Topics: Elon Musk, Space X, NASA, US News, Technology, Politics, Donald Trump
Elon Musk's DOGE website appears to have been hacked, with tech experts saying the site feels 'completely slapped together'.
The tech mogul was appointed the head of the US government's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) by President Donald Trump, tasked with a mission to 'dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies'.
The website officially launched on Wednesday (12 February) as Musk promised the department would be 'maximally transparent' after critics pointed out the irony in the world's richest man tasked with cutting funding while his own companies such as SpaceX have benefitted from the federal budget.
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“I don’t know of a case where an organization has been more transparent than the DOGE organization,” the Twitter owner said in the Oval Office with Trump this week.
However, the website didn't last long before two of its pages were targeted by hackers on Friday (February 14), 404 Media reports.
One mysterious message was left on the site which read: “THESE ‘EXPERTS’ LEFT THEIR DATABASE OPEN - roro.”
A second message added: "This is a joke of a .gov site.”
Both have since been removed.
Web development experts also told the tech news outlet that the DOGE site 'feels like it was completely slapped together', containing 'tons of errors and details leaked in the page source code'.
The pros said that they believed DOGE's site has not been running on government servers.
Meanwhile, DOGE also reportedly posted classified staffing information of a US intelligence agency, Huffpost reported.
The function lets users 'trace' their 'tax dollars from the bureaucracy' and investigate Cabinet-level agencies and other departments to review staffing numbers and total wages earned.
A note on the page says that the data excludes military, Postal Service, White House and other intelligence agencies, though DOGE's database does give information about the federal agency behind US intelligence satellites.
The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) is the only intelligence agency on the website, The Independent reports, where Musk's SpaceX has a $1.8 billion contract to build spy satellites.
Meanwhile, SpaceX has around $15 billion in contracts with NASA, which certainly makes it interesting that DOGE is set to investigate the space agency's spending.
On whether Musk's involvement with DOGE presents conflicts of interest at NASA, Janet Petro, NASA's acting administrator, said 'we have very strict conflict of interest policies,' adding the agency's legal office would vet any DOGE employee for such conflicts, Reuters reported.
Musk and his DOGE team have since gone on a cost-cutting spree which saw thousands of federal employees fired while the department doubled its own spending.
Government records obtained by Fortune reveal the scheme had spent $6.75 million by January, which has shot up to $14.4 million as of February 8.
UNILAD has contacted the White House for a comment.
