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.

    • IninewCrow@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      123
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      21 days 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
      • Yardy Sardley@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        47
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        21 days 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
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          22
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          21 days 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.

        • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          20 days ago

          And that’s pretty lucky, because it means they will be the architects of their own downfall.

          The question isn’t if or even when will Trump fall, it’s how many of us will die in the process.

      • FiveMacs@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        32
        ·
        21 days ago

        Just wait until all the backdoors are discovered. Or front doors I guess…with how inept these idiots are. Can’t wait for someone with some power/money to actually get sick of these clowns and just end them

      • SatansMaggotyCumFart@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        17
        ·
        21 days 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.

      • catloaf@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        10
        ·
        21 days ago

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

    • Lumiluz@slrpnk.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      28
      ·
      edit-2
      20 days 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
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        22
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        20 days 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.

        • yarr@feddit.nl
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          8
          ·
          20 days 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.

          Wait, it gets better! The Democrats are going to form a committee to discuss language for the letter, which is sure to be a 500-page document that will get printed out on recycled paper and ceremoniously burned in a symbolic gesture of disappointment. And after weeks of debate, they’ll finally agree on a single sentence that reads, ‘We are disappointed in the administration’s lack of action.’ Wow, that’ll definitely send shockwaves through Washington!

          But wait, there’s more! They’ll then call an emergency press conference to declare their outrage, where they’ll all stand in front of a teleprompter and read from their carefully crafted statement. And to really drive the point home, they might even release a 3-minute video montage of footage from the committee meeting, set to a dramatic score, just to make sure everyone knows how “serious” they are.

          And if that’s not enough, they’ll then proceed to actually send the letter – but only after making it clear that they’re only doing so because they have to, and not because they actually expect anything to change. And when the administration inevitably ignores them or responds with a half-hearted gesture of tokenism, they’ll be like, ‘See, we told you so! We sent our letter and… oh wait, nothing happened.’ It’s going to be hilarious!

        • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          20 days ago

          At this point I’ll be geniunely surprised to learn that Democrats with survival instincts exist.

      • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        20 days ago

        Sadly Ayn Rand was right when she said…

        “The question isn’t how can I do such things, but who is going to stop me?”

        Suda 51 was right, there really are No More Heroes.

      • KeenFlame@feddit.nu
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        19 days ago

        What they mean are that it’s a clusterfuck, giant Americans sit on sofas crying. You can fuck up while still achieving dominance

    • admin@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      49
      ·
      edit-2
      20 days 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.

      • Maggoty@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        47
        ·
        edit-2
        20 days ago

        He illegally fired 17 of them, including one investigating Neuralink, (one of Musk’s companies).

      • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        14
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        20 days ago

        How are people just so unaware of what’s happening in their own government?

        Like you’re on a site like this, and you know what Inspector Generals do, but you’re not aware that he fired over a dozen of them days into his term? How??

        There’s a whole lot of, “I don’t care about or pay attention to politics because nothing really changes for me” morons about to have a rude awakening.

        • Overconfidentiality@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          17
          ·
          20 days ago

          Our investigative media has been dead or bought out for a long time, and despite project 2025 being published, it’s all happening really quickly. I have a difficult time believing this isn’t the downfall of America. And we almost reached 250.

          • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            20 days ago

            At this point I’m hoping America is annexed by Canada or something. It’s too dangerous to leave this country to its own devices, we are begging for invaders to come liberate us.

          • Adulated_Aspersion@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            19 days ago

            But wait! Your good buddy Donnie signed an Executive Order to ensure that we planned a really good birthday party for America’s 250th!

            Sorry, I have been reading each and every Executive Order to better understand where we are and where we are going.

          • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            20 days ago

            The upside is that often times throughout history massive actions like what is happening right now are restricted to the start or end of empires. Turns out fucking with how a state functions is a great way for it to collapse, the death of empires is often times slow until its not.

        • Jumpingspiderman@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          7
          ·
          20 days ago

          How? Felonious 47 is going after the news media making sure nothing critical gets published. Due to the cowardice of our mainstream media, we no longer have a free press.

  • Hobbes_Dent@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    126
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    21 days 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.

      • PugJesus@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        82
        arrow-down
        9
        ·
        21 days ago

        As much as I wish otherwise, Trump got a plurality of the vote, and pre-election day polling was clear that such a result was very possible.

        The plurality of the people who bothered to vote put Trump in, who was quite clear about his alliance with Musk.

        This is on us.

        • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          10
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          21 days ago

          “us” being “a bunch of apathetic idiots and idiots deeply opposed to the rest of the country”

        • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          13
          arrow-down
          16
          ·
          edit-2
          21 days ago

          We can put a significant amount of blame in the laps of Democrats (as in, DNC officials) and their sycophants and defenders in both media and online.

          Lemmy itself worked to become an echo chamber reflecting an uncritical assessment of both Democrat performance from 2021-2024, and as well the legitimate electoral performance of both the Biden, and separately, the Harris campaign.

          Reality: the denialism around how bad and unpopular both Biden and Harris were in their role as Executives in Cheif, did substantial damage to Harris and probably cost them the election.

          That denialism was RAMPANT across lemmy, and still persists today.

          You can not make a convincing argument that your team should be the ones elected when you are asking people to deny the evidence of their lives experience, and that’s exactly what both the Biden and Harris campaign did. Lemmy moderators also worked to suppress any media or users critical of Harris and Biden.

          Harris needed to feel the pressure from the electorate that Americans sensed that the country wasn’t doing well and was going in the wrong direction. She needed to understand and respond to the fact that Americans, in general, wanted a change from how Democrats had been managing.

          Building an echo chamber, in both mainstream media and social media, to shut that view point out, and ultimately leave it unaddressed, is why the Harris campaign failed.

          That echo chamber shielded the campaign from critical information they needed to be aware of to make the right kinds of changes which might have led to success.

          And every moderator here, who suppressed criticism, or who uses bans to create an echo chamber in forums like c/World, c/Politics, and c/PoliticalMemes is in part to blame.

      • Couldbealeotard@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        18
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        21 days 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
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          24
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          21 days 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
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            11
            arrow-down
            2
            ·
            edit-2
            21 days 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.

                • Quadhammer@lemmy.world
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  arrow-down
                  2
                  ·
                  19 days ago

                  what a stupid comment

                  cucked by two fake geniuses 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😳🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

    • Kalysta@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      20 days ago

      Trump won by 1.5% of the vote. And that amount was basically the number of people the Republicans managed to disenfranchise during this election.

      WE did nothing. The vast majority of Americans want this madness to end but no one with any sort of power to do anything is standing up to the orange bully.

      For all the guns we own, this country has very few Luigis who understand this is a class war. So what else are the people who didn’t vote for the asshole in the oval supposed to do about it?

    • Resonosity@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      arrow-down
      16
      ·
      21 days ago

      Thanks for grouping all Americans together into the same monolith.

      How transparently closed minded can you be ffs

      • Hobbes_Dent@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        18
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        21 days 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.

    • dhork@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      12
      ·
      edit-2
      21 days ago

      Stop misgendering Elon!

      The correct exclamation in this case is Butt Tizzy Males, not Buttery Males

  • towerful@programming.dev
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    19
    ·
    21 days 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
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      62
      ·
      21 days 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
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        40
        ·
        21 days 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
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          39
          ·
          21 days 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
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          21
          ·
          21 days ago

          why isn’t this treason?!

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

        • Kalysta@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          20 days ago

          It IS treason. But who do we have to stop him? The justice department is run by Trump. The cops all voted for trump. The FBI is being replaced with his goons.

        • dx1@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          20 days ago

          Some history on the word “treason”, it’s not the legal definition, it’s whenever you go against whoever is in control.

  • Showroom7561@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    19
    ·
    20 days ago

    How are Republican voters reconciling any of this? Or has Faux News spun this as something Obama’s responsible for?

    • TechAnon@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      20
      ·
      20 days ago

      I’ve been off Reddit for a while but I’d be lying if I didn’t just go look at /r/conservative to see.
      “I pray Trump knows what he is doing, because if this doesn’t work and just results in higher prices and nothing the average person can identify as a positive, then people will sour on Trump.”
      “Im really worried this is going to bite us hard causing prices to skyrocket.”
      “I’m in the construction industry and would be lying if I said I wasn’t a little nervous for this rollercoaster.” In general, some longer comments are basically saying tariffs will work to bring home manufacturing. The problem with this is we would need manufacturing of most of these things IN PLACE NOW to be ready to do that. We’re not since it’s a surprise to both U.S. citizens and Canada.
      Many other posts are being deleted – most I’ve ever seen, but again it’s been a while since I’ve looked at Reddit.

      • DicJacobus@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        20 days ago

        Thst must be the polite minority. Most times I dare to look into thedonald2.0 it’s just stuff talking about annexing canada and Bombing europe

    • Bob Robertson IX @discuss.tchncs.de
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      11
      ·
      20 days ago

      Seriously, everyone needs to go check out FoxNews.com because it is insane that anyone could rely on them for their news. I checked out this morning and had to scroll WAY DOWN to find any mention of tariffs, and even then, it was praising trump for keeping a campaign promise.

  • roofTophopper@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    18
    ·
    20 days ago

    Expect more of this. Unfortunately, ears will be plugged and eyes will be covered as people just go “lalalalala”

  • Rhoeri@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    13
    ·
    21 days 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…

    • T00l_shed@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      13
      ·
      20 days ago

      I’ve heard of a treatment. The guy who killed Hitler did it. It’s a high speed lead treatment. Very effective

      • Chip_Rat@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        20 days ago

        They won’t listen to that. At this point they are pro-Hitler.

        They should employ the method Hitler used in the end! It was super effective!

      • MrMcGasion@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        20 days ago

        Problem is, we can’t just skip to that part of the story without being accused of being just like the J6 crowd. I hate what is happening, and don’t want to say there’s nothing that can be done, but unfortunately there’s a bunch of people who aren’t gonna wake up and get it until it hurts them personally.

        For now, probably the best thing we can do is stand up for those in their crosshairs and support them however we can, while we wait for a bunch of the anti-woke crowd to wake up to the fact that they voted for the leopard that’s eating their face. Now, there should definitely be a limit on how long we wait for them to wake up, but at the speed this leopard is going? I doubt anyone will be unscathed by Spring.

  • nomoredrama@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    13
    arrow-down
    13
    ·
    20 days ago

    This is glorious. The mess is amazing, but the money that will be saved after it’s all done will be worth it.