Musk now controls all US payments 🚨 | USDA freezes payments to farmers

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A 25-Year-Old Is Writing Backdoors Into The Treasury’s $6 Trillion Payment System. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?​


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A 25-Year-Old Is Writing Backdoors Into The Treasury’s $6 Trillion Payment System. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Just months after we learned Chinese hackers had compromised US telecom systems through government-mandated backdoors, an inexperienced developer from Musk’s DOGE unit is pushing untested cod…
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“Just months after we learned Chinese hackers had compromised US telecom systems through government-mandated backdoors, an inexperienced developer from Musk’s DOGE unit is pushing untested code directly into the Treasury’s payment infrastructure — a system that handles over $6 trillion in federal payments annually.

It seems reasonable to call it one of the most dangerous cyberattacks on the US government.

… [In response to questions] Treasury responded with reassurances: just “read only” access, they claimed, with no ability to interfere with payments

… But while Treasury was making these claims, both Wired and TPM revealed a far more alarming reality: a 25-year-old DOGE team member named Marko Elez (who had refused to give any of his brand new colleagues his last name) had been granted something far beyond “read only” access — he had full administrator privileges to the system. That’s the keys to the kingdom (or, rather, the kingdom’s payments).

…
And Elez’s qualifications for this extraordinary level of access to our nation’s financial infrastructure? According to Wired’s reporting, a mere three and a half years of experience since graduating Rutgers, split between SpaceX and ExTwitter’s Search AI team. Neither position involved anything remotely close to handling critical financial infrastructure or government payment systems.

But it gets worse. Josh Marshall’s reporting at TPM reveals something that I can already hear developers howling about, even through the internet: Elez isn’t just looking at the code — he’s pushing untested changes directly into production on a system that handles trillions in federal payments:

I’m told that Elez and possibly other DOGE operatives received full admin-level access on Friday, January 31st. The claim of “read only” access was either false from the start or later fell through. The DOGE team, which appears to be mainly or only Elez for the purposes of this project, has already made extensive changes to the code base for the payment system. They have not locked out the existing programmer/engineering staff but have rather leaned on them for assistance, which the staff appear to have painedly provided hoping to prevent as much damage as possible — “damage” in the sense not of preventing the intended changes but avoiding crashes or a system-wide breakdown caused by rapidly pushing new code into production with a limited knowledge of the system and its dependencies across the federal government.
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Remember Treasury’s reassurance that no payments would be blocked? That appears to have been, at best, aspirational. At worst, deliberately misleading. Marshall’s sources indicate that the code changes have a very specific purpose: creating mechanisms to block payments while hiding the evidence. …”
 
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“… Let’s be clear about what we’re seeing: deliberately obscured payment-blocking capabilities being added to absolutely critical government infrastructure by an inexperienced developer with minimal oversight. In cybersecurity terms, that’s not just a backdoor — it’s flashing warning lights of an approaching catastrophe. …”

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That court order agreed to (which I posted in an earlier post above) is hopelessly naive about what is going on with the coding admin access and what that could mean. It expressly allows Elez to continue to have access and there is no apparent mechanism to co firm that he is or will be honoring the limitations on his access, especially if DOGe has been lying from the outset about the extent of the access.
 
CFordUNC said:
How is this okay?
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Pubs would literally be storming the Capitol (again) if this type of shittery was happening under a Dem administration. Thousands would already be dead. I'm glad Dems are showing more restraint than that, but the lid can only be kept on for so long, especially as more information comes out and the level of anger about the intentional dismantling of the basic building blocks of our government rises.
 
lawtig02 said:
Pubs would literally be storming the Capitol (again) if this type of shittery was happening under a Dem administration. Thousands would already be dead. I'm glad Dems are showing more restraint than that, but the lid can only be kept on for so long, especially as more information comes out and the level of anger about the intentional dismantling of the basic building blocks of our government rises.
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Yeah but at least there are like 4 trans kids out there somewhere in America who have been put in their place.
 
ChapelHillSooner said:
So on the potential criminal charges, first I don’t know exactly what crimes Musk may have committed but some of this stuff has to be very questionable.

So let’s just assume Musk has or will commit serious crimes. That leaves Trump with significant leverage over the richest man in the world.

We know Trump sells pardons. We also know that selling pardons almost certainly does not put Trump at legal risk given the immunity ruling. Trump could flat out demand a hundred billion dollars for a pardon, and Musk could be forced to pay it.

Which would in a way be f’ing hilarious.
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Selling a Pardon would be an official act as President? Humm. I get that under the current alignment it would be impossible to prosecute the crime of selling a Pardon. But if things get bad, that could change.
 
BlueSmoke said:
Selling a Pardon would be an official act as President? Humm. I get that under the current alignment it would be impossible to prosecute the crime of selling a Pardon. But if things get bad, that could change.
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The Supreme Court ruled that no evidence relating to the terms of the pardon could even be introduced at a trial. Thus, it will be impossible to convict for selling pardons unless the pardoned person coughed it up (which wouldn't happen). This was the point on which ACB dissented but she didn't get any of the other 5 to go along.

This is why a lot of what the Supreme Court has done will have to be thrown out. I do not expect us to be bound by this bullshit. So we're going to have to make plans for how that's going to happen.

I've been trying to point out what I thought was obvious (but apparently is not); that illegitimate law has little power when it all comes down to dust. If the Supreme Court turns Trump into an unaccountable dictator, then he will meet the same fate as most dictators (and so will they). That's just the way the world works. There are centuries worth of evidence on this point. Dictators don't retire. That's just not what happens. They rule until they can rule no more, and then if they are lucky they find exile. The relatively few occasions in which dictators were dealt with in the legal system didn't go so well.
 
Paine said:
The lesson they need to take away is that there are no good billionaires. It doesn’t matter if a certain billionaire is altruistic or giving to Dem causes; no one should have that amount of money and power.
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Surely you are talking about billionaires as a class (or as an individual member of that class), not as individuals themselves. I'm sure plenty of billionaires are fine people...
 
nycfan said:
But how much damage did he do rewriting code first?
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He now has a back door into the system. It won’t matter that he was fired, he can get back in regardless. They better be rolling it back to what the system was set at before he touched it. Even then, he would now know if there was any vulnerability inherent to the system. Good to know that the White House assured us earlier today that this crew all passed their security clearances. This shit should be blowing up the airwaves. No wonder Musk was so pissed that the names of people involved were getting out.
 
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