The US Treasury Claimed DOGE Technologist Didn’t Have ‘Write Access’ When He Actually Did
www.wired.com
Sources tell WIRED that the ability of DOGE's Marko Elez to alter code controlling trillions in federal spending was rescinded days after US Treasury and White House officials said it didn't exist.

Summary

Despite official denials, a technologist from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had “write access” to critical U.S. Treasury payment systems.

Marko Elez, a former SpaceX and X employee, was granted admin privileges to systems processing trillions in federal payments. Reports suggest he made “extensive changes” before resigning.

Concerns escalated after Treasury officials falsely claimed DOGE only had “read access.”

The controversy follows the resignation of a senior Treasury official who opposed DOGE’s access, amid allegations of Musk associates interfering with USAID payments.

  • PM_Your_Nudes_Please@lemmy.world
    8·
    6 hours ago

    Exactly. If he has control of the entire department and the only immutable record is contained within the department… That record is now mutable. The point of blockchain is to be a distributed ledger, which is impossible to fake due to the fact that there are so many identical copies. If there is only one copy, (or to be more specific, all of the copies are under the control of a corrupt department) it’s not immutable.

    • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world
      5·
      6 hours ago

      A key thing is that it pretty much needs to be a public blockchain of enough scale as well.

      If the US government had a private blockchain with a thousand copies all over the country, DOGE could still step in and take control of the entire system and start editing it. It would be much harder, but possible.

      By being public you can’t compromise the entire system, and the larger the system gets, it gets crazy expensive to try and attack it, and it’s better to just play along with the existing incentive structure then waste money on an attack.