Ransomware Gang Takes Page From Elon's 'What Did You Do This Week' DOGE Emails
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A ransomware gang is channeling Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency by taunting victims with ransom notes that demand to know what they've "accomplished for work" in the last week.
The FOG ransomware group has been distributing the DOGE-themed notes in recent weeks, according to malware samples that cybersecurity vendor Trend Micro discovered on the file-scanning service VirusTotal. 'We observed that these samples initially dropped a note containing key names related to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE),' Trend Micro says.
The ransom notes also allude to Edward Coristine, who uses the online alias 'Big Balls." He reportedly has a history with cybercriminal groups, but was still appointed to Musk's DOGE team. A separate cybersecurity firm, Cyble, spotted the same attack generating a pop-up on computers that says 'DOGE BIG BALLS RANSOMWARE.'
The FOG ransomware gang appears to be spreading its attack through phishing emails with an attachment titled "Pay Adjustment.zip." If opened, the attachment will download and execute a PowerShell script designed to load the ransomware loader in "cwiper.exe," along with other malicious programs.
"It also opens politically themed YouTube videos and includes written political commentary directly in the script,' Trend Micro notes. The attack is designed to gather data on the victim's PC before encrypting the files, and then leaving a ransom note, demanding the victim pay approximately $1,000 in the Monero cryptocurrency.
According to Cyble, the ransom note, titled RANSOMNOTE.txt, introduces the threat actor as 'Edward Coristine,' and lists his purported home address and phone number. The note then echoes Elon Musk's recent emails to federal workers and demand that victims justify their productivity by listing their weekly accomplishments.
'Give me five bullet points on what you accomplished for work last week or you owe me a TRILLION dollars,' the ransom note from the FOG gang says.
'The use of Coristine's name and the 'DOGE' reference in the ransomware could be a tactic to malign him and the DOGE initiative,' Cyble adds.
In the ransom note, the FOG group also claims they'll decrypt the files for free, but only if the victim spreads the ransomware attack to another victim.
'FOG ransomware is a relatively new ransomware family that enterprises must add to their watchlist,' Trend Micro warns. The gang claims to have attacked over 100 victims, including organizations in the education, manufacturing, and transportation sectors, since January.
Meanwhile, the official "what did you do this week" emails from DOGE are reportedly a bust. The Washington Post reports that the Office of Personnel Management basically told HR officials across the government that the emails are voluntary and that the agency didn't plan to do anything with the emails that were submitted.
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Newsweek
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Washington Post
2 hours ago
- Washington Post
DOGE has the keys to sensitive data that could help Elon Musk
A Washington Post review found that in at least seven major departments or agencies, DOGE secured the power to view records that experts say could benefit Musk's businesses for years. For months, Elon Musk's U.S. DOGE Service plumbed the federal government's information systems, scouring arcane internal records that the billionaire said were guiding his hunt for waste. Now that Musk has stepped away from his government role, some of that data could be valuable in another way — by giving the world's richest man a competitive advantage over his rivals in the private sector. A Washington Post examination found that in at least seven major departments or agencies, DOGE secured the power to view records that contain competitors' trade secrets, nonpublic details about government contracts, and sensitive regulatory actions or other information. 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Help us report on the federal government The Washington Post wants to hear from people affected by or with knowledge of the Trump administration's efforts to reshape government, including actions by the U.S. DOGE Service. We are also interested in the administration's handling of government data. You can contact our reporters by email or Signal encrypted message. Desmond Butler: or desmondbutlerWP.99 on Signal. Jonathan O'Connell: or jonathanoc.76 on Signal. Hannah Natanson: or (202) 580-5477 on Signal. Aaron Gregg: or (771) 215-7909 on Signal. Read more about how to use Signal and other ways to securely contact The Post. Previous Next The Post reviewed court documents and interviewed dozens of current and former U.S. government officials to determine which records DOGE aides were able to examine while Musk led the unit. Reporters also spoke with experts and business competitors about how that information, if improperly shared with Musk's companies, could give them a competitive advantage. DOGE aides, for example, were given near-blanket access to records at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, court records show. The agency holds proprietary information about algorithms used by payment apps similar to ones that Musk has said he wants to incorporate into his social media platform, X. NASA employees told The Post that DOGE aides were able to review internal assessments of thousands of contracts, including those awarded to rivals of Musk's SpaceX rocket company, which has already won billions of dollars of government work and is competing for more. (Among SpaceX's competitors is Blue Origin, a company owned by Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post. Blue Origin and its executives did not respond to requests for comment.) 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Bannon, who has publicly clashed with Musk, called for investigations into Musk's immigration status this month after the billionaire's split with Trump. In April, when the interviewer said Bannon seemed not to trust Musk with government data, Bannon replied, 'Trust, but verify.' Expanding into new industries Musk has long said he intends to turn X, his social media platform, into an 'everything app' that provides banking and payment capabilities. He has championed the idea of X being an American version of the Chinese app WeChat, which has more than 1.3 billion active users. 'I think the fundamental thing that's missing that would be incredibly useful is a single application that encompasses everything,' Musk told X employees in 2023, a year after taking over the company, according to a transcript obtained by the Verge. '… I actually mean someone's entire financial life. If it involves money, it'll be on our platform — money or securities or whatever. It's not just, you know, send 20 bucks to my friend. I'm talking about, like, you won't need a bank account.' In January, the week after Trump was inaugurated, X announced that it would partner with Visa to begin offering peer-to-peer payments to users, marking the company's foray into the financial services industry. Weeks later, DOGE mounted a hostile takeover of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a watchdog agency that regulates the finance sector and, in some cases, collects its trade secrets. Musk led DOGE as a 'special government employee,' a designation that the White House has said made him exempt from some conflict of interest rules. (Jose Luis Magana/AP) On Feb. 7, Musk telegraphed the fate of the agency in a post on X. 'CFPB RIP' he wrote, adding a tombstone emoji. Less than an hour later, his aides began demanding access to the agency's information systems. At 5:36 p.m., an agency communications official received the first in a series of calls from two DOGE aides at the White House, according to interviews with that person, who provided detailed notes from the call. The DOGE aides asked for passwords and full administrative control of the CFPB website and social media accounts, the person said. That night, Trump's new pick to temporarily run the CFPB, Russell Vought, issued an order giving DOGE aides the authority to view all unclassified CFPB data, according to internal agency emails obtained by The Post. Established by Congress in response to the 2008 financial crisis, the CFPB is supposed to enforce federal consumer protection laws. The bureau collects nonpublic information from the companies it regulates and from consumers who file complaints. It is only one of several agencies housing data that could be used to vet potential customers for financial services, experts and employees said. DOGE has had access to such data — about millions of American consumers — at the Treasury Department, Social Security Administration and Education Department, The Post has previously reported. A Treasury spokeswoman said that all its employees undergo training and ethics guidance, adding that nonpublic information may not be disseminated and that doing so for personal use could be punished under the law. A Social Security official said in a statement that the agency 'is solely focused on improving technology and delivering on President Trump's executive order to eliminate information silos and streamline data collection across all agencies to increase government efficiency and save hard-earned taxpayer dollars.' The Education Department and CFPB did not respond to requests for comment. The Trump administration has acknowledged in court that two DOGE aides had credentials that allowed them to review the CFPB's most sensitive records or grant that power to others. Administration lawyers noted, however, that DOGE aides assigned to the agency had certified in written agreements that they would abide by all federal security, confidentiality and ethics laws. No single person had ever been granted such broad access to the bureau's data systems, according to a declaration from Erie Meyer, the CFPB's former chief technologist, later filed in court as part of a lawsuit brought by labor unions and advocacy groups seeking to limit DOGE's ability to review government records. In interviews, Meyer and other staff called that near-complete access 'God tier.' 'Musk could never have gotten 'God tier' access to this kind of information as a private citizen,' Meyer told The Post. 'This kind of data access was unprecedented in government because there were protections in place, until now, to prevent it.' Story continues below advertisement Advertisement Some of the agency's information would be valuable to private companies looking to expand their footprint within the financial services industry, current and former CFPB employees and experts said. In recent years the CFPB requested and received data from major tech firms that have built payment apps, such as Zelle, Cash App and PayPal, according to interviews with current and former CFPB staff. That information includes business strategies, internal assessments of products' development, proprietary algorithms, AI models and the companies' analyses of their competitors. In many cases, the businesses resisted providing data to the CFPB, arguing that it would be devastating if leaked. The CFPB assured the companies that the data would be protected, according to two officials familiar with the talks. CFPB supporters rally Feb. 10 after acting director Russell Vought told the agency's staff to stay home. (Craig Hudson/Reuters) The CFPB employees who spoke with The Post said that they had not seen any indication that DOGE viewed commercially valuable data or that such information was shared with Musk or any of his companies. But the sensitive nature of the information is a source of anxiety for payment processors competing with X, now a subsidiary of Musk's xAI. A lobbyist who represents electronic payment companies described a variety of data held by the CFPB that could harm his clients if leaked to a competitor, including pricing structure, costs and the proprietary information about algorithms. The lobbyist said his clients are unsettled by their uncertainty about how DOGE has handled government data and have shared their concerns with members of Congress during routine meetings on other topics. 'It should be clear that they cannot use that information for competitive purposes,' the lobbyist said. Government contracts Since the 2010s, NASA has increasingly turned to the private sector to facilitate space travel, recently pursuing contracts with 14 American companies including SpaceX to help send people back to the moon. SpaceX has been dominant, winning more than $15 billion from the agency for its work on space programs, including those aiming to explore Mars. Musk's DOGE team at NASA, meanwhile, gained insight into all the agency's contracts and grant data, according to interviews with more than a dozen employees and records obtained by The Post. The information compiled for DOGE's review goes far beyond publicly accessible information about government contracts. It includes detailed descriptions of the services provided to NASA, as well as employees' explanations for why each contract should be kept, cut or downsized — offering an intimate picture of which services NASA values and why. NASA is one of at least two agencies that have ongoing contracts with Musk's companies where DOGE had the ability to examine nonpublic contracting data, The Post found. Experts said such information, if obtained by a Musk company, could provide it with a significant edge in winning future government work. DOGE is also authorized to examine nonpublic data about firms bidding for government work at the General Services Administration, according to two employees. DOGE was given access to two databases there holding records related to the award of contracts, permitting the team to see who submitted bids, for how much and what kinds of negotiations took place. The agency, which administers contracts for technology and other services provided to government agencies, has multiple contracts with a subsidiary of Tesla for solar power generation, records show. NASA declined to comment, and the GSA did not respond to requests for comment. At NASA, acting administrator Janet Petro sent an email to employees on Valentine's Day announcing that DOGE would be 'reviewing our contracts to find efficiencies.' By early March, three DOGE aides had been given user accounts within NASA's internal systems, records show: Scott Coulter and two former employees of Tesla, Alexander Simonpour and Riley Sennott. The DOGE trio obtained '24/7' access to NASA's administrative offices and the ability to review internal employee data, including employment and training history, records show. Sennott declined to comment. Coulter and Simonpour did not respond to requests for comment. About a week later, top administrators began sending emails to NASA staffers who work with contracts or grants, outlining a new data request, according to messages obtained by The Post. Staff were told to help with a 'comprehensive contracts and grants review' required by Trump's executive order embedding DOGE aides at federal agencies. One email directed employees to provide a long list of 'supplemental information' for each of NASA's roughly 13,000 contracts and grants. The information to be compiled included the employee's recommendation of whether to keep, eliminate or shrink the contract or grant, their rationale for the decision and, in the case of a cancellation, its impact on 'the agency's mission.' The email exhorted employees to be specific. 'Please ensure that contract descriptions and justifications … contain sufficient detail,' the email said. 'Enough detail for a laymen to understand critical work being performed under the contract.' Staff entered the requested information into a spreadsheet, according to records obtained by The Post, and sent it to the director's office, where DOGE was installed. 'For any competitor to have that level of access within government agencies is a huge problem,' the executive from the SpaceX competitor said in response to The Post's findings. 'Nobody has that level of detail.' Most active NASA contracts are listed publicly on a federal website. But the details laid out in those documents — including money allocated, vendor name and a brief description of work performed — fall far short of the information in the spreadsheet, said Christoph Mlinarchik, a former senior contracting officer for the Defense Department who now helps companies compete for and carry out federal contracts. 'Useful info about agency needs is extremely valuable — the coin of the realm — for proposal, sales and business development professionals trying to win government contracts,' Mlinarchik said. So, 'getting your hands on a nonpublic spreadsheet that details every aspect of the agency's contracts creates a tremendous advantage.' Mlinarchik said that value 'will endure for many years,' although it will diminish over time as the agency's needs evolve. The information could be useful to Musk's companies in multiple ways, said Jessica Tillipman, associate dean for government procurement law studies at George Washington University Law School. Story continues below advertisement Advertisement Learning which contracts the government plans to terminate or shrink — before that is announced publicly — could tip off companies about what services the government might need in the future, giving them extra time to prepare a more competitive bid, Tillipman said. And the spreadsheet, with its thousands of justifications, paints a detailed portrait of the services NASA officials see as priorities and why. Any company with that level of insight could tailor a more convincing bid, she said. 'This information gives an edge, it helps predict upcoming procurements, it details what the agency might need, and gives insight into its inner workings,' Tillipman said. 'Basically you're looking at the agency's internal thought processes. And not only that, but who's doing the thinking.' Democratic lawmakers have sent several letters to Petro asking what access DOGE has to proprietary or confidential data at her agency, citing potential conflicts of interest for Musk. NASA officials declined to answer those questions directly, writing in a response that 'DOGE has identified an individual who will be employed by NASA' who 'will have all necessary access to NASA owned or managed resources as required for his duties.' Regulatory actions On Feb. 4, two weeks after Trump's inauguration, leaders at the Labor Department informed headquarters employees that DOGE would be visiting the agency the next afternoon. On Feb. 5, the day of DOGE's expected arrival, employee unions and advocacy groups filed a lawsuit challenging DOGE's authority to examine sensitive Department of Labor records. Agency leaders had told employees that 'when Mr. Musk and his team visit, they are to do whatever they ask, not to push back, not to ask questions,' a union representative said in an affidavit filed as part of the lawsuit. Employees 'were told to provide access to any DOL system they requested access to and not to worry about any security protocols; just do it.' The department, tasked with protecting the rights of employees, job applicants and retirees, has more than 50 data systems that contain private information about individuals. DOGE attorneys have argued in court that accessing Labor Department data is required to root out waste and abuse. But some data could provide Musk a window into sensitive government investigations of his companies, including the names of any employees who may have provided information to aid those investigations, said Jordan Barab, who was the department's deputy assistant secretary for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration from 2009 to 2017, during the Obama administration. 'OSHA enforcement data remains protected by law, and the agency continues its inspections to safeguard workers' health and safety — regardless of who the employer may be,' Labor Department spokesperson Courtney Parella said in a statement to The Post. OSHA enforces workplace safety and health standards, collects information about workplace injuries and conducts investigations. It has investigated and penalized SpaceX and Tesla multiple times for safety violations, including an episode last year in which a contract worker at Tesla was electrocuted and killed while inspecting solar panels at the company's Texas factory. Tesla is appealing the penalties related to last year's electrocution. OSHA has issued more than 40 penalties to Tesla and its subsidiaries since 2010, according to the corporate watchdog and research group Good Jobs First, and a half dozen penalties to SpaceX since 2014. In 2020, a Tesla executive said its injury rate was below the industry average. Trump and Musk promote Tesla vehicles at the White House on March 11. Trump said he wanted to help Musk after seeing Tesla face a backlash over Musk's DOGE role. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post) The identities of workers who may have shared information about allegedly unsafe conditions are in OSHA's data, putting them at risk of being outed. 'All that information about workers who file complaints, details of the investigations, are in OSHA's files,' Barab said. Workers who contact OSHA can and often do request that their names be kept confidential from the company, Barab said. The agency often publicly releases details about injuries it investigates but does not disclose who provided the information, such as in 2020 when a Tesla employee suffered a broken lower back installing solar panels. 'You've got people who are afraid of filing complaints for fear of the employer finding out. OSHA is required by law to keep that confidential if the employee requests that it be confidential,' Barab said. Those investigations can also involve collecting company documents or taking photographs of jobsites — information that sometimes contains business secrets or proprietary information that companies do not otherwise share with outsiders. OSHA regularly collects proprietary material in a database, Barab said, and is required by law to keep it private. Otherwise, he said, businesses wouldn't feel comfortable complying with the agency's inquiries for fear that the information they provide could be used by competitors. Among the companies OSHA has investigated are rivals of Musk's in the automobile and aerospace industry. OSHA's database is one of seven Labor Department systems that the employee unions raised as particular concerns in their February lawsuit. Attorneys for DOGE and the government have pointed out in court filings that aides detailed to the Labor Department are required to act in accordance with applicable laws and regulations for data handling. They also said DOGE employees at the agency were required to fill out paperwork before accessing data systems and to acknowledge legal restrictions on the use of sensitive information. As of early April, attorneys for DOGE and the government did not list OSHA's database as one DOGE had accessed, and it's unclear whether DOGE has done so since then. The judge in the case rejected the unions' request for a temporary restraining order, allowing DOGE to continue to review agency data. But lawyers for the unions have argued the risk of the data being breached and shared with Musk or someone else in the private sector is too great. 'No other business owner on the planet has access to this kind of information on his competitors,' they wrote. 'And for good reason.' Daniel Gilbert and Trisha Thadani contributed to this report.
San Francisco Chronicle
2 hours ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Tesla's primitive robotaxis are driving in Texas. Will they come to San Francisco next?
When Tesla rolled out a primitive robotaxi service Sunday in Austin, Texas, it took the reverse approach of its competitors. While other companies, such as Waymo, highlight their time-intensive engineering and heavy investments in safety and reliability, experts have marveled at Tesla's more radical philosophy: Scrap the sophisticated hardware, put full faith in AI, deploy in places that don't have a lot of rules. It all seemed very seat-of-the-pants, befitting Tesla's brash chief executive, Elon Musk. And the first days were messy. Viral videos of the robotaxis depict basic fumbles, like the car pulling up nearly a block away from its pickup spot. Though the erratic behavior echoed early phases of Waymo and General Motors' self-driving subsidiary, Cruise, Tesla's mishaps drew immediate derision. By Wednesday, commenters on the social media site Reddit had put together a list of captured-on-video mishaps in Austin, where at least one robotaxi had dropped its passenger off in the middle of an intersection. Such scenes have raised doubts about Tesla's ability to expand its business to California, a more tightly regulated state with tantalizing urban markets, including San Francisco, the epicenter of autonomous car technology. Industry watchers are now divided over whether Tesla needs to crack those markets if it aims to be a player in the driverless taxi sector. 'They have a very long road before they can even consider California,' said University of San Francisco engineering professor William Riggs. He characterized Musk's style as bullish, and grounded in 'a really bold prediction.' It just might work, he said. Clearly, Tesla had eyed the populous West Coast state long before the company sent its tiny fleet of modified, self-driving, electric Model Ys to pick up passengers in Austin. In a sign of ambition, Tesla obtained a permit with California's Department of Motor Vehicles to test autonomous automobiles in 2015. This year the company secured a separate permit from the California Public Utilities Commission to serve as a charter party carrier, or taxi. Yet, even with those initial steps locked down, Tesla is following a jagged path from Austin's scrappy Silicon Hills to the original Silicon Valley. And some observers are puzzled by the company's new way of doing business. As a titan of electric cars, Tesla initially focused on high-performance luxury models before shifting to mass-market products. But as a robotaxi venture, Tesla did the opposite: The company took its most recent suburban utility vehicle, upgraded the software and slapped a flashy logo on the side. Thus, a new ride-hail service was born. 'Everybody else's plan is, make it work first, then make it cheap,' said Brad Templeton, a Sunnyvale-based self-driving car consultant. 'Tesla is saying, 'It's gotta be cheap on Day One. We gotta make it work with the cheapest hardware.'' From Templeton's perspective, Tesla made a big gamble with cars that operate chiefly on 'computer vision,' combining cameras with machine-learning. Lacking the intricate LiDAR sensors and high-definition maps on which Waymo vehicles are trained, Teslas instead build maps on the go. Tesla robotaxis might drive up to an intersection in Austin and 'feel out' where the lanes are, Templeton said. Waymos, by contrast, 'know' every crack in the road. Tesla's methodology wouldn't fly in a state with complicated policies and politics and road conditions. But it might fit well in suburbs and rural areas that are less penetrated by technology, particularly if the people there are car-dependent and lack adequate public transit, Riggs said. 'There's too much regulatory friction in California,' Riggs conceded. 'Tesla doesn't have to come.' During an earnings call in April, Musk touted the shrewdness of his strategy. 'Generalized' artificial intelligence would be more adaptable, and easier to scale, he said, than 'very expensive sensors and high precision maps' developed for specific areas. 'Once we can make it work in a few cities in America, we can make it work anywhere in America,' Musk said. 'Once we can make it work in a few cities in China, we can make it work anywhere in China. Likewise in Europe, limited only by regulatory approvals.' (To date, Tesla has not announced any robotaxi testing outside Texas.) After the call, Tesla saw a fleeting rise in share values. Austin's robotaxi debut had a frat party vibe. A fleet of roughly a dozen vehicles provided rides to an invite-only group of influencers and Tesla enthusiasts. Trips cost a flat rate of $4.20, a reference either to marijuana or 'Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.' The videos posted online show passengers galloping up to the electric SUVs, craning cellphones to film steering wheels that turned by themselves. But Musk had failed to deliver on some of the promises he'd made in the earnings call. He had hyped the modified Model Y taxis as 'fully autonomous,' meaning they don't need human intervention. He had even claimed that with a software update, regular Model Y owners could convert their cars into robotaxis. In reality, the robots that cruised Austin streets this week came with with babysitters: Tesla had assigned safety monitors to sit in the front passenger seats. These shotgun riders are not compelled by Texas regulators, and have led to confusion over whether they are needed for emergencies, or merely there for optics. The company's push to full autonomy will face challenges in September, when a new Texas law takes effect, requiring a state permit for self-driving vehicles, and mandating that they comply with traffic laws. With the new oversight, it appears Tesla's wings 'were clipped significantly,' said Cameron Gieda, a mobility executive who specializes in autonomous vehicles. For all of Musk's daunting ideas, the real 'moon shot,' as Templeton sees it, is a commercial ride service that doesn't need human supervision. Other companies are far ahead: By next year, Waymo will operate driverless taxis in at least seven U.S. cities, while Amazon's Zoox, which just opened a second Bay Area factory, will soon offer rides in San Francisco, Las Vegas, Austin and Miami. Ultimately, Musk's chance of success depends on whether he can move beyond Austin to dense areas of California or New York, Gieda said. Getting there won't be easy. Whereas Texas is just starting to clamp down on self-driving operators, California has two agencies that regulate them — the Department of Motor Vehicles and the California Public Utilities Commission — and requires six permits to run a passenger service in fully autonomous vehicles. The two that Tesla has obtained from the DMV and CPUC do not authorize its vehicles to drive without a human. And then there's the political climate. Long a polarizing figure, Musk recently faced an intense backlash in California and other blue states for being an erstwhile adviser to President Donald Trump. As the Tesla CEO installed himself in the White House and led an aggressive campaign to torch federal programs and agencies, owners of Teslas began putting anti-Elon stickers on their bumpers. Some traded their cars in for other brands. Sales of what had once been a pioneering electric vehicle plummeted. Though Musk's relationship with Trump has since unraveled, it doesn't mean disenchanted consumers will forgive him. Tesla's brand identity is particularly shaky in metropolitan regions anchored by San Francisco and Los Angeles. The company will have to saturate those areas with robotaxis if it seeks to challenge Waymo, which now logs more than 250,000 fares each week. Tesla is 'under a microscope' in a way that Waymo and other companies never were, wrote Phil Koopman, an associate professor of engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, in a post on his personal Substack. Koopman expressed concern about some of the errors: In one video, for instance, a Tesla robotaxi wobbles on a left-hand turn before bailing, then briefly veers into a lane of oncoming traffic. So far none of these errors has caused a collision or serious injury, and taken together, they aren't necessarily an indictment of Tesla, in Koopman's view. Nonetheless, he urged the company to 'get its house in order' before one of the vehicles crashes — and takes Musk's world-conquering plans down with it.
