In short: Elon Musk’s Division of Authorities Effectivity (DOGE) staff accommodates a member who as soon as offered tech assist to a cybercrime gang, in response to a brand new report. Edward Coristine, the 19-year-old usually recognized by his nickname of “Huge Balls,” already has a colourful historical past, with different stories claiming he’s the grandson of a KGB spy.
In line with data reviewed by Reuters, Coristine ran an organization referred to as DiamondCDN that offered community providers from round 2022, whereas he was nonetheless in highschool. Amongst its customers was an internet site run by a hoop of cybercriminals working underneath the identify “EGodly.”
EGodly thanked DiamondCDN for offering it with DDoS safety and caching programs in February 2023, noting that Coristine’s firm helped it securely host and safeguard its web site, dataleak.enjoyable.
Personally, I voted for Huge Balls https://t.co/gtRPzGHLDr
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 7, 2025
That very same yr, EGodly boasted on its Telegram channel that it had hijacked telephone numbers, broke into regulation enforcement electronic mail accounts in Latin America, and dedicated cryptocurrency theft. It had additionally distributed private particulars of an FBI agent who was investigating the group, together with his telephone quantity and pictures of his home, on Telegram.
The now-retired FBI agent informed Reuters that the group was being investigated over its connection to swatting incidents. “These are unhealthy of us,” the previous agent mentioned. “They are not a nice group.”
A cybersecurity researcher mentioned EGodly was made up of hardened fraudsters.
Nitin Natarajan, who served because the deputy director of CISA underneath former President Joe Biden, informed Reuters that it was regarding somebody who had offered providers to cybercriminals now had entry to delicate authorities networks.
Coristine arrange Tesla.Attractive LLC in 2021, when he was 16 years previous. The corporate controls dozens of net domains, together with no less than two Russian-registered domains, considered one of which is an AI bot for Discord servers focusing on the Russian market, writes Wired.
In line with journalist Jacob Silverman, Coristine’s great-grandfather labored for the KGB in the course of the Chilly Struggle. Valery Fedorovich Martynov was recruited by the FBI in 1982 to go Soviet intelligence to the US, however he was finally found by KGB counterintelligence officer Victor Cherkashin and executed as a traitor.
Coristine was fired from a cybersecurity internship final yr for allegedly leaking insider data to a rival. He was additionally accused of continuously partaking with Telegram and Discord communities linked to cybercrime.
Coristine’s background has led to some questioning the vetting course of for DOGE workers, and whether or not any background checks have been carried out.
