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PhilipTheBucket @ponder.cat

1mo ago

A 25-Year-Old Is Writing Backdoors Into The Treasury’s $6 Trillion Payment System. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

www.techdirt.com A 25-Year-Old Is Writing Backdoors Into The Treasury’s $6 Trillion Payment System. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Just months after we learned Chinese hackers had compromised US telecom systems through government-mandated backdoors, an inexperienced developer from Musk’s DOGE unit is pushing untested cod…

A 25-Year-Old Is Writing Backdoors Into The Treasury’s $6 Trillion Payment System. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

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1mo ago

A 25-Year-Old Is Writing Backdoors Into The Treasury’s $6 Trillion Payment System. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

www.techdirt.com /2025/02/05/a-25-year-old-is-writing-backdoors-into-the-treasurys-6-trillion-payment-system-what-could-possibly-go-wrong/

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82 comments

Holy shit lol
I'm more than a decade into my engineering career. Nobody pushes directly to prod on my team, not even me. Everyone gets reviewed and tested.
I read this and cackled in public. Because my god, however bad you think this is, it's way fucking worse. Idk what a reasonable reaction to this is but wow. Just wow. Fucking. Cooked.
Like member how everyone talked about graft in Russia resulting in funds meant for military maintenance being siphoned off the top instead of being used for what it was supposed to be used for? This is like that, except you don't even have to have any excuses or anything, the money just... Disappears.
Edit: Have you ever seen a check from the US Treasury bounce? These fuckers boutta be rubber.
- We told people to stop giving Brawndo to crops and now the economy computer failed. Brought to you by Carl's Jr.
- what i think this really means is that the treasury was hacked a long time ago and marko is making changes that were already written beforehand….
  otherwise this would be impossible.
  they entered those systems like three days before significantly altering the code….
  
  You can absolutely push changes to a system that you don't actually understand.
  You might be right, but consider the alternative: "someone thinks that they're so much smarter than the people who originally designed, implemented, and maintained a system integral to the functioning of modern society that they dismiss out of hand the idea of caution when dealing with it in situ."
  If someone of that description were in this situation, what do you suppose their behavior would be?

US is fucked. Is this going to be a Reichstag Fire moment?
- We are one rm -rf away from away from being absolutely fucked.
  
  You didn’t say sudo, so it’ll be ok.
- They're past that, honestly. The SCOTUS decision on the POTUS being above the law was that moment.
  The POTUS has the same power that Hitler wielded after the Reichstag fire. Then they elected the worst person to have that power.
  You know the person weighing Hitler down was warmonger president Paul Hindenburg. There's none of them in the US, and the only judiciary that could, won't stop him.
  
  Yeah but they still need some sort of excuse to declare an emergency, impose Marshall Law and round up all the Democrats and “DEI” workers. The functional collapse of the government would be very convenient for them.
- Nah if this happened, trump would say that each person now owes him millions of dollars (scaling based on assets) and MAGAS would line up to thank him for shielding them from the evil banks

Musk robs the treasury blind then Trump pardons him. Biggest heist ever.
- Fucker thinks hes Gus Gorman in Superman III and thinks salami slicing is his get rich quick scheme.
- Ugh I hate it.

He also works 18 hours a day and sleeps on a cot in his office. That’s how you know his work is always flawless.
- And I'm sure early 20s adults that hang out with the muskrat are 100% drug free. Definitely not amphetamined or ketamined up or anything.
- I've seen a ton of studies that have proven that the quality of your home life is directly related to your own production which could profit myself and even more so the company I work for, and I have to say, what about next quarters numbers?
  
  We worry about that next quarter.

I worked as a developer in electronic payments for 5 years and we had to go through a months long process to certify the code with the financial system. My bosses were paranoid of any changes I made (to a silly degree) and we had a silly amount of automated tests.
We were a small startup with an underpaid staff and I'm not sure if more than 1000 people used our software. What they're doing is completely reckless.
- You're telling me you want to update a typo from 'teh' to 'the' but it's in the same package as this important file? Fuck that, that's another 3 weeks of certification.

Back door to US government on sale on the black market for the highest bid.
- He will probably leak it on discord dedicated to some treasury game to win an argument against some 12 year old.
  
  Damn what a reference lol
- Highest bid?
  These stupid fucks couldn't even imagine what this data is worth if they would wait minimum one year.

I guess there are no checks and balances that apply?
- Sorry, no. We'd need 60 votes in the Senate and a majority on the SCOTUS to stop this.
  
  Why do we need both congress and the judiciary? Can't congress kick him out all by themselves?
  
  Sorry, no, he meant there are no checks -as in bank checks- because all the balances -as in account balances- are now zero after all the money has now disappeared.
  So, literally, no checks and balances.
  
  To stop it through the government
- Technically, this is the executive branch working within itself.
  Now, the check on executive stupidity to this extreme is impeachment, but that's never gonna happen with the Republican party in charge of both houses of Congress.

Pushing code directly to Prod in a payments system handling trillions of $ is going to end in an almighty bang...
- In their quest for ever moar, the capitalists sowed the seeds of their own destruction...

Holy fuck.

I thought this was an onion article

Honestly this could be the best thing possible if anonymous takes advantage and just... Deletes all data on the US dollar....
Short term, people would suffer. Long term, our children might get a future they currently don't have thanks to the capitalists.
- Isn’t this the plot to Mr Robot?
  
  It's a common hacker dream since looooong before that. Bringing the score to zero.
  
  Yeah, Mr. Robot is based on the Anonymous movement.

Gen-Z is rUiNiNg GoVeRnMeNt!!!

If they completely break the payments system, does that mean government employees stop getting paid?
Like no more federal government? No more ICE? No more military? No more FBI?
- It means all of a sudden you have a lot of well armed and well connected people out of a job, while probably the US dollar becomes worthless as a currency. If you live in the US and havent though about owning a weapon, now would be the time to quickly get one. You never know when the currency becomes worthless and police will demand all your food reserves at gunpoint.

Heads up if you get a lot of tech news/discussion from HN they appear to be heavily censoring submissions along these lines.
- Do you mean Hacker News?

Wasn't this the plot to one of the Die Hards. Except they just went in and did it.
- Wonder if the muskrat would be triggered by being called Hans Gruber. Or some variation...
  How about... Hans Groomer.
  Anybody else got one?
  
  Handsy Grabber.
  
  I like it. Then the celebrity couple name mashup for our glorious leaders can be Small Hands Groomer.

Break out the Whiskey, we're done boys. It was a good run.

that will prove very lucrative to the industrious hacker in the third world.

Nice, clearly this guy did well in college, I'd totally hire him for all my financial and secure resource needs (/s)

Just wait until they allow bitcoin transfers over tor... Its a featured not a bug...
- What happened in Albania was that a bunch of people, basically, stole most of the money in the country. It caused a civil war, sort of. Nobody ever got their money back either.
  I would like to say it's more complicated than that, here, but I'm not sure that it is. My one consolation is that Musk and Trump have not the slightest idea what they're fucking with or what they're up against, if it really gets its dander up at them, but that's at minimum 40% wishful thinking on my part.
  
  I would like to say it’s more complicated than that, here, but I’m not sure that it is.
  The US has infinitely deep pockets, practically speaking. That produces a lot of fraud and embezzlement, but its not like you can just walk away with the real material assets of the country (particularly since so much has already all been carved up and privatized out).
  What you can do is break down the flow of commerce passing through the federal government and send a bunch of contractors and federal staffers spiraling into bankruptcy. All those hospitals that rely on Medicare/Medicaid payments, all the MICs that the Pentagon has to pay to keep delivering goods and services, all the folks on SS getting a direct deposit... You could fuck up a lot just by stalling when those payments get processed.
  It's more complicated, without a doubt. But that doesn't improve the situation. We already saw what happened when the private sector financial flow got snarled up in 2008. God only knows what's going to happen when Musk and Trump decide to start labeling half the Treasury's recipients "DEI".
  Strap in, folks...
  My one consolation is that Musk and Trump have not the slightest idea what they’re fucking with or what they’re up against
  I think they've discovered, over the last twelve years, that nobody is guarding the hen house. You really can just send four schmucks with a basic understanding of Quickbooks into the US Treasury and have them start meddling with trillions of dollars in cash flow.
  What they're "up against" is a paper tiger.
  
  They're specifically putting in place a measure to hide that they blocked payments. So the government books will read that it was properly paid but the money won't go.
  I wonder what they could possibly want to do with that money. Politically they could just lie about paying it. They've done that to great success already. So for what possible reason could they want to spoof the accounts book?
- ? That's actually extremely secure
  
  Yes but hard to trace. Not impossible to trace but allows government corruption money to flow.

Einstein was also young though so maybe these guys…ahh they’re so fooked

I think the worst thing that could happen is capitalism continuing to function as "normal".

82 comments