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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWired: A 25-Year-Old With Elon Musk Ties Has Direct Access to the Federal Payment System
The Bureau of the Fiscal Service is a sleepy part of the Treasury Department. Its also where, sources say, a 25-year-old engineer tied to Elon Musk has admin privileges over the code that controls Social Security payments, tax returns, and more.
Feb 4, 2025 1:02 AM
A 25-year-old engineer named Marko Elez, who previously worked for two Elon Musk companies, has direct access to Treasury Department systems responsible for nearly all payments made by the US government, three sources tell WIRED.
Two of those sources say that Elezs privileges include the ability not just to read but to write code on two of the most sensitive systems in the US government: The Payment Automation Manager (PAM) and Secure Payment System (SPS) at the Bureau of the Fiscal Service (BFS). Housed on a top-secret mainframe, these systems control, on a granular level, government payments that in their totality amount to more than a fifth of the US economy.
Despite reporting that suggests that Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) task force has access to these Treasury systems on a read-only level, sources say Elez, who has visited a Kansas City office housing BFS systems, has many administrator-level privileges. Typically, those admin privileges could give someone the power to log into servers through secure shell access, navigate the entire file system, change user permissions, and delete or modify critical files. That could allow someone to bypass the security measures of, and potentially cause irreversible changes to, the very systems they have access to.
You could do anything with these privileges, says one source with knowledge of the system, who adds that they cannot conceive of a reason that anyone would need them for purposes of simply hunting down fraudulent payments or analyzing disbursement flow.
"Technically I don't see why this couldn't happen," a federal IT worker tells WIRED in a phone call late on Monday night, referring to the possibility of a DOGE employee being granted elevated access to a government server. "If you would have asked me a week ago, I'd have told you that this kind of thing would never in a million years happen. But now, who the fuck knows."
/snip

brush
(58,774 posts)Last edited Wed Feb 5, 2025, 12:39 AM - Edit history (1)
President Musk has taken over the government. What could go wrong with a 25-somethng with his hands in the till?
Jilly_in_VA
(11,514 posts)whose name needs to be plastered everywhere....telephone poles, sides of buildings, you name it.
Dennis Donovan
(29,139 posts)@joshtpm.bsky.social
1h
A bit of professional disappointment that Wired beat me to it. But glad the info is out. I can confirm the key details of this report based on my own reporting -the name of the DOGE operative and that yes the reports about read only access is categorically false. Not only does Marko have full
Tim Marchman
@timmarchman.bsky.social
7h
NEW: A 25-year-old who's worked for Elon Musk companies now has direct control over a Treasury system disbursements from which amount to a fifth of the US economy. He does not, our sources say, have "read only" access, but high-level admin privileges on a mainframe housing all the code.
Josh Marshall
@joshtpm.bsky.social
1h
2/ privileges in this system but has indeed begun rewriting the code base of this critical system, significantly rewriting the software for this critical system. For more on this it was this situation I was referring to in a series of tweets from last night in which, as I said, I substituted the
Josh Marshall
@joshtpm.bsky.social
1h
3/ name Fred because my reporting was not yet complete. In that thread I discussed the extreme anxiety of Treasury programmers who have been compelled to assist Marco about the changes that he is making to the code base. See the other thread for more on that.
Josh Marshall
@joshtpm.bsky.social
4/ Ill have a fuller report on this early Tuesday morning at TPM. The relevant point is that I can independently confirm what wired is reporting here and the privileges to alter the code base go even further than described and that code base has in fact been significantly altered.
February 4, 2025 at 6:33 AM
https://bsky.app/profile/joshtpm.bsky.social/post/3lhdxl4erak26
speak easy
(11,168 posts)OldBaldy1701E
(7,155 posts)I mean... other than those people going on talk shows to complain. That should help, right?
Right??
orangecrush
(23,067 posts)..
birdographer
(2,689 posts)And this kid wipes out his bank accounts.
NoMoreRepugs
(10,955 posts)LymphocyteLover
(7,294 posts)LymphocyteLover
(7,294 posts)Aviation Pro
(13,864 posts)The internet will take of this little shit.
suegeo
(2,912 posts)So the Nazis want to go after US citizen "Y" who might possibly pose a threat to them, now or in the future.
US citizen "Y" has ties to financing terrorism, along with citizen "G". All fabricated by this 25 year old kid, who is inserting this fabrication, irreversibly, into the systems at the US Treasury.
Elon Musk can listen into an attorney driving a Tesla. Said attorney who is trying to defend citizen "Y". The attorney knows that with the breech these few weeks into the Trump cartel, the Treasury systems are not reliable. That's how the attorney might make their case. Nazi government, you cannot prove citizen "y" or "g" are terrorists since the data cannot be proven to be accurate.
Since he is a private businessman, Musk can turn over the attorney's conversation to the government.
A fascist government who can send citizen "Y" to GITMO.
This is a national security threat.
Ray Bruns
(4,942 posts)
dlk
(12,557 posts)As well as other personal information. This is a threat to every single American. It can and, I believe will, be used against us. Its not hard to believe anyone designated an enemy will suddenly find their identity stolen snd accounts hacked.
Fla Dem
(26,256 posts)He could set up payments for himself, family, friends. Huge payments to Musk and Trump and other billionaires. Delete information for any individual he, Musk, or Trump have an issues with. Make big tax refunds to any Musk or Trump business. Sell information to crooks.
We're any pf these Musk troops cleared, had background checks done on them.
liberalgunwilltravel
(664 posts)It's time to make the rest of their lives a living hell. The MAGAts have no problem threatening and aggressively attacking anyone who defies Trump. Senators and their families were threatened if they even gave a hint of dissent. Why do we continue to play so nicely. This literally is war. People need to start acting like it.
defacto7
(13,774 posts)If total power corrupts totally, this is the biggest seduction in human history. Humans don't fare well holding such control.
Johonny
(22,733 posts)One 25 year old could cripple the US economy. That is great to know. Trump is making the US stronger one failure at a time.
4catsmom
(477 posts)and bust down the doors.
dalton99a
(86,351 posts)Bluetus
(583 posts)that are in widespread use in every swing state?
Trump practically said as much when he boasted that "Nobody knows more about these election systems than Elon Musk."