to sound nefarious but is more an admission of technical ignorance
- qwertox 2y agoNot at all: it says DOGE appears to have created a container in a place where containers were never created by NLRB. Tell THAT to someone who doesn't know what Docker is, and it is less informative. Where's the technical ignorance?
- Ukv 2y agoI think it sounds a bit off in the same way as "Linux, a computer program commonly used by hackers, was found on the suspect's machine" does, though not to that extent. It's not saying anything technically untrue, and emphasising the aspects it does arguably makes sense within the context of what the concept is being brought up for, but it comes across as an odd framing for people familiar with the concept in general (using containers for standardization/scaling/etc.)
- delusional 2y agoIt's only odd for people in the middle segment of "just smart enough to understand why you want containers, not experienced enough to understand how they work" We use them for standardization and scaling exactly because they are opaque. I personally believe the explanation shows a deep understanding of the technology, but also a good grasp of what matters politically.
- skc 2y agoIt's darkly humorous how conservative politicians keep gaslighting people by stating that this was the mandate of the people.
- bilbo0s 2y agoI mean, just, Devil's Advocate, but it kind of was the consensus will of the people that voted. And we live in a democracy, so the people who didn't vote don't count. That's the beautiful thing about democracy, you get exactly the government that you deserve. Now I think about it, that can also be the terrifying thing about democracy as well, but you get the idea. You deserve no better, nor any worse, than what you have.
- carefulfungi 2y agoThis is a common refrain but logically empty. It implies, for example, that the minority deserves any hypothetical persecution by the majority simply for being fewer in number at the ballot box. Failing to convince the majority that your rights matter doesn't mean you deserve to be punished.
- nullstyle 2y agoHell no. A country in which the Citizens United decision is in effect is extremely less democratic than a country without such a corrupting influence in play. "Now I think about it..." work on that some more going forward. The country is complicated and Democracy has grades. We're getting an F at the moment.
- bilbo0s 2y agoSigh. There are democratic procedures by which the people can go about changing citizens United. You apparently believe those procedures are not part of democracy, but they are. That the people won’t take the decision, and implement the process to change citizens united, is the fault of the people, not of the democracy. Democracy simply provides the procedures. You make the decisions. For instance, a lot of right wing people spent a lot of time stacking the court to do away with roe v wade. Democracy provided that possibility through procedures it put in place. That’s only one way to do away with citizens united. There are others. None of which you choose to avail yourself of. How is that the democracy’s fault?
- Red_Tarsius 2y agoCybersecurity is not my main field but this sounds beyond suspicious. > Berulis [...] and his colleagues grew even more alarmed when they noticed nearly two dozen login attempts from a Russian Internet address (83.149.30,186) that presented valid login credentials for a DOGE employee account — one that had been created just minutes earlier. Berulis said those attempts were all blocked thanks to rules in place that prohibit logins from non-U.S. locations. > “Whoever was attempting to log in was using one of the newly created accounts that were used in the other DOGE related activities and it appeared they had the correct username and password due to the authentication flow only stopping them due to our no-out-of-country logins policy activating,” Berulis wrote. “There were more than 20 such attempts, and what is particularly concerning is that many of these login attempts occurred within 15 minutes of the accounts being created by DOGE engineers.” Somehow each paragraph reveals something even worse than the last. > Berulis [...] and the associate CIO were informed that “instructions had come down to drop the US-CERT reporting and investigation and we were directed not to move forward or create an official report.” Berulis said it was at this point he decided to go public with his findings.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Tireings 2y agoEspecially how long does it take for them to get a non Russian ip
- ajsnigrutin 2y agoRussian IPs are used, because russia won't help the american authorities with investigations. If I was an american and hacking into <whatever american thing>, I'd use russian IPs too.
- darkerside 2y agoCouldn't you route through a Russian IP for anonymity and then a US IP for access?
- sschueller 2y agoThe Russian IPs may also be a ploy by people at DOGE to cause doubt about the security of the NLRB to get play at a court in order to not disclose company secrets required for cases. I guess DOGE wanted to write a report how they saw Russian IPs login in but it back fired because the people at NLRB have proof DOGE created the accounts. EDIT: edited for clarity.
- amarcheschi 2y agoI do not understand why we should still give these people the benefit of doubt. How many scandals we have to endure? How many evil things need to be done? How many people need to be unnecessarily fired? Edit: the parent comment was edited
- kubb 2y agoThere’s no limit. Everything Musk does can and will be given the benefit of the doubt. It’s a matter of identity, he’s their guy and they stick to him through malpractice and treason.
- amarcheschi 2y agoThe level of faith that there's in some of those communities is... Cultish. These days I was reading on effective altruism, sbf, ftx debacle and macaskill influence on sbf. It's weird how long it is possible to go to justify someone's actions
- kubb 2y agoThey’ll always stick to their team, no matter what. Anything else means losing.
- amarcheschi 2y agoAnd that's what scares me the most about those ideologies. With their p(doom) they basically say oh an infinite damage may happen! And to prevent an infinite damage, of course everything is allowed. And that absolutely doesn't bode well for democracy. And of course it goes well with the oligarchy at the silicon Valley because they see themselves as saviors
- boesboes 2y ago[flagged]
- qwertox 2y agoNo it is not. All it says is that they appear to not be careful enough in what they do. Maybe even childish.
- actionfromafar 2y agoWe can debate the finer points of intent. The situation is that whoever put them there is fine with the current risk of Russian (or whoever, seems to be a party going on) infiltration.
- vharuck 2y agoGoing by Occam's Razor, you'd be correct. The scenario with the least assumptions is the DOGE people are using personal devices too much, one of which had already been compromised. Which makes sense from Russian intelligence's point of view: people who ignore security because it slows them down are easier targets, and people with credentials to multiple systems are more valuable targets. They wouldn't be able to resist when those are the same people.
- Muromec 2y agoOr use a vpn.
- galangalalgol 2y agoIt seemed to me that when trying to log back in they bounced through a Russian vpn to be able to have a mildly plausible explanation. But yeah, your story is simpler and even more disturbing.
- moolcool 2y agoI think you could go the other way with Occam's Razor here. If you observe an extremely Russia-friendly administration coming in and meticulously dismantling American soft power around the world, I think to say that there's no connection would be reaching.
- karel-3d 2y agoMove fast, break things
- Sloowms 2y agoMove fast and break unions.
- Spooks 2y agoWhile bad in sensitive systems, breaking things seems preferable to blatantly giving account information to another country. > There were more than 20 such attempts, and what is particularly concerning is that many of these login attempts occurred within 15 minutes of the accounts being created by DOGE engineers.
- rawling 2y agoA lot of discussion, a week ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43691142 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43691142
- tomhow 2y agoWhistleblower details how DOGE may have taken sensitive NLRB data – https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43691142 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43691142 1139 points/7 days ago/528 comments
- ModernMech 2y agoI'm glad this is still being discussed. It seems like there are 4 main threads that we have to deal with right now as a society, and the severity of each means we have no time to deal with just one. 1. Breakdown of rule of law and political systems. Executive usurped Congress and is currently usurping SCOTUS. Both parties are dead. MAGA replaced the Republican party and Democrats are in the wilderness. 2. Destruction of the federal government through DOGE, which is this thread. 3. Destruction of the economy through tariffs and usurping the Federal Reserve by firing the Fed Chair, turning America into essentially a controlled economy. 4. Destruction of non-government institutions like law firms and academima which are power centers that could resist points 1-3.
- DrillShopper 2y agoRE: 4 The current Attorney General's brother is running for a seat on the Board of Governors of the Washington, DC bar. It is expected that he will carry water for Trump and Bondi and impede any sort of disciplinary action the DC bar may dole out to any attorney working for Trump. Yet another way Trump has his lackeys putting a thumb on the scale.
- 9283409232 2y agoThis is a very important election and I'm surprised no one is talking about it. Maybe because only DC lawyers can vote but I would think dems would want national attention on this.
- submeta 2y ago„Russia accessing US data using Russia IP“ Is it me or does this sound like someone trying to create a Russia connection here? Why whould Russian intelligence do this so amateurishly? As if they want to get caught. - Cui bono?
- exe34 2y agoI wouldn't rule out incompetence, but after the Nazi salute during the inauguration, I'd say it's a demonstration of power - "look at what I can do, and there's nothing you can do about it".
- qwertox 2y agoThey'd use one of their gazillion Digital Ocean VM-instances located in the US.
- adgjlsfhk1 2y ago> As if they want to get caught no. as if they don't care about being caught.
- footlose_3815 2y agoRight because they got caught before and the Supreme Court and the right side of the aisle bailed him out time and time again
- llm_nerd 2y ago
- bix6 2y agoLet’s give them the benefit of the doubt here. DOGE needed to hide its activities while it collected data for the president so that the private citizens chosen by his associates can run analytics on it offsite and decide which cases to pursue. And Russia has a login because they are friendly to the new era of American interests. It sounds so stupid, I can’t believe people still support this madness…
- bangaroo 2y agoat what point does it make sense to say “maybe you don’t deserve the benefit of the doubt” because it sincerely feels well past that point by all measures.
- lenerdenator 2y ago> at what point does it make sense to say “maybe you don’t deserve the benefit of the doubt” Eh. June 2018.
- ToucanLoucan 2y agoI read that comment as a steelman of the position that this is genuine anti-corruption activity, and pointing out via doing so that even if you give them an incredibly unwarranted amount of good faith, it still doesn’t make any remote amount of sense.
- bangaroo 2y agoperfectly reasonable read of it, honestly. i think i'm just very tired by all of this.
- Dumblydorr 2y agoSorry, I don’t follow? Why did it need to hide its activities to run analytics? What statistical analytical purpose is served by wiping logs and removing logging? Since we’re spitballing, Why not try giving them the opposite of benefit of doubt, as well? Something like, the administration is clearly compromised by Russia and hired a bunch of low status hackers, and we’re seeing massive bombs being dropped all over our cybersecurity defenses?
- Havoc 2y agoWild that this isn’t squarely in treason territory
- finnjohnsen2 2y agoSeen from afar; it seems that Trump is so close to absolute power that he can simply brush off what should be scandals with real consequences. How _everyone_ survived the Signal scandal blows my mind
- adestefan 2y agoI could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters.
- littlestymaar 2y agoHe would likely lose a bunch of independent voters but your point still stand if we're only talking about the MAGA crowd.
- throw-qqqqq 2y agoIt’s a Trump-quote from 2016, just FYI https://youtu.be/iTACH1eVIaA https://youtu.be/iTACH1eVIaA https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/01/23/464129029/donald-trump-i-could-shoot-somebody-and-i-wouldnt-lose-any-voters https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/01/23/464129029...
- littlestymaar 2y agoTIL thanks.
- Y_Y 2y agoSame, but that's just because I don't have any voters
- sjsdaiuasgdia 2y ago
- fpauser 2y agoAmerica is being hacked by Russians while the authorities are watching, and nobody is doing anything to prevent it. Trump is obviously more involved in Russia's "greatness" than America's. It seems the cloud data nightmare - "[...] What if Adolf Hitler had access to all the data that is available today [...]" - is coming true. Perhaps we are witnessing the beginning of the end of "all things cloud."
- pk-protect-ai 2y agoHow do you stop kleptocracy from destroying democracy? The USA is an authoritarian country de facto now, though there should be a lot of rail-guards, which should prevent this from happening ... Nobody cares?
- pjc50 2y agoPeople want it as long as it's used against their enemies. The "anti-woke" propaganda, and the anti-immigrant propaganda, have been incredibly effective. People are demanding a police state so it can be used against "MS-13".
- Suzuran 2y agoWe can't stop it. All we can do is try to stay alive until they are satisfied they have extracted everything of value, and then rebuild from whatever is left.
- ncr100 2y agoWe can stop it. Increasingly it appears, we are the only ones who will, also. We have to group together so that we are a recognizable entity. We. According to political science, historically 3.5% of the population protesting non violently is a big enough we.
- neogodless 2y agoInfluence is the enemy. While we should not elect influential people, we want persuasive, charismatic people in office. Catch 22. But I much prefer presidential candidates I'd never heard of before the campaign cycle began to any celebrity. But putting someone massively influential in the executive branch, so influential that they've negated the entire legislative branch, has crippled our guard-rails / checks and balances. Just about every Republican member of congress cares more about what Trump will do if they do not fall in line. To be sure, the overall issue of partisanship does cross the aisle, and has been an issue for decades. But being quite so beholden to the President over constitutional rules and law is largely a new and devastating phenomena.
- ncr100 2y ago
- darkstar_16 2y agoWhy isn't Russia using a compromised US IP ? That shouldn't be hard to get.
- TehCorwiz 2y agoThey’re bragging.
- freen 2y agoThey didn’t think they even needed to do that. The door is supposed to be completely open.
- elaus 2y agoThey probably do, but those instances are not noticed and therefore don't make the news.
- hyperpape 2y agoYeah, I think this should be seriously investigated, but that detail struck me as not making sense.
- q3k 2y agoMy guess is that someone attempted to log in over Tor and they got unlucky with a Russian exit node. Or maybe I'm giving this situation too much credit and we should call a spade by its name.
- jryan49 2y agoMaybe it's someone in the US trying to trick people into thinking it was Russia who did it.
- qwertox 2y agoRelated: Whistleblower statement on anomalies at time of DOGE work at NLRB [pdf] - 16 hours ago, 13 comments - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43755298 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43755298
- techlatest_net 2y ago[dead]
- bgwalter 2y agoThis whole article reads like a comedy. Hidden accounts, login attempts from Russia (they can't afford IP addresses elsewhere?), and then there is this: "Berulis told KrebsOnSecurity he was in the process of filing a support ticket with Microsoft to request more information about the DOGE accounts when his network administrator access was restricted. Now, he’s hoping lawmakers will ask Microsoft to provide more information about what really happened with the accounts." Why does Microsoft have login and account information for a government institution? I'd prefer a mainframe without Windows or Internet access in the basement.
- pjc50 2y ago> Why does Microsoft have login and account information for a government institution? Undoubtedly Office365. Difficult to run a bureaucracy without Word or Outlook. (French/German governments investing in a replacement for this kind of reason: https://www.techspot.com/news/107225-france-germany-unveil-docs-collaborative-tool-rival-us.html https://www.techspot.com/news/107225-france-germany-unveil-d... )
- whalesalad 2y agoAzure cloud.
- getlawgdon 2y ago1. "Russian IPs" give them plausible deniability for people who are Pavlovian for that soundbite. 2. Plausible deniability no longer required for an administration with components that are obviously Kremlin influenced.
- 2y ago
- freen 2y agoLots of government employees are committing real-deal, federal penitentiary crimes here. While Trump is in power, they won’t be convicted, much less investigated. How much incentive do they have to continue to commit as much crime as possible in order to keep Trump in power? Every single story you read about these sorts of things os not only a horrible violation of constitutional rights and the rule of law, it is the creation of an army of incredibly dangerous people who desperately want trump to remain in power and can commit crimes with impunity in order to keep him there.
- selfhoster 2y ago> While Trump is in power, they won’t be convicted https://www.justice.gov/pardon/pardons-granted-president-joseph-biden-2021-present https://www.justice.gov/pardon/pardons-granted-president-jos... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_pardoned_or_granted_clemency_by_the_president_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_pardoned_or_gra... "Joe Biden 2021–2025 8,064"
- freen 2y agoI guess you are in favor of incarcerating people convicted of marijuana possession? That’s the overwhelming bulk of those pardons. The other folks are people that Trump said should be in jail and/or summarily executed.
- Sloowms 2y agoThis is not about cyber security, this is about getting union activity data to the oligarchs. Russian IP's are a useful, probably unintentional, nugget that distracts people from what happened here. Labor actions is the most powerful tool that ordinary people have and this is an effort to take that away. Citizens are already being kidnapped. Dissenter legal immigrants are being dissappeared. Anyone that believes the administration is doing any business other than seizing more power is a useful tool.
- galangalalgol 2y agoIt is also about cyber security. These people were following pretty good practices for what I'm guessing was a shoestring budget. Having this as a potential threat model is enlightening. Edit: but yes, that is a bit in the noise compared to the attempt to end democracy in the us that is underway. If some combination of protests and judicial action manage to wake up congress to act for country instead of party, maybe we could use the momentum to do something good. I'd recommend closing the attack vector in our electoral system that creates two parties that can be so easily polarized against each other. Ranked choice voting and proportional representation or mmp for both house and electoral college would probably generate 4-8 parties and wouldn't require any amendments. Just 60 votes to allow the pr/mmp and then the hard part of convincing all the states to implement it in unison rather than delay to give their dominant party advantage.
- fareesh 2y agoi continue to be amazed by the l33t h4x0rs who are caught because they forgot they have russian ips
- alistairSH 2y agoGenerally, yes. But, in this case, they have Musk's bank accounts and POTUS covering for them, so why bother with different IPs?
- xqcgrek2 2y ago[flagged]
- JKCalhoun 2y agoAgree. Free speech is only reserved for non-biased US politics content.
- jermaustin1 2y agoUS Politics is World Politics. Almost everything we do immediately effects the rest of the world. They have a vested interest in our governance, or lack there of.
- diggan 2y agoMaybe adding a tariff for our comments and upvotes would solve the problem? Premium bandwidth tariffs since these bytes crossed the Atlantic to reach you.
- cardamomo 2y agoSomething needs to be done about Trump apologists flagging non-political articles that discuss technical issues relevant to this community.
- computerthings 2y ago[dead]
- Muromec 2y agoOne thing you can do is not sleep. Sleeping is totally in your hands and you can fix that
- jjulius 2y agoI move past, and don't click on, articles I don't care about all the time. That approach takes a lot less time/effort than it does to click on them and post something about it. Doing that also means that they leave my mind almost instantaneously, rather than sticking around in my head after having thought about what to say. Downvote and move on.
- 2y ago
- Neil44 2y agoRemoving admin from people who don't need it is 100% the correct thing to do according to any IT guidelines you could quote. And of course, every single user will whine that they're special and really really need it. With regards to the rest of the article, there's definitely stuff to be investigated here but I don't see the investigation yet.
- pcaharrier 2y ago"Removing admin from people who don't need it is 100% the correct thing to do" Indeed. And if you look at the picture of the email from the deputy CIO he mentions SCuBA (see here: https://www.cisa.gov/resources-tools/services/secure-cloud-business-applications-scuba-project https://www.cisa.gov/resources-tools/services/secure-cloud-b...). Cleaning up unnecessary admin roles is exactly the kind of thing that CISA itself is requiring agencies to go in and do.
- bayindirh 2y agoFrom my understanding, the whistleblower is one of the admins, so why he shouldn't have the rights?
- GranularRecipe 2y ago> Removing admin from people who don't need it is 100% the correct thing to do according to any IT guidelines you could quote. And of course, every single user will whine that they're special and really really need it. You assume that "suddenly none of the IT employees at the agency could do their jobs properly anymore" is whining and not substantial? Shouldn't be least privilege principle a culture (a standardised and automated process) and not something that happens ad hoc?
- Neil44 2y agoYes I do assume that... I've worked in IT for a long time. That phrase in a ticket would be an immediate eye roll from me. A lot of the quotes in the article trigger my eye roll reflex actually. But there is some stuff in there that warrants an explanation/double check to be fair.
- deleted 2y ago
- lenerdenator 2y agoRemember: The behavior will continue until an effective negative stimulus is introduced.
- ncr100 2y ago3.5% of a population needs to protest and that historically predicts country wide change, I heard once. > based on the research of political scientist Erica Chenoweth
- lazide 2y agoAnd the only effective negative stimulus here is locking up people in jail and/or violent action. Which no one in the opposition will allow anyone in the opposition to do. Potentially for good reason (it would make them a legitimate target for violent retribution), but which just means the war was lost before it started. Which is why people aren’t fighting back much either - because the smart ones are looking at the score going ‘I’m just going to get murdered fighting a war you already lost because you refuse to let anyone use weapons that will work’.
- ncr100 2y agoStart with protesting, non violently. Big enough protest historically predicts country wide change
- lazide 2y agoThis, this right here is the shit I’m talking about.
- lenerdenator 2y agoWe've been doing that for ten years now. Standing in a city park with a sign that says "Dumbledore wouldn't have let this happen" isn't working. [0] [0] https://preview.redd.it/some-of-my-favorite-photos-from-hands-off-kcmo-v0-stmll6mk2ite1.jpg?width=1080&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=2d699599d3c7ed8924e44be825a0f831e0c7e69d https://preview.redd.it/some-of-my-favorite-photos-from-hand...
- qwertox 2y ago> “Our acting chief information officer told us not to adhere to standard operating procedure with the DOGE account creation, and there was to be no logs or records made of the accounts created for DOGE employees, who required the highest level of access,” Berulis wrote of their instructions after that meeting. How can this be true?
- diggan 2y ago> How can this be true? What exactly sounds unbelievable? Considering Berulis was an administrator and DOGE requested administrator accounts, they'd both have the ability to turn on/off logging as they wish, wouldn't they?
- qwertox 2y agoI mean, from a legal point of view?
- diggan 2y agoIf you mean "how can it be legal?", I'm not sure that matters if there is no one around to enforce the laws.
- Muromec 2y ago>"Look," he says, "I'm sorry for reminding you of this, but if we still had laws, the Mafia would be a criminal organization." >"But we don't have laws," she says, "so it's just another chain."
- eCa 2y agoThe US president was basically bragging on live TV the other day about disregarding a 9-0 supreme court verdict against his administration. Following laws is not exactly of the highest priority.
- bretpiatt 2y agoThe screenshot of email from DCIO is what should be getting rolled out. This is not suspicious by itself from my perspective. SCuBA is a CISA project that improves security. Source: https://www.cisa.gov/resources-tools/services/secure-cloud-business-applications-scuba-project https://www.cisa.gov/resources-tools/services/secure-cloud-b...
- Fokamul 2y agoOmg he only screenshot middle of screen, he didn't leak whole Powershell scripts DOGE buffoons ran, right?
- zelon88 2y agoThis needs to be investigated by a mainstream outlet like 60 Minutes.
- zelon88 2y agoI just sent it to them and I urge everyone else to do the same.
- pcaharrier 2y agoNotice that the email from the deputy CIO mentions SCuBA.This is the "Secure Cloud Business Application Project" from CISA.If you look at two of the required policies you will find this: "A minimum of two users and a maximum of eight users SHALL be provisioned with the Global Administrator role."[1] and "Privileged users SHALL be provisioned with finer grained roles instead of Global Administrator."[2] So at least for the agency-wide removal of security administrator roles, that would seem to be unrelated to anything DOGE was doing. The NLRB was supposed to be doing that anyway. [1] https://www.cisa.gov/resources-tools/services/m365-entra-id#MSAAD71v1 https://www.cisa.gov/resources-tools/services/m365-entra-id#... [2] https://www.cisa.gov/resources-tools/services/m365-entra-id#MSAAD72v1 https://www.cisa.gov/resources-tools/services/m365-entra-id#...
- GranularRecipe 2y agoIs this a new policy? Otherwise, why this sudden and broad implementation so that "suddenly none of the IT employees at the agency could do their jobs properly anymore" (according to the source).
- pcaharrier 2y agoIt's pretty new, yes. The binding operational directive from CISA only came down in December. Agencies are in the midst of running the assessment tools and implementing the changes right now. See here: https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/directives/bod-25-01-implementing-secure-practices-cloud-services https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/directives/bod-25-01-implem....
- ImPostingOnHN 2y agoThe policy you linked doesn't say "agency-wide removal of security administrator roles". It discusses a limit. That says nothing about how many there were here, how it suddenly changed, how elmu's DOGE was able to gain administrator access despite these restrictions, how elmu's DOGE administrators were chosen, etc.
- pcaharrier 2y ago
- rq1 2y agoAnother masterclass from the DODGY department.
- smrtinsert 2y agoHard to see how this whole fiasco won't end up in charges at very least for negligence. Easy to see why leadership is signaling they have nothing to do with DOGE but are letting their engineers take the heat
- whalesalad 2y agoNothing will happen here until the MAGA movement is destroyed. We are a degraded cluster with 2 of 3 nodes down (executive and legislative). Judiciary is holding on ... but they don't have much power to actually enforce anything. So this type of behavior will continue unmitigated for at least the next 1,369 days.
- egonschiele 2y agoCould someone outline the implications of this?
- tonetheman 2y ago[dead]
- wyldfire 2y agoIt's interesting, because Edward Coristine was fired "cybersecurity firm Path Network in 2022 for allegedly leaking internal company information to a competitor" [1]. Seems like an ideal candidate for recruitment by a foreign espionage service. And he'd used accounts on a cybercrime social network [2]. How in the world is this person still able to work anywhere near the government? But if Russian spies wanted to access US Gov resources, why would they use their own IPs as the origin? Unless getting caught was deliberate, to foment discord? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Coristine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Coristine [2] https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/02/teen-on-musks-doge-team-graduated-from-the-com/ https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/02/teen-on-musks-doge-team-...
- zmgsabst 2y agoAs a PSYOP, it’s great: - create account - attempt to access whatever records, don’t worry about succeeding - wait for US news to cause fragmentation Undermining US unity is an objective of Russian influence, as we’ve seen from the spectrum of advocacy groups they funded ads for. - - - - - There’s also the suspicious timing that this happened just as the US was engaged with Russia to negotiate peace in Ukraine — and that this embarrasses the regime doing so and encourages a feud with Russia. (As an indication that it may not be so simple.) Spying is complicated.
- monkeyfun 2y agoAptly observed. I'm not even sure if it's what I believe is the case, but there's some serious merit in this line of thought. It could make a lot of sense even if they have better means of access, and even with this attention risking the compromise of said access, simply because of how valuable even slight furthering of any division and political incoherence is right now both mid and long term. Still wouldn't seem the more likely Plan A, as success would obviously be even better than such an apparently close failure, but I can see it being used to justify acting. Succeed at the intended plan and you win -- fail and you still win, just a little less so.
- ModernMech 2y ago> How in the world is this person still able to work anywhere near the government? It's a pretty long road, but it goes like this: 1. SCOTUS gets rid of campaign finance laws, opens up billionaires buying elections. 2. The world's wealthiest billionaire, Elon Musk, bought the 2024 US presidential election, and put himself in charge of the "government efficiently" office. 3. Elon Musk chose Edward Coristine, and no one said "no" because 1) everyone who would have said "no" has already been fired or pushed out and 2) no one else at the White House could actually pass a rigorous FBI background clearance, so they're just giving them to everyone by fiat.
- cyberjerkXX 2y agoI'm a cyber security incident responder. Firstly, let me claim my bias - I don't trust Kerbs after his FUD reporting about the CVE totally not losing funding. I started my cyber career in federal government contracting as a SOC Analyst and eventually became an incident responder. My first doubt - the NLRB has a SOC ran by an MSSP/government contractor. Data destruction events and anomalous connections would 10000% cause security event alerts to trigger. Sentinel has OOB detection for anomalies for events that the whistle blower states in the article. My Second doubt - CISA and US-CERT are not a bunch for scrubs. If their official statement is that it's not a security incident then I trust them. Third doubt - If you see something suspicious then you have every right to report it to the SOC, and contain the suspicious activity to the best of your ability. If you don't have permissions then report it to the SOC. All malicious activity gets investigated (unless the MSSP is a joke but then they become liable and will get sued if it turns into an incident that results in damages). Fourth doubt - Kerbs and the whistleblower are framing this as a sophisticated nation-state attack leveraging DOGE to exploit the NLRB. But that doesn’t add up. Nation-state actors don’t blow their cover because they proxy with clean IPs from within the target country. The IP address in question (83.149.30[.]186) has had a bad reputation in open-source intelligence for over a year, linked to credential stuffing and scanning activity. Using an IP like that in a high-level operation is like flying a spy plane into enemy airspace with inflatable tube men and disco balls strapped to the wings. Attacks of this complexity require significant time and resources—no serious actor would risk burning their investment by using an IP already flagged and based in Russia. Last doubt - The "Security Engineer" took a screenshot of the user names then gave it to the media....You're expecting me to trust what you say while you commit a data leak - nice one.
- whalesalad 2y agoLikewise it is difficult to take your remarks seriously, especially with -13 account karma. Your sentiments remind me of the widespread gaslighting currently occurring within the GOP.
- notepad0x90 2y agoThere is a small but significant chance that this whole admin's activities might be revealed without doubt as sponsored and facilitated by Russia. That may or may not result in a proper war with Russia. Either way, it would be scarily devastating.
- SketchySeaBeast 2y ago> That may or may not result in a proper war with Russia How? The people who would need to declare war are the ones compromised. Are we still holding out hope that there's some sanity in the government's leadership, or that there's some sort of accountability to be had?
- notepad0x90 2y agoIt just comes down to popular sentiment. if it pisses of the american people enough, then it will be similar to the Iraq war in terms of almost everyone in congress supporting a declaration of war. I get what you're saying, but I like to think there are at least a majority in the US military that would desire a war in such a situation. So long as the evidence is indisputable, like Putin himself declaring what he did.
- carrja99 2y agoDOGE will be an interesting case study in the years to come to say the least. A friend was contacted by them in an attempt to recruit him to help rebuild the nations aviation systems from the ground up as a 1099 contractor reporting directly to Sean Duffy. The recruiter advertised it as a side hustle on evenings and weekends paying an abmysal hourly wage. When my friend pointed out that the comp was far below what he makes, the recruiter countered with the prestige that will come with having worked for DOGE.
- pjc50 2y ago> prestige that will come with having worked for DOGE. This seems like a highly fragile currency. If things continue to deteriorate a future administration may end up running its own reprisals trials against DOGE staff.
- mdhb 2y agoI mean I think it would be a fair assumption that there’s a very very real chance that havinng worked at DOGE will come with credible threats to your safety in the future. This is a team that is currently in the process of killing peoples grandparents by cutting them off from social security, building databases of immigrants and people with autism among a million other fuckups. People aren’t going to just let that slide. I really don’t think they should expect to live in comfort and anonymity for the rest of their days if you look at how these kinds of things have played out historically with only a few counterexamples (I.e the East German Stasi come to mind as one)
- morkalork 2y agoHiring a whole bunch of contractors is almost providing cover. "No, I didn't work on the gulag candidate selection tool, I was just a FAA navigation coder". During the downfall of ISIS there was a funny quote from a commander in the Iraqi military along the lines of "if you listen to what the prisoners said, you'd think ISIS was entirely staffed by innocent drivers and cooks and never any jihadists"
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- jmyeet 2y agoWhen this story first broke, my initial thought was that Elon was using this unprecedented and probably illegal access to access case data to benefit his companies and possibly others [1], most specifically for Tesla where unionization remains a threat to profits [2]. I don't know what the Russia connection is. Blue MAGA types like to contend that Trump is a Russian asset. There are definitely some weird connections going back to Trump purchasing TVs for a hotel in the 1980s [3] and some weird timings of the movements of Viktor Orban between Putin and Trump [4] but I just don't buy the Russian asset narrative. I consider it way more likely that individual DOGE people have been compromised by foreign actors and possibly without their knowedge (eg compromised email or computers). We're only 3 months into this. The amount of damage that is going to be done over the next 4 years is hard to comprehend. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43701222 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43701222 [2]: https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-pay-vs-ford-gm-uaw-union-factory-workers-2024-2 https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-pay-vs-ford-gm-uaw-uni... [3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1FHtBu5H8w&t=36s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1FHtBu5H8w&t=36s [4]: https://www.axios.com/2024/07/12/trump-orban-meeting-mar-a-lago https://www.axios.com/2024/07/12/trump-orban-meeting-mar-a-l...
- arunabha 2y agoAt this point, the number of probable explanations for antics DOGE in particular and the administration in general are close to zero. One somewhat far fetched(till recently) explanation floated for the all out war on institutions waged by the Trump administration is that the goal is to destroy the last remaining entity in this country that is capable of standing up to corporations. The idea seemed laughable just a couple of months back. The fact that it seems very probable now shows just how bad the situation is. At what point will Congress act? Or will they simply sit by as the country is destroyed from the inside?
- rileytg 2y agoI saw this around 9:15am eastern time. By 9:45am it is no longer on 1, 2 or 3rd page of HN. Why?
- timmytokyo 2y agoAsk yourself who runs this web site.
- kmitz 2y agoHow come this article has disappeared from HN front page ? Posted 2 hours ago and with 649 points
- whalesalad 2y agoI was just asking myself the same thing.
- kmitz 2y agoThe faq says rankings can be affected by automated moderation. I'd appreciate to have this clarified by a mod if one happens to read my words. Thanks How are stories ranked? The basic algorithm divides points by a power of the time since a story was submitted. Comments in threads are ranked the same way. Other factors affecting rank include user flags, anti-abuse software, software which demotes overheated discussions, account or site weighting, and moderator action.
- whalesalad 2y ago> software which demotes overheated discussions i'm inclined to think this is it. can't have the populous too rowdy - gotta settle them down.
- nineplay 2y agoSounds like something Neville Chamberlain would have supported. We will at last have peace in our message boards.
- jerrygenser 2y agoIt's not flagged. Is it shadow banned? Is that a thing in hacker news?
- kmitz 2y agoI hope not. It would be such a disappointment.
- reimertz 2y ago@dang what happened to this post? It was at the top like 30 mins ago and now it seems shadow-banned.
- tomhow 2y agoIt was flagged by community members and downweighted (correctly) by a moderator for being a dupe: Whistleblower details how DOGE may have taken sensitive NLRB data – https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43691142 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43691142 1139 points/7 days ago/528 comments
- mfkp 2y agoIt's a separate writeup by a separate author though, and with 500+ comments, it still seems relevant. From #1 on HN to completely disappeared. Bring it back, I say.
- dang 2y agoOn HN, dupeness is more a question of whether the underlying story is substantively the same or not—or, to put it slightly differently, whether the follow-up submission is able to support a substantively different discussion or not. In this case, the answers appear to be yes, it's substantively the same story, and no, it can't support a substantively different discussion than the previous major thread. That's why we'd treat the follow-up submission as a dupe. This is in no way passing judgment about the importance of the story! It's just that if we weren't careful and proactive about moderating HN in this way, the frontpage would rapidly fill up with variations on the hottest stories of the moment, and avoiding repetition is a core principle here (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=curiosity%20repetition%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...). I wrote a long explanation about exactly this the other day—if you (or anyone) is willing to take a look at that (assuming you have the stamina) and still have a question that isn't already answered there, I'd be happy to take a crack at it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43738815 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43738815. p.s. The current case is unfortunate because the follow-up/duplicate post came a week later than the original thread. If it were hours later, or a day or two later, as is more typical, we would merge the threads and in this way avoid a split discussion. But 7 days is too wide a chasm to merge across.
- 9283409232 2y agoThis was on the front page and mysteriously dropped off. I don't know the mechanism for this so it is most likely innocent and the system working as planned but I do find it odd that every post critical of the Trump administration gets flagged or gets dropped off the front page.
- whalesalad 2y agovery odd indeed - some insight from the moderators would be appreciated.
- mindcrash 2y agoI am Dutch and know of at least one pretty harsh lawsuit against a former employee of Tesla with autism against Tesla in the Netherlands regarding the work environment, sooo... Also baffled they can still do shit like this with Senate and Congress looking the other way...
- josefritzishere 2y agoDOGE seems to be on a bit of a crime spree.
- qwery 2y agoSad to see it if this gets killed as a [dupe]. The story has been posted twice, yes. The first submission[0] is ~10 hours older and has 3 comments on it. This one has 348 comments at time of writing. If you care about having an interesting discussion, this one's clearly where it's at. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43758392 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43758392
- zoba 2y agoAnd thats exactly what happened. Insane.
- binarymax 2y agoWe’ve seen lots of posts about DOGE get killed. It’s not far fetched to think they are actively working to keep news like this off HN’s front page.
- disgruntledphd2 2y agoIt's important to remember that a large proportion of the community just wants to see tech stories here, and not anything perceived as political. And I totally get where they're coming from (this stuff is super exhausting and depressing). That being said, this story in particular seems squarely in the HN wheelhouse, but I can understand that others disagree. tl;dr probably not a conspiracy, just people who think differently than you do.
- whalesalad 2y agoSo odd. The dupe detector usually works really well. 9 times out of 10 when I submit a story, it already exists, and I just get redirected there. I rely on it actually, knowing that I can submit things freely and they will either get collapsed into the existing one, or start a new story. This time it did not work? URLs are the same. Sometimes people dupe the dupe detector with an arbitrary query string ... but in this case they are truly identical. Odd.