Summary

A vulnerability in the new OPM email server allowed anyone to send mass messages to federal employees, exposing poor cybersecurity.

Over 13,000 NOAA staff received spam and vulgar messages, including crude jokes about Trump and bizarre newsletters, causing widespread outrage.

The breach resulted from an overhaul led by Elon Musk that installed underqualified personnel and an insecure in-house system, sparking a class-action lawsuit for cybersecurity failures.

The unsecured system also inadvertently revealed ties to Project 2025 and a plan to gather government employee data as Trump’s loyalists reshape federal operations.

    • admin@sh.itjust.works
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      42 minutes ago

      They’re firing Inspector Generals? Damn, thats like, expediting the destruction of the federal government.

      Edit: for those who don’t know, IGs are independent officials within fed and state agencies that conduct investigations, audits or inspections to employees or agencies.

    • Lumiluz@slrpnk.net
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      7 hours ago

      Because they don’t have to worry about fuck ups. Americans are gonna do jack shit about it. Otherwise something would have already been done.

      • GoofSchmoofer@lemmy.world
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        6 minutes ago

        Not true. The Democrats will form a committee to discuss language to be placed in a letter to the administration, they may even call a news conference to state that they are disappointed in what is happening and if it continues they may have to do more drastic measures like actually sending the letter that the committee put together.

    • IninewCrow@lemmy.ca
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      20 hours ago

      That’s the frightening part … either they are idiots that are completely messing everything up including their own plans … or they are following a well orchestrated plan of disruption and chaos to gain control of everything and everyone

      Either way, they are undoing a lot of things that will take years or decades to bring back

      “From barbarism to civilization requires a century; from civilization to barbarism needs but a day.”

      • Will Durant
      • catloaf@lemm.ee
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        12 hours ago

        It’s much easier to fight a enemy that is confused, disorganized, and fighting amongst itself. This is by design.

      • Yardy Sardley@lemmy.ca
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        18 hours ago

        they are idiots that are completely messing everything up including their own plans

        Incompetence is one of the hallmark qualities of a fascist government.

        • CitizenKong@lemmy.world
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          15 hours ago

          Hey, people think Hitler’s Germany was a success story until he started to loose the war but it was actually a clusterfuck right from the beginning and doomed to fail from the start.

          • Kitathalla@lemy.lol
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            12 hours ago

            I mean, he loosed war pretty early, so it wasn’t that long according to what you say.

        • datavoid
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          13 hours ago

          Now now… incompetence is the hallmark of any government

      • SatansMaggotyCumFart@lemmy.world
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        18 hours ago

        Either way, they are undoing a lot of things that will take years or decades to bring back

        This is what the accelerationists didn’t account for.

  • Hobbes_Dent@lemmy.world
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    20 hours ago

    The breach resulted from an overhaul led by Elon Musk that installed underqualified personnel and an insecure in-house system, sparking a class-action lawsuit for cybersecurity failures.

    And y’all let him have access to government.

    The world will burn from climate and war because of American stupidity.

      • Couldbealeotard@lemmy.world
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        19 hours ago

        Unless you are suggesting that actual election fraud took place, these guys got democratically elected.

        From the outside it seems like this is what the majority of your voting public wanted, and the majority of your adult population were fine with it and chose not to vote. If it were the first time I would consider it as revealing a major flaw in your political system, but this is the second time, non consecutively, that this has happened. That just looks like this is representative of your people. Sorry.

        • timbuck2themoon@sh.itjust.works
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          18 hours ago

          It is. Im tired of people making excuses for the idiots in this country. Idgaf if you thought the Democrats were terrible- theyre clearly far better than these fascists. But enough people decided it wasn’t worth their time anyhow.

          Fuck them and fuck all of us because this is who we are.

          • JasonDJ@lemmy.zip
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            16 hours ago

            You’re not wrong.

            Imagine if the Dems won and we never experienced this timeline, and it was another boring and mediocre administration.

            Then it would have just postponed the inevitable.

            It’s the “what have you done for me lately, Eddy?”. The last election was “super duper important guys trust us”. And it absolutely was. And it was a remarkably average presidency. And that’s a good thing.

            The majority of the people either have absolutely no understanding of how our government actually functions in the real world (and this includes both the people saying “why aren’t the Dems doing anything” and the people who said “vote third party”), or actually want to watch the world burn.

            Basically, they FAFO’d. They had their fun in the first half, and now they’ve got us all trapped in the second half.

            There is no way within the system as it stands now to even begin to turn towards normalcy for at least two years.

            Buckle up, kids.

            And I hope nobody tries to off Trump. As bad as it is, that would definitely just make things worse. Just check out the order of succession.

            The order of succession

            How far down would they have to go before things start to look better? Best we can do is to just hope some other global power pities us enough to send a mercy nuke to DC.

    • Resonosity@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      18 hours ago

      Thanks for grouping all Americans together into the same monolith.

      How transparently closed minded can you be ffs

      • Hobbes_Dent@lemmy.world
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        17 hours ago

        Do you care who the Russian soldier in Ukraine voted for?

        America is a monolith. This is what it chose to be. You can’t expect the rest of the world to act as nations yet only consider some of the population when one of them attacks.

        On the world stage where economies are tanked and people die - this is Americas choice. Your sports team politics is an internal problem that we all have to suffer.

  • Rhoeri@lemmy.world
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    18 hours ago

    I wonder how much of the intended damage he wants us to suffer is going to be mitigated as a result of their incompetence, and then I wonder how long can we count on them to continue making these mistakes before people begin to get seriously hurt…

  • towerful@programming.dev
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    20 hours ago

    It’s been 4 days.
    How did people get these email addresses?
    I mean, the domain is known.
    But was the system that president musk broke really holding back this torrent of abuse and garbage?
    Feels like actual email addresses were leaked.
    Unless it was a mailing list that was suddenly exposed.

    Still seems strange that an email that simply says “yo” suddenly came through as part of the spam.
    Feels like email addresses were posted somewhere, and someone jumped on for the lulz. Along with the wall of trolls and abusers jumping on.

    I mean, as soon as I link a domain to an IP, I see all sorts of “security” scans turn up. Till then, firewall is pretty quiet.
    And if I wildcard direct a domain to an ip, the root gets scanned but any sub domains don’t.
    I feel email addresses would follow a similar pattern.

    • MrEff@lemmy.world
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      19 hours ago

      It’s worse than you think. Last week we got an email that looked like strait up fishing spam demanding that we were to email back “yes” confirming that we got the email. So many people even reported it as spam that we had supervisors have to directly tell us that it was legit. Then they sent out a second email with a warning that is was in fact legit and to respond to that email with “yes” if we got that one.

      On the back end at OPM: Musk forced his way in and demanded to redo the email servers. The IT told him it wasn’t possible for what he was asking. So he brought in his own goons to install a non government server with unknown software and unknown security configurations and they plugged it into the OPM network to spoof it as an official OPM server, then sent out those emails.

      And sure enough, the idiot didn’t didn’t configure the security correctly or let official government IT people touch it, it ended up backdooring into the entire government HR system, and it had every active government email that responded “yes” to his stupid email that we were required to. And now we know it was compromised. There is no telling what foreign governments now have all of that info as well as what other backdoors they have installed.

      • towerful@programming.dev
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        18 hours ago

        Holy shit.
        That’s some shit that contravenes every security briefing, every security best practice.
        Then they go and spoof a legit government installation with their own bullshit?!
        Fucking Hilary and her email servers. But like times 10. Legitimately compromising the US government communications.
        Why is this lawsuits, why isn’t this treason?!

        • JasonDJ@lemmy.zip
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          16 hours ago

          This is way worse than Hillary’s email servers.

          Hillary occasionally conducted government business on an email servers owned by her, but also on her (not .gov) domain.

          I never knew the details. But I wouldn’t doubt that for simplicity sake they probably had multiple accounts configured on the same phone. At that point, it’s incredibly easy to accidentally respond or start a chain from the wrong address. Who among us hasn’t done that, we actually grew up with this stuff.

          What Musk did was set up his own separate infrastructure to send and receive emails, on a .gov domain, and use that server, as a private contractor to the president, to circumvent tons of critical processes and security practices, in order to push his clients agenda.

          The point of that agenda is to nip checks-and-balances in the balls so the president can unilaterally enact “his” (or the highest bidders…Heritage, Musk, Thiel, Federalists, Illuminati, Skull and Bones, whatever, at this point it’s all the same) agenda.

          It. Is. Actual. Treason.

          By an illegal immigrant, no less.

        • dhork@lemmy.world
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          18 hours ago

          why isn’t this treason?!

          Because Musk bought the election for Trump, and now Musk do whatever he wants.