1125 points by mahkeiro 381 days ago | 1123 comments on HN
| Moderate positive
Contested
Editorial · v3.7· 2026-02-28 08:20:01 0
Summary Government Accountability & Digital Security Advocates
This investigative article documents a critical security vulnerability in DOGE.gov where unauthorized parties can modify government databases. The reporting advocates for government transparency, accountability, and digital security (Articles 19, 21) while documenting failures in system security and privacy protection (Articles 3, 12). The piece demonstrates free expression and investigative journalism holding government responsible for transparency commitments.
Every other intelligence agency on the planet is about to scoop a ton of American data via cyber and basic HUMINT. It's free for all out there, I guess.
Does anyone want to talk about the hack itself? Can anyone give more details than "left their database open"? I came to this site hoping for a real discussion about that and didn't see it here yet...
Worth noting that the U.S. Digital Service (USDS, i.e the org that DOGE has now subsumed) has for a long while been experts at building and deploying static websites for the federal government. And doing it completely in the open. Within minutes you can literally clone and re-deploy all of httsp://usds.gov — 150MB of 2,700 assets and documents, built on Jekyll — locally or on S3. They've even written out the complete deployment instructions:
Trump/Elon fascism/heroism (depending on your point of view) aside, one thing that concerns me is how quickly is it possible to decide that 1000 employees at a place like the Department of Energy, including 300 at the National Nuclear Security Administration, can be dismissed without any impact on the effectiveness of these agencies.
Even if you do believe that these agencies are bloated with workers who are doing "unnecessary" work, which is possible, it seems very unprudent to make cuts so quickly. And who is qualified to make these decisions? Elon? Some Tesla or SpaceX engineer who wrote some code and put up a website? Come on. WTF do they know about how all these agencies operate and the downstream effects? You think they're taking the time to really think it through?
Now it's possible that prior to taking office, Trump had people with deep understanding of government operations go through everything, and really think things through, and prepare a list of jobs that could be cut without any impact, but if that is the case, it's never been said. Given who Trump has around him to lead these agencies (McMahon for Dept of Ed? An Oil and Gas Lobbyist for BLM? Really?) that doesn't seem likely.
Move fast and break things works fine for a start-up, and might even be fine for more cultural type stuff ("DEI"), but Dept of Energy?
It's like firing two-thirds of your sysadmins because "well, we haven't had any issues with our servers lately, and no breaches, so those people must not be needed".
I am wondering if it would have been more of an effect to
instead of this add some DEI trolling ... April 1st level of foolery so people think it is real and then get Twitter riled up on it.
Does anyone else see what’s really going on here? Naming a “government agency” after a meme coin? Wearing a hat in the Oval Office while talking over the (literally) sitting president? Elon is attempting to telegraph that he has no respect for the institutions of our country. Why do you think Trump did something as petty as renaming the Gulf of Mexico? It’s a litmus test to see who will follow his most inane power plays. Today, it was put into action when they banned the AP from the Oval Office and AF1 for not bending the knee on this issue. This is far darker than Elon just running amok.
Its not just this website. Since DOGE, China probably canceled all vacation days for their hackers, as its a free for all. Firing of most so many people including security departments and most likely the (good) femboy furry hackers.
Is the newly created user with name "bigballs" who downloads whole government databases a foreign TA or just DOGE? Who knows. Who cares, certainly not the Government.
The data and access gained currently by China, Russia, NK and SA will continue to be useful until and way after the next war.
> Maybe they should fire these kids and replace them with REAL engineers.
Nah, they'll want reasonable pay, reasonable hours, and won't confuse their boss for a living god. They may even have some self-confidence and morals, which would be a total deal breaker.
I mean the article is paywalled but it sounds like this is isolated to their site-displayed twitter feed; basically the site was hosted by cloudflare and you could insert your own fake tweets into what was recorded on the site (but not on the actual DOGE twitter feed). I don't think any data was actually compromised
They are doing tremendous damage for something that is supposed to be a stage show. Among everything they've done over the past three weeks, HUD is being gutted as we speak and the company a friend works at lost $100 million in contracts practically overnight.
DOGE is a complete farce, but I think there's an important to not just write this off as a stage show and the people buying into it as idiots. There are a lot of people who feel that government isn't working for them and so when they see things like "8 million dollars spent on condoms for Palestinians" they're already primed to get angry about it. Musk/DOGE's actions may all be for spectacle, but he's tapping into some very real emotions that he wouldn't be able to tap into if people felt the government was working for them. DOGE is a symptom of a larger problem. Even if Musk and DOGE are completely discredited, if we don't figure out a way to make it so the average citizen feels like they're getting their money's worth from the government, it's just a matter of time until someone else steps in to exploit that feeling for their own gain.
The numbers they claim to save are like trying to turn your household budget around by cutting out a weekly latte.
If you really want to make big financial changes, you need a lot more income, or cut serious costs - like a car payment or downsize your house. In the case of DOGE, I haven't seen them touch DoD or any of the massive medical programs, etc.
The article documents a government website designed to demonstrate transparency but found to be insecure, emphasizing the importance of government accountability in protecting systems and rights
FW Ratio: 67%
Observable Facts
The article discusses a government website created to track government actions and demonstrate transparency
The report identifies failures in government system administration and security
Inferences
The documentation of government accountability failures highlights the importance of proper administration for protecting rights
build 1ad9551+j7zs · deployed 2026-03-02 09:09 UTC · evaluated 2026-03-02 11:31:12 UTC
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