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How Edward 'Big Balls' Coristine and DOGE Got Access to a Federal Payroll System That Serves the FBI
In early February, Edward “Big Balls” Coristine was one of two operatives for Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) granted potentially wide-ranging access to a number of systems at the Small Business Administration (SBA). Through that foray, DOGE gained access to the National Finance Center (NFC), a sensitive system that provides human resources and payroll functions for the Department of Justice (DOJ), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), among other agencies.
This access has not been previously reported. And new reporting from WIRED, including the review of hundreds of pages of documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, offers insight into the comprehensive access DOGE operatives were able to gain to federal systems in the early days of the second Trump administration—and just how quickly they got it.
Coristine is a 19-year-old who was one of DOGE’s earliest hires and was brought on as a permanent government employee at the General Services Administration (GSA) before resigning and then resurfacing as a special government employee at the Social Security Administration. He and Donald Park, a Brazilian jiujitsu enthusiast and private equity investor, have previously been identified as DOGE operatives at the SBA who sought access to HR, contracting, and payment systems and information. Neither replied to requests for comment.
Records reviewed by WIRED show that within five hours of a request from the office of the SBA’s chief information officer that they be given access to SBA systems, Park and Coristine—who went by the online name “Big Balls” and had reportedly been fired from an internship at a network monitoring firm known for hiring reformed blackhat hackers, after being suspected of leaking internal information—were granted entrance to the agency’s core financial and loan systems. Not long after that, Coristine had access to NFC systems not even housed within the SBA, the agency to which he had been detailed.
This access has not been previously reported. And new reporting from WIRED, including the review of hundreds of pages of documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, offers insight into the comprehensive access DOGE operatives were able to gain to federal systems in the early days of the second Trump administration—and just how quickly they got it.
Coristine is a 19-year-old who was one of DOGE’s earliest hires and was brought on as a permanent government employee at the General Services Administration (GSA) before resigning and then resurfacing as a special government employee at the Social Security Administration. He and Donald Park, a Brazilian jiujitsu enthusiast and private equity investor, have previously been identified as DOGE operatives at the SBA who sought access to HR, contracting, and payment systems and information. Neither replied to requests for comment.
Records reviewed by WIRED show that within five hours of a request from the office of the SBA’s chief information officer that they be given access to SBA systems, Park and Coristine—who went by the online name “Big Balls” and had reportedly been fired from an internship at a network monitoring firm known for hiring reformed blackhat hackers, after being suspected of leaking internal information—were granted entrance to the agency’s core financial and loan systems. Not long after that, Coristine had access to NFC systems not even housed within the SBA, the agency to which he had been detailed.
https://www.wired.com/story/edward-coristine-big-balls-doge-federal-pay-roll-system/]
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