Wired reported this week that a 19-year-old working for Elon Musk‘s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was given access to sensitive US government systems even though his past association with cybercrime communities should have precluded him from gaining the necessary security clearances to do so. As today’s story explores, 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.
Since President Trump’s second inauguration, Musk’s DOGE team has gained access to a truly staggering amount of personal and sensitive data on American citizens, moving quickly to seize control over databases at the U.S. Treasury, the Office of Personnel Management, the Department of Education, and the Department of Health and Human Resources, among others.
Wired first reported on Feb. 2 that one of the technologists on Musk’s crew is a 19-year-old high school graduate named Edward Coristine, who reportedly goes by the nickname “Big Balls” online. One of the companies Coristine founded, Tesla.Sexy LLC, was set up in 2021, when he would have been around 16 years old.
“Tesla.Sexy LLC controls dozens of web domains, including at least two Russian-registered domains,” Wired reported. “One of those domains, which is still active, offers a service called Helfie, which is an AI bot for Discord servers targeting the Russian market. While the operation of a Russian website would not violate US sanctions preventing Americans doing business with Russian companies, it could potentially be a factor in a security clearance review.”
Mr. Coristine has not responded to requests for comment. In a follow-up story this week, Wired found that someone using a Telegram handle tied to Coristine solicited a DDoS-for-hire service in 2022, and that he worked for a short time at a company that specializes in protecting customers from DDoS attacks.
A profile photo from Coristine’s WhatsApp account.
Internet routing records show that Coristine runs an Internet service provider called Packetware (AS400495). Also known as “DiamondCDN,” Packetware currently hosts tesla[.]sexy and diamondcdn[.]com, among other domains.
DiamondCDN was advertised and claimed by someone who used the nickname “Rivage” on several Com-based Discord channels over the years. A review of chat logs from some of those channels show other members frequently referred to Rivage as “Edward.”
From late 2020 to late 2024, Rivage’s conversations would show up in multiple Com chat servers that are closely monitored by security companies. In November 2022, Rivage could be seen requesting recommendations for a reliable and powerful DDoS-for-hire service.
Rivage made that request in the cybercrime channel “Dstat,” a core Com hub where users could buy and sell attack services. Dstat’s website dstat[.]cc was seized in 2024 as part of “Operation PowerOFF,” an international law enforcement action against DDoS services.
Coristine’s LinkedIn profile said that in 2022 he worked at an anti-DDoS company called Path Networks, which Wired generously described as a “network monitoring firm known for hiring reformed blackhat hackers.” Wired wrote:
“At Path Network, Coristine worked as a systems engineer from April to June of 2022, according to his now-deleted LinkedIn résumé. Path has at times listed as employees Eric Taylor, also known as Cosmo the God, a well-known former cybercriminal and member of the hacker group UGNazis, as well as Matthew Flannery, an Australian convicted hacker whom police allege was a member of the hacker group LulzSec. It’s unclear whether Coristine worked at Path concurrently with those hackers, and WIRED found no evidence that either Coristine or other Path employees engaged in illegal activity while at the company.”
The founder of Path is a young man named Marshal Webb. I wrote about Webb back in 2016, in a story about a DDoS defense company he co-founded called BackConnect Security LLC. On September 20, 2016, KrebsOnSecurity published data showing that the company had a history of hijacking Internet address space that belonged to others.
Less than 24 hours after that story ran, KrebsOnSecurity.com was hit with the biggest DDoS attack the Internet had ever seen at the time. That sustained attack kept this site offline for nearly 4 days.
The other founder of BackConnect Security LLC was Tucker Preston, a Georgia man who pleaded guilty in 2020 to paying a DDoS-for-hire service to launch attacks against others.
The aforementioned Path employee Eric Taylor pleaded guilty in 2017 to charges including an attack on our home in 2013. Taylor was among several men involved in making a false report to my local police department about a supposed hostage situation at our residence in Virginia. In response, a heavily-armed police force surrounded my home and put me in handcuffs at gunpoint before the police realized it was all a dangerous hoax known as “swatting.”
CosmoTheGod rocketed to Internet infamy in 2013 when he and a number of other hackers set up the Web site exposed[dot]su, which “doxed” dozens of public officials and celebrities by publishing the address, Social Security numbers and other personal information on the former First Lady Michelle Obama, the then-director of the FBI and the U.S. attorney general, among others. The group also swatted many of the people they dox
75 Comments
ronbenton
This seems really bad. Did they intentionally pick the worst possible people?
laidoffamazon
This is uh, a more than a little disturbing. Is JD Vance going to say that he deserves grace too?
More context [0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/764_(organization)
camillomiller
[flagged]
_1tan
Just out of curiosity, has anyone here been able to find one of the sites where "the COM" convenes or am I too old to see?
ZeroGravitas
Linked previously here (currently flagged and dead):
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42979187
Good thorough article on another wild development in this story. Deserves to be seen and read.
relaxing
Good reporting here. Clarifies why the kid was fired for leaking documents – it was specifically for leaking internal corporate documents to a competitor.
The details about cybercrime discords involved in SWATting and DDOS attacks are fascinating.
The idea that anyone involved in this would be fast-tracked for a clearance is beyond the pale.
wobblyasp
Say what you will about the cuts, you can't have people with zero clearance being given access to all of this data.
wahnfrieden
Another DOGE member created a tool that generates ballot images to be used by counting machines to satisfy any statistical outcome requirements: https://bsky.app/profile/denisedwheeler.bsky.social/post/3lh…
He worked in contact with Musk and his sponsorship to create this tool
Interesting cybercrime research credentials
Yes there's not evidence available that this research was used for crime, just that the project is capable of what's described and that it was done under Musk's sponsorship and that he was hired after building this in contact with Musk
SamBam
Is it the same Edward Big Baller that tweeted that Elon stole the election and is setting up more computers within the government to be hacked?
https://bsky.app/profile/cartwright776.bsky.social/post/3lhr…
BenFranklin100
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bloopernova
And now musk is calling for the impeachment of Judge Paul Engelmayer who blocked his department from accessing government payment/financial systems.
https://thehill.com/policy/technology/5134725-elon-musk-impe…
This should be mandatory reading for everyone who argues this is just fine: https://www.amazon.com/They-Thought-Were-Free-Germans/dp/022…
jrflowers
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dang
All: if you're going to comment here, please make sure you're up on the guidelines at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, and don't post low-information / high-indignation comments that could just as easily appear in any related thread. Such generic comments make discussion less interesting and more activating. That's not what we're trying for here.
Rather, we want curious conversation. I know that's not so easy when a situation is intense, infuriating, frightening, distressing, and so on. But we need to protect this site for its specific mandate—which is fragile at the best of times—so please make the effort.
As some of you know, this article was posted a dozen times and immediately flagkilled by users. I turned the flags off on this one because there's interesting new information in the story. But now it's up to the commenters to prove that was a good decision by co-creating a discussion that is interesting, curious, and has to do with the specifics of the article.
If we end up with yet-another interchangeable flamewar about $BigTopic, that will only confirm that the flaggers were right, so those of you who want fewer of these threads to be flagged have a particular interest in sticking to the intended spirit of the site and proving that a substantively different discusson is possible.
Edit: if you want to reply to this, please uncollapse the child comment below and reply there. Your views are welcome! I just also want to conserve space at the top of the thread.
ty6853
A career fed guy in his 50s being forced to beg for his job in a 15 minute teleconference to an arrogant zoomer in shorts and an unbuttoned suit is peak representation of democracy.
newsclues
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fabian2k
Ignoring the horrifying political parts, I think one aspect here about data access that is inherently worrying is that it seems like all usual controls were bypassed and the DOGE people had very low level access to systems. So there are probably copies of sensitive data now in their possession, and nobody knows exactly what was copied and where it is stored.
This kind of access would be dangerous even in the hands of principled and well-meaning people. Giving it to people with glaring red flags like here is just entirely irresponsible.
amazingamazing
The biggest irony to me is that Musk wanted to reneg on the Twitter sale. It's interesting to consider the timeline where he was allowed to not buy it. Truly a "canon" event, that one.
I'm also not convinced this is a "security breach." They're being allowed to do it. It's more like an unforced error, if anything. Not that it changes anything material about the situation.
That said – a small majority of congress is currently complicit in this, but I expect that to reverse as many Republican states will have congresspeople whose constituents are affected. I'd expect by May of this year some of this will have been reversed.
Sadly that's too long and some damage will be done perhaps permanently…
outside1234
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thrance
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wnevets
I wouldn't trust these criminals with access to a staging database let alone access to data on every single America.
> Musk’s DOGE teen was fired by cybersecurity firm for leaking company secrets
https://fortune.com/2025/02/07/musks-doge-teen-edward-corist…
VagabundoP
Is anyone really surprised here?
This is Elon who is neck deep in the cesspool parts of the internet and attracts the same kinds of people.
They will continue to break every rule they can and ignore the legal push back as much as possible. They know that there is little they could do here that will result in any criminal prosecution.
Batten down the hatches and expect worse to come, the safeties are off.
retskrad
When Elon stripped the Twitter organisation down to its fundamental parts, saved tons of money and the service is still ran like usual, people said the he’s a moron and the service couldn’t possibly run without a bloated and inefficient workforce.
They were wrong. Now that Elon is applying the same philosophy to all of his companies and now the federal government, people are once again saying he doesn’t know what he’s doing.
At a certain point, you have to ask yourself if these people who complain like headless chickens are actually serious people …
9283409232
Why are high level figures in these departments just letting them walk in and have access? Tell them to kick rocks until they have proper clearances.
9283409232
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?
engineer_22
The stakes are high for these kids. They're obviously very talented individuals, but they're in deep. The reality probably isn't lost on them.
I hope they stay safe, they're doing important work.
belorn
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 10 years ago, I heard multiple version of this several times, with one student from my university getting employed because they managed to demonstrate a hack on a bank.
I always hope that such recruits had a bit tighter surveillance from their employee, but no one in the industry describes such recruits as "highly susceptible to extortion and coercion from current members of the same gang", and absolutely no one described them as members of violent street gang. It might have been a fair label but at most, such teens were describe as smart but mischievous. Might not be the best people to be responsible for national security, or peoples bank accounts, but it seemed to be the culture of that industry.
Has other people in the IT security industry had the similar experience of this culture?
nisten
Doesn't all this make the kid a lot more practically skilled at the job than most regular overpaid security engineers at most regular corps?
cjbgkagh
I don't like Musk and have not for many years, but the left has been venerating some very flawed people for a very long time. It’s hard to be outraged now when we’ve been selectively told to ignore the past of others.
Let’s not forget that Trump is the pied piper candidate promoted by the left to make it easier to win elections. I remember when Ron Desantis was successfully undermined by the news media casting him as weird if he was even covered at all. The left celebrated at the time because they assumed Trump would be easier to beat. When our leaders are picked by their enemies it’s understandable that they’re extremely flawed.
I see it as an emergent behavior where it’s easier to damage than it is to build, it’s easier to undermine an opposition than it is to build up your own side.
I would suggest that political parties stop trying the pied piper strategy but if we are to learn one thing from history it should be that no-one learns anything from history.
> https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/1120
Dowwie
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ein0p
I'd much rather Krebs actually looked into the theft of taxpayer funds by USAID, with all its "shrimp treadmills", "Iraqi Sesame Street", "transgender mice" and regime changes. I want to get to the leaves of that tree and see who really got my money. Everything else is immaterial and should be ignored as targeted attacks on their mission.
whatshisface
Why isn't all government budgetary information public to begin with?
picafrost
I recall an aphorism that government is self-governed 90% by norms and 10% by law. I don’t know if American law is being violated but certainly it is alarming to observe from the outside when the norms are totally disregarded.
The US looks unstable and untrustworthy.
cm2187
As all the intelligence agencies see DOGE coming their way to look into how they spend money, I think we will see many of those stories in the coming weeks.
jdross
I realized I’m treading in extremely hostile waters here, but the stories I hear from folks working in DOGE are closer to “I spend 8am to 2am with the leaders of department X going through all contracts and outflows and identifying what is important versus wasteful given a target of saving $X million per day, and there are some great people in this department who really know what’s been going on and it’s been great to make a difference”
Versus whatever the media is reporting
j_timberlake
The more advanced AI gets and the more power that is at stake, the more these tech CEOs are going to drop their nice-guy acts and reveal their true intentions. The drama is going to get much worse over the coming years.
0xbadcafebee
Worth noting that some of the most well-known cybersecurity experts today are former cyber criminals. It may be worth investigating his past, but a person's past is often used to attack their character when there is no other argument to make. If we were all judged solely on our past, we'd all be perpetually guilty.
fujinghg
I used to hang around with the late 90s's versions of these guys. I grew up, had a family, have had a successful career. They went to prison. I expect the same will happen to this lot.
AlexCoventry
How do I access this "Com"? I'm curious.
mmastrac
The reason security clearances are so important, and why people are so upset about randos going through so much sensitive government information, is that things like this can be used by adversaries to lean on these employees in the future.
One of these kids might have worse skeletons in their closet. Given how well-known their names are, adversaries of the USA are likely combing through their own intelligence archives, etc and might decide to extract their own pound of flesh from the government.
Or, even more horrible, they might have family that adversaries can lean on.
Subverting the process to meme faster and blitz the other side puts the entire American system in pretty serious danger. If it's more important to destroy the system than make serious change, I suppose that's how you'd do it.
Waterluvian
Of all the ways for China, Russia, Iran, Israel, etc. to get access to sensitive data like this, these events feel like they’re by a wide margin the most likely way for them to do so.
These people are going to cut corners and be sloppy and stuff is just going to end up on USB keys and whatnot.
malkia
[flagged]
lenerdenator
All 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 partially due to their work, but at least they got to pad out their resumes and were set for life as consultants.
chmorgan_
Why the security concerns now and not with the thousands of employees with potentially similar access? NOW it's a concern because the idea occurred to people that who might have access to data is important? Imo the faux outrage is so far beyond rational that it turns people away. Let's have a reasonable discussion about data access and controls, and whether they are being followed, rather than some reflexive response based on political points of view.
xyst
Why this unvetted person(s) has been allowed to even touch or access critical systems speaks volumes about the state of US government.
We are at the neoliberal endgame. Billionaires and multibillion dollar corporations received massive tax cuts during the first term, and this will likely continue under the second term. He’s going all out for this billionaire donors, buddies, and of course himself. We have a kleptocracy at the federal level with the intent to dismantle it as much as possible.
End game here is federal/people control end, and “network states” (balaji) model with corporations acting as governance over land, regions, and law.
Thiel and the rest of the billionaire class are the parasites that need to be purged. Whether we will recover after 4 years remains to be seen.
varsketiz
An angle I didn't notice discussed here on HN is that while this confusion about DOGE among the general US public continues, it's a great time for China to advance it's agenda and to weaken the US.
davesque
Seems safe to assume that the DOGE kids probably scored copies of the data they had access to even if that access was or will be revoked, especially considering that some of them have a history of data theft as mentioned in the article.
swat535
I am wondering what will happen at the end of all of this? I see a few possibilities here:
1. Either this project will be a tremendous success for the American people, saving millions and uncovering massive fraud and waste in the government thanks to the audits
2. It will ab a complete failure, nothing of value will get discovered, published and time and money will be wasted for everyone involved (giving the DNC a huge attack vector for the next election)
3. Alternatively, some efforts may yield some positive net results but others will fail to bring anything of value in fruition, this to me, seems to most realistic outcome, but who knows?
This is going to be an interesting experiment for the rest of the world to watch.
cytocync
Elon Musk's DOGE team is raising eyebrows with their seemingly reckless behavior.
Their actions are causing concern for several reasons:
* A 19-year-old with a questionable past has been given access to sensitive US government systems.
* The team is reportedly using this access to dig through student loan data.
* This could potentially put millions of Americans at risk of identity theft or other forms of financial exploitation.
stanislavb
The 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 rid of these new parasites in the White House for many years. And even after that, it will take generations for the US to gain the trust of its partners and the world. Because trust that's once lost is very difficult to regain.
It seems that at this point, it might be better to "simply" accept the new imperator(s) and learn to live with them and their new rules. And remember, they are NOT breaking the law, they are bending "rules" for the good of humanity… (yeah… nah). They have never tried and will never try to enrich themselves for the sake of their egos.
jimmar
Apparently 18 years old is old enough to be handed a rifle and sent into war but not access a database.
sxyuan
Here's my attempt at contributing something meaningful to this discussion, since I'm tired of seeing the same kinds of responses to these threads over and over again. Feel free to disagree, the idea is to try to move the conversation past knee-jerk reactions.
This is an FAQ of sorts.
Q1: What's wrong with making the government more efficient? My tax dollars are being wasted by Agency X, spending billions of dollars a year on who knows what.
A1: There's nothing wrong with making the government more efficient, but (1) there are good and bad ways of cutting spending (and DOGE, IMO, is really bad), (2) the federal budget is massive [1], 1B or even 10B USD is practically peanuts, so a real cost-benefit analysis is critical while knee-jerk "that's too much money" reactions are usually short-sighted, and (3) the Trump administration is planning to spend FAR MORE on massive tax cuts – a government that's serious about reducing the deficit would not spend 5-10 trillion USD on tax cuts.
Q2: What's wrong with how DOGE is trying to cut spending? Government is filled with red tape, and they're taking a hacker approach to circumvent the things that prevented past governments from fixing things.
A2: Any time a large group of people need to agree on something, it takes time. Small-d democratic governance doesn't prioritize getting things done quickly in normal times, it prioritizes reaching consensus and respecting individual liberties. Occasionally war-time governments will temporarily suspend normal procedures (and rights), but there's good reason why things (mostly) go back to normal after the war ends. And whatever you may be seeing in your news feeds, America is NOT AT WAR.
A2 (pt. 2): The HN community usually (and rightly, IMO) gets very upset and concerned when companies or the government infringe on our privacy. The situation this article brings to light seems analogous to a big tech company bringing in consultants who are later found to have cybercriminal connections, without any safeguards or auditing around access of employee or user data. If that happened, there would be a huge uproar.
A2 (pt. 3): Except, it's worse, because the government is not the same as any old company. The US government was designed with checks and balances precisely to avoid concentrating too much power in the hands of any individual, including the president. Remember, America was establishing a democracy in a time when most countries were monarchies – a monarchical president was something the framers desperately wanted to avoid. There's too much to get into here, but this ongoing story is not just about privacy/security, but also about breaking legal and constitutional safeguards.
Q3: You admit that the federal budget is massive, so it's obvious that it's spending too much money. Sometimes it's hard to fix an old system with lots of parts – we need a ground-up rewrite! Cut first, then add spending back later – what's wrong with that?
A3: What's wrong with that is that people will get hurt. Ordinary people (no, not "woke leftists" – they're real people) will lose their jobs. People who were getting HIV treatment will stop getting treatment. Poor children will lose school lunches. And on it goes. To play along with the analogy, even if you think the only option is a ground-up rewrite, you don't run around the data center unplugging machines that you don't like. But that's also buying into a false premise. The federal budget as a percentage of GDP really hasn't grown all that much [2], and a huge part of that spending is on things that are really hard to cut (because most people don't want to cut it): social security, Medicare, defense.
Q4: Well, tax cuts aren't spending, it's just giving money back to the people! It's too bad you want the US government to spend so much, but that's my tax dollars you're talking about.
A4: Well, unfortunately, we live in a society, one that has historically agreed through democratic processes to care for its elderly, (sometimes) its sick or disabled, and (occasionally) its poor, because our ancestors wisely realized that those are elements of a stable societ where its people can flourish. Feel free to disagree.
Q5: Why report on the identities of these young people? And what's wrong with being young – many startup founders are college dropouts, right?
A5: Founding a startup isn't the same as running a mature company, and even running a mature company isn't necessarily the best preparation for civil service IMO. Youth has its advantages – fearlessness, energy – but wisdom comes with age. On the other hand, youth are impressionable, and can be easily led (or rather, misled) into doing illegal and/or immoral things. That's a pattern we've seen throughout history, and I see no reason to believe that the folks at DOGE are any different. As for making their names and identities public, they were the ones who made the decision to participate in actions that affect millions of people. Anonymity is for Internet commentators, not for supposed public servants cutting off funding to aid workers or scientists (you know, the actual public servants).
Q6: Why is this on Hacker News?
A6: See A2, pt. 2. There's no surprise that a news about hackers in on Hacker News. Also, should Elon Musk only be on Hacker News when it's about Tesla or SpaceX, and not when he's off trying to shut off funding to half the government? If you agree with him, fine – let's have a discussion. Don't flag kill everything that's reporting on what might be one of the most consequential events of this century. (Thanks for giving this a chance, dang.)
[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FGEXPND
[2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYONGDA188S
slimebot80
The confuddling thing to me is how did we have years of decay and no ability to head it off.
If we are at a point where the FBI is being dismantled, where was the FBI this whole time during the build up?
Even if you believed the FBI was some evil deep state entity – it turns out it was completely benign one because it couldn't even defend itself from an approaching enemy thousands of yards away.
culi
> 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't have encryption by default and whose gov't backdoor is basically an open secret[0]
[0] https://words.filippo.io/dispatches/telegram-ecdh/
b8
Many former hackers have been hired by the government with TS clearances and it's ridiculous to compare teenage hacker groups to violent street gangs. I told an agency of previous hacking stuff and they were more concerned with me admitting to cheating on a math test at college lol.
markus_zhang
I just hope they post everything they found. I don't care about their credentials and neither do I care about security — those damned companies already had them 10 times anyway.
But it's very interesting if they can release all information. I mean it's a democracy, right?
erikpukinskis
Can anyone recommend a journalist who is reporting the facts of what’s happening on this subject?
From what I can tell, it’s widely been reported that
– Elon Musk was allowed into the Department of Education
– “Big Balls” accessed Treasury computers
– etc…
But I have not been able to find any first person testimony that confirms those statements.
From what I can tell Tom Krause is actually the one who was given access by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. And Tom Krause is an employee of the Treasury and has security clearance.
I see a lot of people claiming there was some sort of illegal access, but I would love to read a source that explains exactly who accessed exactly what system improperly.
Can anyone point me at that source?
jBBQ_dev
[dead]
I_am_tiberius
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.
stainablesteel
and if you want to be a good network/security/intelligence person, isn't this basically a requirement?
this is the kind of ground that people SHOULD be covering if they want to pursue a career of this nature
it doesn't make him a bad person, or even a criminal the internet is just the wild west and hacking is prevalent, long live the people who do this because it's needed
fassssst
And anyone that gets busted will just get pardoned. Trump
and Musk broke the system.
Slava_Propanei
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alsoforgotmypwd
While curious, intelligent young people are still self-assembling in small groups, I'd hope they'd be more shmoo group, l0pht/cDc, or w00w00 than 4chan. Maybe they are and we're just hearing about this one because they're thrown into the political frying pan.
globalnode
So from what I can understand, the new regime doesn't trust the outgoing one and wants to use its own independent people to look for signs that they have been unfairly treated by the govt and/or its institutions? Would this be a reasonable observation? I can make a few guesses about how they would react if they could compile such a list of grievances. Congrats to krebs for this article.
throwaway2037
FYI: This guy already has a Wiki page. You can find it deep in the article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Coristine
nikolay
Krebs lost all of its credibility serving political agendas and not understanding teenagers nowadays! They should be ashamed of their ballless attempt at a character assassination!
ClownsAbound
[dead]
throwopi
[flagged]
shipscode
President Biden told me that I was in for a winter of “severe illness and death”.
Some kid with an infosec history and some shitposts is the furthest thing from scary or inappropriate.
Edit: they’ll downvote me, but they won’t say I’m wrong
rukuu001
I know it's like screaming into the void when there's a 1000+ comments but…
You remember the end of Gatsby where Nick turns up at the mansion and some sinister characters have the run of the place and you-know-who is floating in the pool out back…
This is what the US looks like right now. Party's over, no guests ever again. Crims have moved in instead.
curtisszmania
What I find fascinating is that we're seeing a blurring of the lines between the cybercrime world and the legitimate tech industry.
Key concerns raised by Edward Coristine's story:
• The vetting process for hiring individuals with a history of cybercrime activity is questionable
• The potential risks associated with hiring such individuals are not being adequately assessed
• The legitimate tech industry may be inadvertently providing a platform for cybercrime activities to be legitimized or funded
TaurenHunter
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anoncow
We have too many regulations. I support what DOGE is doing. Thank you dang for letting the world see this topic. I think pg would agree. /s
TZubiri
Can't they add some fake data as canaries/watermarks to identify the perpetrator if the data gets leaked?
Thinkst does this
bigmattystyles
I thought it was 'The Corn' until I typed it out. I need new glasses.
jiveturkey
As usual, excellent reporting from Krebs.
D&D Alignment aside, one has to admit this kid has impressive skills and impressive energy. Sidestepping any argument whether criminals should be hired or have access to sensitive data, I do think he's too immature (demonstrably) to be allowed access to all this information.