NEW from me: A whistleblower says DOGE may have taken sensitive labor data...and then someone posted a threatening letter to his door. www.npr.org/2025/04/15/n... - ThreadSky

jennamclaughlin.bsky.social • 45 days ago

NEW from me: A whistleblower says DOGE may have taken sensitive labor data...and then someone posted a threatening letter to his door.

https://www.npr.org/2025/04/15/nx-s1-5355896/doge-nlrb-elon-musk-spacex-security

Comments

lesliead717.bsky.social•45 days ago

This is truly frightening

phoenixwomanmn.bsky.social•45 days ago

DOGE put in a backdoor:

"After journalist Roger Sollenberger started posting on X about the account, Berulis noticed something Wick was working on: a project, or repository, titled "NxGenBdoorExtract."

Wick made it private before Berulis could investigate further, he told NPR."

poppermost4.bsky.social•45 days ago

Who's Wick?

phoenixwomanmn.bsky.social•45 days ago

Now we know why DOGE didn't want logs of their activities:

wirelessben.bsky.social•42 days ago

Awesome work, Jenna. Thank you!

Turning off logging is what hackers do to eliminate evidence of their crimes.

dneumde51.bsky.social•45 days ago

Traitor trump and his cabinet want Russia to screw around with our infrastructure so scare us thinking Russia is attacking us so he can declare martial law and finish his dictator takeover. He must die

dneumde51.bsky.social•45 days ago

DOGE WORKERS MUST BE ARRESTED FOR SPYING AND TREASON

dneumde51.bsky.social•45 days ago

TIME TO OVERTHROW THIS NAXI TAKEOVER NOW!!!!!!

m7jd.bsky.social•45 days ago

Rachel Maddow just had him and his attorney on her show. This is frightening!

melijade.bsky.social•45 days ago

Potentially related?

kennwhite.bsky.social•45 days ago

This is terrific reporting Jenna. Thank you and NPR for bringing light to this.

cryptodd.bsky.social•45 days ago

Amazing detailed reporting that the #cybersecurity community can understand and dig into. Thank you for the insights and work that went into this incredible reporting.

amyfriedman.bsky.social•45 days ago

What else did the DOGE hackers do at the other agencies? #russianbuddies

crusadermdd.bsky.social•45 days ago

Thank you for your reporting and thank you to Mr. Berulis for his bravery and for his diligence in trying to protect this highly sensitive data. I offer a huge shout out to all the dedicated civil service workers trying to do their jobs each day to support the American people.

carljungfranz.bsky.social•45 days ago

*

Vote the fascist MAGA Republicans
out of office.

Purge the House of
the Republican Party.

Purge Fascism from America.

Protest and campaign
in the Streets.

Fill the Evening News
with protesting carnivals
in the streets.

Summer is here
and the time is right
for dancing in the streets.

*

screaminglibral.bsky.social•44 days ago

If you watched the show, you should be very scared! This harassment of the whistle blower is Russian level "fall out a window" level!!

cmac122584.bsky.social•45 days ago

What’s become painstakingly clear in the last couple of weeks is that the administration is intimidating anyone that could potentially challenge its authority, whether they’ve spoken out or not. The media, the legal community, academia, public servants. They’re setting the stage for even worse stuff

ifindkarma.bsky.social•45 days ago

“Ongoing actions by Musk and his followers are a coup because the individuals seizing power have no right to it…”
@timothysnyder.bsky.social

bienechan.bsky.social•45 days ago

Good grief. Exactly what I was afraid of. The biggest hostile hack into National Security sanctioned from the top. Little do they know that they themselves could be under control of a foreign adversary.

irishcolleen48.bsky.social•45 days ago

Brave Whistleblower on Rachel Maddow tonight! Will Congress grow a pair?

biggfredd.bsky.social•45 days ago

I believe this is why Dumb Donald is always calling someone a treasonist.
He's The One!!

I believe they would have killed Dan if he didn't come forward - and show his face.

GREAT JOB, DAN. ALL THE BEST!!

biggfredd.bsky.social•45 days ago

Those MFs, Trump & Musk, are selling the USA out to Russia!

Daaaaaaamn!!
WTF??...
Daaaaaaamn!!

ikycat.bsky.social•45 days ago

Brava, Jenna. Excellent reporting.

damorgan.bsky.social•45 days ago

very good article! doge's utter disdain for America and its citizens and its dehumanizing disrespect for federal employees is so enraging

hobokenirish.bsky.social•45 days ago

A plus reporting!!!!! Thank you

egtfirefall.bsky.social•44 days ago

Thank you for this!!

And thank you to all anonymous sources who contributed insights.

bobhowells.bsky.social•45 days ago

Brilliant work. Such a chilling scenario. Your thorough reporting is much appreciated.

jennamclaughlin.bsky.social•45 days ago

This story is highly technical. Counterintuitively, it deals with a *lack* of evidence, or, rather, what appears to be its removal.

Without this whistleblower's forward thinking and painstaking detection, it's likely this suspicious behavior could've gone unnoticed.

jennamclaughlin.bsky.social•45 days ago

VERY few people even saw DOGE enter NLRB. It's like they were never there. (And once they found out everything was on the cloud, they really didn't need to be.)

There are still a LOT of unknowns here, but the disclosure has a lot of detail.

jennamclaughlin.bsky.social•45 days ago

This kind of reporting is impossible without brave folks stepping up, and keeping the receipts.

And it's impossible without an amazing team behind me @npr.org. I couldn't have done it without @stphnfwlr.com, @brettneely.bsky.social, editors, lawyers, artists, an amazing copy editor, so many more.

jennamclaughlin.bsky.social•45 days ago

Seen anything suspicious worth further investigation at your agency?

I take source protection very seriously.

Download Signal (a great encrypted application for the average user), click the little pen and pad, search for my username: JennaMcLaughlin.54.

richedit.bsky.social•45 days ago

Terrific reporting, Jenna!

north-easton.bsky.social•45 days ago

Mad props!

igdilemma.bsky.social•45 days ago

It's a really insidious attack. The administration appears all in on union busting activities.
The Russian attacks are doubly enraging. If they're transmitting information to the Russians, that's treason.

igdilemma.bsky.social•45 days ago

The responsible individual(s) must be investigated for treason.

annagami.bsky.social•45 days ago

@ossoff.senate.gov @ossoff.bsky.social @warnock.senate.gov @warren.senate.gov What are they doing with our data?! Please help!!

pulsarcube.bsky.social•45 days ago

Methods like using DNS tunneling to exfiltrate data are normally used by criminal or state-sponsored hackers. The article also reports that DOGE apparently disabled various security measures, which possibly left the agency vulnerable. This should be investigated (but it won't with Trump in power).

billstewart.bsky.social•45 days ago

The late Dan Kaminsky demonstrated DNS tunneling at CodeCon about 20 years ago, and went on to fix major holes in the world's DNS systems.
We all knew it was theoretically possible, but he not only demonstrated telnet-over-DNS, he also did video-over-DNS.

Using it definitely indicates criming.

sethdmichaels.bsky.social•45 days ago

sincerely, excellent work on this, thank you

fauxids.bsky.social•45 days ago

Great reporting. Kudos to you and everyone else involved in getting this out.

kentpitman.bsky.social•45 days ago

«After journalist Roger Sollenberger started posting on X about the account, Berulis noticed something Wick was working on: a project, or repository, titled "NxGenBdoorExtract."»

ffgson.bsky.social•45 days ago

Thank you for showing us one more way DOGE is putting our national assets at risk. Amazing, detailed reporting from you and NPR.

dvbuck.bsky.social•44 days ago

Hmm I thought the big risk was China stealing corporate IP & trade secrets. Turns out Elon & his stooges were doing Trump sanctioned theft.

I hope corporations are wielding their wealth & influence about the risks. Then again easier for Don to nationalize their businesses with this info.

l1mb0.bsky.social•45 days ago

As an IT professional this story made my teeth grind

gripnoir.bsky.social•44 days ago

Splendid work. I knew of article from Maddow but googling *your* article with NPR & whistleblower wasn't working until I found you on Bluesky. (Got an interview transcript and takeaway, but not the long form.) Just so you know.

tytoseye.bsky.social•45 days ago

This tells you that DOGE is anti-worker, PERIOD. Not about saving money per se, but dismantling any protections for workers, or their ability to unionize and have a voice moving forward.

billstewart.bsky.social•45 days ago

Having Elon Musk as the Top DOGE already told you that -
Tesla is the only non-union US car maker, and known for bad working conditions including high injury rates and racism.

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/tesla-workers-get-seriously-injured-almost-twice-much-industry-average-n765096

tytoseye.bsky.social•45 days ago

Yes, it's just a period, back-space-delete, an exclamation point! They are transparent about some things...like their targets, and their actions against them.

billstewart.bsky.social•45 days ago

And of course most of Trump's other big donors have been anti-union - notably the coal business from last term, the Koch Bros, Trump's own practice of not paying workers, etc.

tytoseye.bsky.social•45 days ago

Long R history, period.

leeeeenda3.bsky.social•44 days ago

#TraitorInChief

vondav90.bsky.social•45 days ago

DOGE is putting in "Backdoors" for Russia to either access or completely control or shut down all out systems.

shakemupnow.bsky.social•45 days ago

Exactly! DOGE is a not cost-cutting initiative, it’s a data/info gathering operation that will use the data in criminal and treasonous ways to take down the American government and control the American population in ways that will be beyond imaginable evils.

tenorune.bsky.social•45 days ago

Incredible reporting. Thank you!

nachyocheese.bsky.social•45 days ago

And installed a backdoor for DNS tunneling.

wkash917.bsky.social•45 days ago

Thank you @jennamclaughlin.bsky.social for your detailed reporting and for the extra lengths you went to get knowledgeable experts (like Ann Lewis) to comment on how totally irregular this is.

nedwharton.bsky.social•45 days ago

Spectacular reporting Jenna

mjdavis1988.bsky.social•44 days ago

BRAVO!
Should be 24/7 on this!
https://mdavis19881.substack.com/p/must-watch-breaking-news-the-dogerussia

nouveaux-horizons.bsky.social•44 days ago

what a mess.

christranscend.bsky.social•44 days ago

Ok, might b far fetched but does this story have anything to do with the fact that Garcia worked in a union?

fischer.bsky.social•45 days ago

this is fantastic reporting, I was so impressed at how much technical detail was included in an article that still felt very accessible to a general audience

chelleld16.bsky.social•45 days ago

Investigate this.
@schiff.senate.gov @padilla.senate.gov @whitehouse.senate.gov
@warren.senate.gov @klobuchar.senate.gov @chrismurphyct.bsky.social
@raskin.house.gov
@ericswalwell.bsky.social @tedlieu.bsky.social

drelwell.bsky.social•45 days ago

Great report, with details and explications that help a nonexpert like me to understand nature and dangers of the DOGE raid. I hope this information prompts closer investigation of previous, current, and future DOGE activities in other agencies. The patterns must be similar.

erharder.bsky.social•45 days ago

Thank you for your fantastic reporting. Now I’m really terrified.

chkco.bsky.social•45 days ago

This is very concerning and in fact terrifying

lechapeau.bsky.social•45 days ago

"may" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. I think most are pretty confident DOGE was all a scam to harvest user data from govt DBs.

mariekalb.bsky.social•45 days ago

*Really* concerning that the death threat included a photo of him with his dog — means it was taken after hours, probably near his home, with an implicit threat to harm not just him but anyone and anything close to him.

mariekalb.bsky.social•45 days ago

One small technical thing that threw me — the explanation of “zero trust” sounds more like the principle of least privilege. I tend to think of zero trust as having more to do with whether devices are trusted/how they’re authenticated/not assuming on network automatically means safe

billstewart.bsky.social•45 days ago

Zero Trust has been a major cybersecurity technique evolving for a decade or so. Basically it's dynamically making sure connections across a network are only allowed and kept open when they're needed and authenticating endpoints each time.
Here's one vendor's version.
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/collateral/enterprise/design-zone-security/zt-ag.html

mariekalb.bsky.social•45 days ago

Ok…. Who was this reply intended for exactly?

billstewart.bsky.social•45 days ago

Replying to your question about zero trust. They're using the term in an industry-standard way, and it says the source was keeping up with high-end current techniques.

mariekalb.bsky.social•45 days ago

Right. Ok, I think you may have misread my question. I’m aware of what zero trust is. I work in security. The point I was raising was that the definition in the article for zero trust sounds more like the definition I usually hear for the principle of least privilege than zero trust.

mariekalb.bsky.social•45 days ago

Does NLRB use the term differently / with more emphasis on account privileges? Or was this worded to be more accessible to non technical readers?

mariekalb.bsky.social•45 days ago

(Btw in case tone doesn’t come through text the way I intended — I’m not trying to “well actually” you, it just jumped out at me as something that tech bros might seize upon as a “gotcha” if they wanted to discredit the story)

billstewart.bsky.social•45 days ago

This recently-retired tech bro* seized on it as saying
"NPR's source definitely is keeping up with the latest security techniques and NRLB's better protected than I'd have expected"
and the "10GB of DNS exfiltration is a really big YIKES."

* I did network security stuff at AT&T my last 15 years

vlipman.bsky.social•44 days ago

here's the waste, fraud & abuse 🤔

rcowboys88.bsky.social•45 days ago

Is it 1940s living in Germany that this administration is locking up people illegally and sending them to concentration camps

sxeptomaniac.bsky.social•45 days ago

I've been a sysadmin for a while now, and this is one of the best articles I've read in a while related to issues of ethics and cybersecurity.

The principle of least privilege, logging access, documenting changes, etc. are critical in sensitive systems. Bypassing those is black hat behavior.

lauraleeb.bsky.social•45 days ago

Rachel Maddow @maddow.msnbc.com is covering this now. EVERYONE NEEDS TO SEE THIS STORY! This is TREASON.

thebystander99.bsky.social•45 days ago

Thank you for this. There are always metaphors or comparisons that spring to mind with the continuing revelations of what they’re up to, but this really makes it start to feel like DOGE has been set up to serve as the MAGA Stasi