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Exclusive: DOGE staffer, 'Big Balls', provided tech support to cybercrime ring, records show (www.reuters.com)

submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world

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Summary

Edward Coristine, a 19-year-old DOGE staffer nicknamed "Big Balls," reportedly provided tech support to the cybercrime group EGodly through his company DiamondCDN.

EGodly, known for online of hacking government emails and cyberstalking FBI agent, publicly thanked DiamondCDN for DDoS protection in 2023.

Coristine, now a senior adviser at the State Department and CISA, did not respond to requests for comment.

Critics, including former CISA deputy director Nitin Natarajan, expressed concern over Coristine’s recent ties to cybercriminals while holding government network access.

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[–] tal@lemmy.today 34 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

https://www.techtimes.com/articles/309317/20250208/elon-musks-19-year-old-doge-intern-fired-leaking-company-secrets-competitors.htm

In a June 2022 message, an executive of the firm in question, Path Network, said that Coristine had been terminated for leaking internal information to competitors. They added that this was unacceptable and noted that the company had zero tolerance for it.

A spokesperson for the cybersecurity firm also said on Thursday that Coristine's brief contract with the company was terminated after an internal investigation concluded. This was to look into the leaking of proprietary company information during the teen's tenure at the Arizona-based hosting and data-security firm, according to Yahoo News.

Weeks after his termination, Coristine wrote in a Discord post in 2022 that he had retained access to the cybersecurity firm's computers. The teen said he had the opportunity to wipe Path Network's customer-supporting servers if he wanted to, but he did not, saying he never exploited his access.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/02/teen-on-musks-doge-team-graduated-from-the-com/

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.

One does kind of get the feeling that perhaps Big Balls could have done with a bit more vetting.

EDIT:

Also, there's his grandfather:

https://www.jacobsilverman.com/p/prominent-doge-staffer-is-grandson

In 1980, KGB officer Valery Fedorovich Martynov was sent to the US to serve undercover at the Soviet Embassy in Washington, DC. He was a Line X officer, part of a technical espionage division. Martynov had a wife and two young children, and they enjoyed traveling to cities on the eastern seaboard and enjoying life in what was one of the KGB’s most desirable postings.

[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 7 points 10 months ago

What the 'trump salute' wasn't enough?