Elon Musk's government project, DOGE, has been extremely controversial, to say the least. While not an official government agency, DOGE has been empowered by the Trump administration to go after so-called government fraud and waste. So far, DOGE has come up empty-handed.
However, that doesn't mean that Musk and his team haven't been busy gutting the federal government. DOGE's cuts to USAID have ended important life-saving programs for some of the world's most vulnerable communities. Essential federal employees, such as park rangers, have been fired. And DOGE continues to rifle through sensitive government data in order to put more items on the chopping block, such as Social Security.
But, DOGE's issues lie not just with what it's doing, but who is doing it.
WIRED reported on many of the names involved with DOGE last month and many of them were young, inexperienced tech workers in their teens and early 20s who idolize Musk. While concerning, this is not disqualifying on its own. However, as more is known about the Musk fanboys that Musk hired for DOGE, the more concerning and disqualifying it gets.
A new report from Reuters has uncovered that one of the young DOGE employees, 19-year-old Edward Coristine, previously was involved with a cybercrime group known as "EGodly."
Coristine, also known by his online nickname "Big Balls," provided support for cybercriminals through his company DiamondCDN. In fact, EGodly has explicitly thanked Corisinte's company for helping them operate online.
"We extend our gratitude to our valued partners DiamondCDN for generously providing us with their amazing DDoS protection and caching systems, which allow us to securely host and safeguard our website," read a message from EGodly's Telegram channel which was shared with Reuters.
The cybercriminal group had previously claimed responsibility for hijacking phone numbers, hacking into law enforcement email accounts, and stealing cryptocurrency. In one specific incident, the group shared private details allegedly belonging to an FBI agent, including his phone number and photos of his house.
This is just the latest in a string of infractions against DOGE's young team.
In a previous report from Bloomberg, Coristine had been ID'd as a former employee of cybersecurity firm Path Network. Coristine was eventually fired for leaking internal company information to competitors.
But "Big Balls" isn't the only problem at DOGE. For example, another DOGE employee, 25-year-old Marko Elez, resigned from his position after his numerous racist social media posts were discovered. Elez had urged his followers to "normalize Indian hate."
"Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool," Elez said in another post. "You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity."
While Elez did resign, Musk rehired him just a day later to continue his work at DOGE.
It appears unlikely that Edward "Big Balls" Coristine will face any repercussions for his past actions either.
