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.

  • jedibob5@lemmy.world
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    15 days ago

    Why does everything have to be so fucking stupid? Is it really not enough that we have to watch the destruction of democracy happen before our eyes? Must it really be carried out by a group named after an early 2010s internet meme featuring a Shiba Inu with bad grammar? Do we really have to read serious reporting about the criminal connections of a 19-year-old government employee called “Big Balls?”

    I just never imagined the fall of American democracy would be so… inane.

    • Thorry84@feddit.nl
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      15 days ago

      Yeah it’s so sad Elon actually believes the fictional stereotype of the young gifted super hacker. Fully self taught, uber smart and able to hack anything in seconds. And when they get caught they don’t go to jail, the government hires them.

      Except in real life those are just dumb fuck kids, calling themselves “Big Balls” and would never ever be hired by the government for IT related tasks. They only hire people with proper credentials, education and a clean sheet. You don’t put criminals in sensitive positions for a reason.

      • jedibob5@lemmy.world
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        15 days ago

        Idiocracy gets the causes of its particular type of dystopia pretty catastrophically wrong, to the point of basically being inadvertently pro-eugenics (“society collapsed because stupid people wouldn’t stop breeding” implies that intelligence is exclusively tied to genetics, which is… a very bad take), but it sure seemed to be an indicator of just how brazenly dumb things could get.

        • TheFinn@discuss.tchncs.de
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          15 days ago

          I guess it should be viewed that way but I always took it to be that the parents didn’t value education and didn’t push it on their kids, rinse and repeat. They didn’t act like they weren’t teachable, it was like they looked down on smart people, as if it was a cultural value.

          • postmateDumbass@lemmy.world
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            14 days ago

            It wasnt that education was demonized, more that everything kept gradually declining in capability due to laziness, conformity, and lack of critical thinking.

      • ubergeek@lemmy.today
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        15 days ago

        Idiocracy is an optimistic projection…Think 1984 but stupider. Ie, like Russia in the 90s.

    • violetring@lemmy.world
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      15 days ago

      For shits and giggles, I tried to go the path of “yeah but…” starting with his nickname. Surely he was named “big balls” a decade or so ago by other people, no he named himself. Surely his previous connections are just that, previous and years if not decades old, no, it’s 2 years, at most.

      “Big Balls” is 19 y/o 🙄 at this point. He gave himself that name and has ties to unknown hackers. He has “senior advisor” status, filling a role, that should likely be filled by a bureaucrat accountant - as opposed to a kid whose resume is being a ‘techbro with hacker connections’ and programming knowledge.

      I just have to curse here. Jesus fucking Christ! What the hell! Dummkopf, i’idiot, idiota, was zur holle, що в біса, що в біса

    • SkyNTP@lemmy.ml
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      15 days ago

      It has to be this fucking stupid, because the weapon of choice against democracy is idiocracy.

    • jaybone@lemmy.world
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      15 days ago

      Yeah, it seems like the original Nazis tried to present themselves as some form of sophisticated aristocracy. They wouldn’t have had some kid from the Hitler Youth Boy Scouts called “Big Balls” reporting to Goebbels.

      • postmateDumbass@lemmy.world
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        14 days ago

        Maybe, maybe not.

        But you cannot deny Goebbels sounds like a noise made during oral sex. Or at least it is a request for it.

      • Zron@lemmy.world
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        15 days ago

        This has the plot of a CBS show.

        19 year old hacker kid gets contracted to work for the government because he’s “the best”

        Except this is the real world where 19 year olds aren’t good at much of anything beyond learning that dating sucks and unlimited masturbating is fun.

        Guarantee you this kid got hired because he can use ChatGPT to generate code that barely does what he wants.

        Also guarantee you this kid is also the target of honeypot stings from every intelligence agency outside of America, plus maybe a few inside, and he will fall for it and divulge dangerous information.