Wired reported this week {that a} 19-year-old working for Elon Musk‘s so-called Division of Authorities Effectivity (DOGE) was given entry to delicate US authorities methods though his previous affiliation with cybercrime communities ought to have precluded him from gaining the mandatory safety clearances to take action. As right now’s story explores, the DOGE teen is a former denizen of ‘The Com,’ an archipelago of Discord and Telegram chat channels that perform as a sort of distributed cybercriminal social community for facilitating instantaneous collaboration.
Since President Trump’s second inauguration, Musk’s DOGE workforce has gained entry to a really staggering quantity of non-public and delicate information on Americans, shifting rapidly to grab management over databases on the U.S. Treasury, the Workplace of Personnel Administration, the Division of Schooling, and the Division of Well being and Human Assets, amongst others.
Wired first reported on Feb. 2 that one of many technologists on Musk’s crew is a 19-year-old highschool graduate named Edward Coristine, who reportedly goes by the nickname “Huge Balls” on-line. One of many firms Coristine based, Tesla.Horny LLC, was arrange in 2021, when he would have been round 16 years outdated.
“Tesla.Horny LLC controls dozens of internet domains, together with a minimum of two Russian-registered domains,” Wired reported. “A kind of domains, which continues to be energetic, provides a service referred to as Helfie, which is an AI bot for Discord servers concentrating on the Russian market. Whereas the operation of a Russian web site wouldn’t violate US sanctions stopping Individuals doing enterprise with Russian firms, it may probably be a think about a safety clearance evaluation.”
Mr. Coristine has not responded to requests for remark. In a follow-up story this week, Wired discovered that somebody utilizing a Telegram deal with tied to Coristine solicited a DDoS-for-hire service in 2022, and that he labored for a short while at an organization that focuses on defending clients from DDoS assaults.
A profile photograph from Coristine’s WhatsApp account.
Web routing information present that Coristine runs an Web service supplier referred to as Packetware (AS400495). Also called “DiamondCDN,” Packetware at present hosts tesla[.]horny and diamondcdn[.]com, amongst different domains.
DiamondCDN was marketed and claimed by somebody who used the nickname “Rivage” on a number of Com-based Discord channels through the years. A evaluation of chat logs from a few of these channels present different members steadily referred to Rivage as “Edward.”
From late 2020 to late 2024, Rivage’s conversations would present up in a number of Com chat servers which can be intently monitored by safety firms. In November 2022, Rivage might be seen requesting suggestions for a dependable and highly effective DDoS-for-hire service.
Rivage made that request within the cybercrime channel “Dstat,” a core Com hub the place customers may purchase and promote assault providers. Dstat’s web site dstat[.]cc was seized in 2024 as a part of “Operation PowerOFF,” a global regulation enforcement motion in opposition to DDoS providers.
Coristine’s LinkedIn profile mentioned that in 2022 he labored at an anti-DDoS firm referred to as Path Networks, which Wired generously described as a “community monitoring agency identified for hiring reformed blackhat hackers.” Wired wrote:
“At Path Community, Coristine labored as a methods engineer from April to June of 2022, in keeping with his now-deleted LinkedIn résumé. Path has at occasions listed as workers Eric Taylor, often known as Cosmo the God, a well known former cybercriminal and member of the hacker group UGNazis, in addition to Matthew Flannery, an Australian convicted hacker whom police allege was a member of the hacker group LulzSec. It’s unclear whether or not Coristine labored at Path concurrently with these hackers, and WIRED discovered no proof that both Coristine or different Path workers engaged in criminality whereas on the firm.”
The founding father of Path is a younger man named Marshal Webb. I wrote about Webb again in 2016, in a narrative a few DDoS protection firm he co-founded referred to as BackConnect Safety LLC. On September 20, 2016, KrebsOnSecurity printed information displaying that the corporate had a historical past of hijacking Web tackle area that belonged to others.
Lower than 24 hours after that story ran, KrebsOnSecurity.com was hit with the most important DDoS assault the Web had ever seen on the time. That sustained assault stored this web site offline for almost 4 days.
The opposite founding father of BackConnect Safety LLC was Tucker Preston, a Georgia man who pleaded responsible in 2020 to paying a DDoS-for-hire service to launch assaults in opposition to others.
The aforementioned Path worker Eric Taylor pleaded responsible in 2017 to fees together with an assault on our dwelling in 2013. Taylor was amongst a number of males concerned in making a false report back to my native police division a few supposed hostage scenario at our residence in Virginia. In response, a heavily-armed police pressure surrounded my dwelling and put me in handcuffs at gunpoint earlier than the police realized it was all a harmful hoax often called “swatting.”
CosmoTheGod rocketed to Web infamy in 2013 when he and a lot of different hackers arrange the Website uncovered[dot]su, which “doxed” dozens of public officers and celebrities by publishing the tackle, Social Safety numbers and different private data on the previous First Woman Michelle Obama, the then-director of the FBI and the U.S. legal professional common, amongst others. The group additionally swatted most of the folks they doxed.
Wired famous that Coristine solely labored at Path for just a few months in 2022, however the story didn’t point out why his tenure was so brief. A screenshot shared on the web site pathtruths.com features a snippet of conversations in June 2022 between Path workers discussing Coristine’s firing.
In response to that document, Path founder Marshal Webb dismissed Coristine for leaking inner paperwork to a competitor. Not lengthy after Coristine’s termination, somebody leaked an abundance of inner Path paperwork and conversations. Amongst different issues, these chats revealed that considered one of Path’s technicians was a Canadian man named Curtis Gervais who was convicted in 2017 of perpetrating dozens of swatting assaults and faux bomb threats — together with a minimum of two makes an attempt in opposition to our dwelling in 2014.
A snippet of textual content from an inner Path chat room, whereby members focus on the explanation for Coristine’s termination: Allegedly, leaking inner firm data. Supply: Pathtruths.com.
On Could 11, 2024, Rivage posted on a Discord channel for a DDoS safety service that’s mainly marketed to members of The Com. Rivage expressed frustration together with his time spent on Com-based communities, suggesting that its profitability had been oversold.
“I don’t suppose there’s some huge cash to be made within the com,” Rivage lamented. “I’m not shopping for Heztner [servers] to arrange some com VPN.”
Rivage largely stopped posting messages on Com channels after that. Wired experiences that Coristine subsequently spent three months final summer time working at Neuralink, Elon Musk’s mind implant startup.
The difficulty with all that is that even when somebody sincerely intends to exit The Com after years of consorting with cybercriminals, they’re usually nonetheless topic to non-public assaults, harassment and hacking lengthy after they’ve left the scene.
That’s as a result of an enormous a part of Com tradition includes harassing, swatting and hacking different members of the group. These internecine assaults are sometimes for monetary achieve, however simply as steadily they’re perpetrated by cybercrime teams to precise retribution from or assert dominance over rival gangs.
Consultants say this can be very troublesome for former members of violent road gangs to realize a safety clearance wanted to view delicate or categorized data held by the U.S. authorities. That’s as a result of ex-gang members are extremely vulnerable to extortion and coercion from present members of the identical gang, and that alone presents an unacceptable safety threat for intelligence companies.
And make no mistake: The Com is the English-language cybercriminal hacking equal of a violent road gang. KrebsOnSecurity has printed quite a few tales detailing how feuds inside the group periodically spill over into real-world violence.
When Coristine’s identify surfaced in Wired‘s report this week, members of The Com instantly took discover. Within the following phase from a February 5, 2025 chat in a Com-affiliated internet hosting supplier, members criticized Rivage’s expertise, and mentioned harassing his household and notifying authorities about incriminating accusations which will or is probably not true.
2025-02-05 16:29:44 UTC vperked#0 they acquired this nigga on indiatimes man
2025-02-05 16:29:46 UTC alexaloo#0 Their cropping is worse than AI may have executed
2025-02-05 16:29:48 UTC hebeatsme#0 bro who’s that
2025-02-05 16:29:53 UTC hebeatsme#0 yalla re speaking about
2025-02-05 16:29:56 UTC xewdy#0 edward
2025-02-05 16:29:56 UTC .yarrb#0 rivagew
2025-02-05 16:29:57 UTC vperked#0 Rivarge
2025-02-05 16:29:57 UTC xewdy#0 diamondcdm
2025-02-05 16:29:59 UTC vperked#0 i cant spell it
2025-02-05 16:30:00 UTC hebeatsme#0 rivage
2025-02-05 16:30:08 UTC .yarrb#0 sure
2025-02-05 16:30:14 UTC hebeatsme#0 i’ve him added
2025-02-05 16:30:20 UTC hebeatsme#0 hes on discord nonetheless
2025-02-05 16:30:47 UTC .yarrb#0 hes centered on stroking zaddy elon
2025-02-05 16:30:47 UTC vperked#0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Coristine
2025-02-05 16:30:50 UTC vperked#0 no fucking manner
2025-02-05 16:30:53 UTC vperked#0 they even made a wiki for him
2025-02-05 16:30:55 UTC vperked#0 LOOOL
2025-02-05 16:31:05 UTC hebeatsme#0 no manner
2025-02-05 16:31:08 UTC hebeatsme#0 hes not a superb dev both
2025-02-05 16:31:14 UTC hebeatsme#0 like????
2025-02-05 16:31:22 UTC hebeatsme#0 needs to be faux
2025-02-05 16:31:24 UTC xewdy#0 and theyre saying ts
2025-02-05 16:31:29 UTC xewdy#0 like okay bro
2025-02-05 16:31:51 UTC .yarrb#0 now i wanna know what all the opposite devs are like…
2025-02-05 16:32:00 UTC vperked#0 “`Coristine used the moniker “bigballs” on LinkedIn and @Edwardbigballer on Twitter, in keeping with The Every day Dot.[“`
2025-02-05 16:32:05 UTC vperked#0 LOL
2025-02-05 16:32:06 UTC hebeatsme#0 lmfaooo
2025-02-05 16:32:07 UTC vperked#0 bro
2025-02-05 16:32:10 UTC hebeatsme#0 bro
2025-02-05 16:32:17 UTC hebeatsme#0 has to be fake right
2025-02-05 16:32:22 UTC .yarrb#0 does it mention Rivage?
2025-02-05 16:32:23 UTC xewdy#0 He previously worked for NeuraLink, a brain computer interface company led by Elon Musk
2025-02-05 16:32:26 UTC xewdy#0 bro what
2025-02-05 16:32:27 UTC alexaloo#0 I think your current occupation gives you a good insight of what probably goes on
2025-02-05 16:32:29 UTC hebeatsme#0 bullshit man
2025-02-05 16:32:33 UTC xewdy#0 this nigga got hella secrets
2025-02-05 16:32:37 UTC hebeatsme#0 rivage couldnt print hello world
2025-02-05 16:32:42 UTC hebeatsme#0 if his life was on the line
2025-02-05 16:32:50 UTC xewdy#0 nigga worked for neuralink
2025-02-05 16:32:54 UTC hebeatsme#0 bullshit
2025-02-05 16:33:06 UTC Nashville Dispatch ##0000 ||@PD Ping||
2025-02-05 16:33:07 UTC hebeatsme#0 must have killed all those test pigs with some bugs
2025-02-05 16:33:24 UTC hebeatsme#0 ur telling me the rivage who failed to start a company
2025-02-05 16:33:28 UTC hebeatsme#0 https://cdn.camp
2025-02-05 16:33:32 UTC hebeatsme#0 who didnt pay for servers
2025-02-05 16:33:34 UTC hebeatsme#0 ?
2025-02-05 16:33:42 UTC hebeatsme#0 was too cheap
2025-02-05 16:33:44 UTC vperked#0 yes
2025-02-05 16:33:50 UTC hebeatsme#0 like??
2025-02-05 16:33:53 UTC hebeatsme#0 it aint adding up
2025-02-05 16:33:56 UTC alexaloo#0 He just needed to find his calling idiot.
2025-02-05 16:33:58 UTC alexaloo#0 He found it.
2025-02-05 16:33:59 UTC hebeatsme#0 bro
2025-02-05 16:34:01 UTC alexaloo#0 Cope in a river dude
2025-02-05 16:34:04 UTC hebeatsme#0 he cant make good money right
2025-02-05 16:34:08 UTC hebeatsme#0 doge is about efficiency
2025-02-05 16:34:11 UTC hebeatsme#0 he should make $1/he
2025-02-05 16:34:15 UTC hebeatsme#0 $1/hr
2025-02-05 16:34:25 UTC hebeatsme#0 and be whipped for better code
2025-02-05 16:34:26 UTC vperked#0 prolly makes more than us
2025-02-05 16:34:35 UTC vperked#0 with his dad too
2025-02-05 16:34:52 UTC hebeatsme#0 time to report him for fraud
2025-02-05 16:34:54 UTC hebeatsme#0 to donald trump
2025-02-05 16:35:04 UTC hebeatsme#0 rivage participated in sim swap hacks in 2018
2025-02-05 16:35:08 UTC hebeatsme#0 put that on his wiki
2025-02-05 16:35:10 UTC hebeatsme#0 thanks
2025-02-05 16:35:15 UTC hebeatsme#0 and in 2021
2025-02-05 16:35:17 UTC hebeatsme#0 thanks
2025-02-05 16:35:19 UTC chainofcommand#0 i dont think they’ll care tbh
Given the speed with which Musk’s DOGE team was allowed access to such critical government databases, it strains credulity that Coristine could have been properly cleared beforehand. After all, he’d recently been dismissed from a job for allegedly leaking internal company information to outsiders.
According to the national security adjudication guidelines (PDF) released by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), eligibility determinations take into account a person’s stability, trustworthiness, reliability, discretion, character, honesty, judgement, and ability to protect classified information.
The DNI policy further states that “eligibility for covered individuals shall be granted only when facts and circumstances indicate that eligibility is clearly consistent with the national security interests of the United States, and any doubt shall be resolved in favor of national security.”
On Thursday, 25-year-old DOGE staff member Marko Elez resigned after being linked to a deleted social media account that advocated racism and eugenics. Elez resigned after The Wall Street Journal asked the White House about his connection to the account.
“Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool,” the account posted in July. “You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity,” the account wrote on X in September. “Normalize Indian hate,” the account wrote the same month, in reference to a post noting the prevalence of people from India in Silicon Valley.
Elez’s resignation came a day after the Department of Justice agreed to limit the number of DOGE employees who have access to federal payment systems. The DOJ said access would be limited to two people, Elez and Tom Krause, the CEO of a company called Cloud Software Group.
Earlier today, Musk said he planned to rehire Elez after President Trump and Vice President JD Vance reportedly endorsed the idea. Speaking at The White House today, Trump said he wasn’t concerned about the security of personal information and other data accessed by DOGE, adding that he was “very proud of the job that this group of young people” are doing.
A White House official told Reuters on Wednesday that Musk and his engineers have appropriate security clearances and are operating in “full compliance with federal law, appropriate security clearances, and as employees of the relevant agencies, not as outside advisors or entities.”
NPR reports Trump added that his administration’s cost-cutting efforts would soon turn to the Education Department and the Pentagon, “where he suggested without evidence that there could be ‘trillions’ of dollars in wasted spending within the $6.75 trillion the federal government spent in fiscal year 2024.”
GOP leaders in the Republican-controlled House and Senate have largely shrugged about Musk’s ongoing efforts to seize control over federal databases, dismantle agencies mandated by Congress, freeze federal spending on a range of already-appropriated government programs, and threaten workers with layoffs.
Meanwhile, multiple parties have sued to stop DOGE’s activities. ABC News says a federal judge was to rule today on whether DOGE should be blocked from accessing Department of Labor records, following a lawsuit alleging Musk’s team sought to illegally access highly sensitive data, including medical information, from the federal government.
At least 13 state attorney general say they plan to file a lawsuit to stop DOGE from accessing federal payment systems containing Americans’ sensitive personal information, reports The Associated Press.
Reuters reported Thursday that the U.S. Treasury Department had agreed not to give Musk’s team access to its payment systems while a judge is hearing arguments in a lawsuit by employee unions and retirees alleging Musk illegally searched those records.
Ars Technica writes that The Department of Education (DoE) was sued Friday by a California student association demanding an “immediate stop” to DOGE’s “unlawfully” digging through student loan data to potentially dismantle the DoE.
