Tuesday, April 29, 2025

DOGE-Trolling Ransomware Hackers Demand $1 Trillion

 A DOGE Aide Involved in Dismantling Consumer Bureau Owns Stock in Companies That Could Benefit From the Cuts


DOGE-Trolling Ransomware Hackers Demand $1 Trillion 
 Davey Winder is a veteran cybersecurity writer,

Update, April 24, 2025: This story, originally published April 23, has been updated with information from a new FBI ransomware report following the latest DOGE attackers’ trillion-dollar ransom demand.

The same criminal group behind the DOGE Big Balls ransomware attack has just upped the ante. A newly updated ransom note is now using Elon Musk and DOGE references with a demand for, are you sitting down, one trillion dollars from victims.

DOGE Ransomware Attackers Troll Elon Musk

Although there is no doubt that ransomware threats should be taken very seriously, what with a massive surge in ransomware attacks this year, new password-cracking tools being employed to gain initial access, and some very concerning political moves by big names in the extortion-racket industry, not all the players take themselves seriously it would seem.

The ransomware group behind the recent DOGE Big Balls threat, using a variant of existing malware known as FOG, and trying to pin responsibility for the attacks on a well-known member of the Department of Government Efficiency team, has just updated its ransom note. As detailed in an April 21 security report by researchers Nathaniel Morales and Sarah Pearl Camiling at Trend Micro, the ransomware now appears to have started trolling DOGE and Elon Musk mercilessly. In reference to the now-infamous Musk demand for federal workers to email DOGE what they had achieved, leaving them fearing for their jobs if they did not comply, the ransom note has been altered to read:

“Give me five bullet points on what you accomplished for work last week or you owe me a TRILLION dollars.”


DOGE Ransomware Reflects ‘Most Pervasive Threat’ FBI Warning

In an April 23 FBI internet crime report, B. Chad Yarbrough, the FBI 
operations director for criminal and cyber, confirmed that ransomware is “the most pervasive threat to critical infrastructure” and played an increasingly important role in the $16.6 billion cost of cybercrime to individuals and organizations in the U.S. across 2024. Interestingly, the FBI report said that the FOG ransomware threat, a variant of which has been used in the DOGE Big Balls attacks, was the most reported of new ransomware attacks during 2024. The bureau’s Internet Crime Complaint Center provides this information to field offices to help the FBI “identify new ransomware variants, discover the enterprises the threat actors are targeting, and determine whether critical infrastructure is being targeted,” the FBI said.

“The most alarming thing about the FBI’s IC3 report is that its numbers are just the tip of the formidable iceberg of organized cybercrime,” Dr Ilia Kolochenko, CEO at ImmuniWeb, said. Warning that a “growing number” of U.S. organizations prefer to silently settle with ransomware groups that carry a strong reputation for keeping attacks and data confidential following payment, Kolochenko said that it’s likely we will see this option continue to be taken. “In all cases,” Kolochenko advised, “the final decision to pay or not to pay should be brainstormed with cybercrime experts and lawyers having experience in such matters. Otherwise, you are running a sprint on thin ice.” In the case of the DOGE attacks, maybe less consideration is required when the demand is for a trillion dollars.

Should You Take The DOGE Ransom Note Seriously?

“The ransomware payload embedded in the samples has been verified as FOG ransomware,” the Trend Micro report warned, “an active ransomware family targeting both individuals and organizations.” As such, it’s imperative that you do not think that just because the attackers might act like clowns, the threat itself isn’t serious.


Indeed, the ransomware demand itself is all business. “We are the ones who encrypted your data and also copied some of it to our internal resource,” the attackers state. They then advise the victim that the sooner they are contacted, the sooner they can get everything resolved, offering instructions on using a Tor browser to get the next steps.

The DOGE references are not the only trolling in the updated ransom note, there’s also a “Don’t snitch now” warning. This could be in response to the ransomware informer platformthat I have previously reported on. The humor — I guess that’s what it is an attempt at — continues with a warning from the attackers that they have “grabbed your trilatitude and trilongitude (the most accurate) coordinates of where you live,” in order to prove that they are lying. Not lying and not funny, but not to be ignored either. Report any such attacks to the FBI here.



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Thoughts on Bluesky Verification

 "Our lives are not our own... we are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.”

― The Revelation of Sonmi 451

Asking AI To Create The Most Beautiful Woman For Every Country




Australian Radio Network (ARN), the media company behind KIIS, as well as Gold and iHeart, used an AI-generated female Asian host to broadcast 4 hours of midweek radio, without disclosing


Thoughts on Bluesky Verification

Steve Klabnik: “[April 21, 2025], Bluesky rolled out blue checks. And, I was given one. Now, I’m not the biggest fan of this sort of feature, however, I also don’t really think this kind of feature is for me.

 I really like the idea of domain verification; I have been like “oh okay that’s coming from a .gov account” from time to time. 

But I don’t think most people really think about domains the way that programmers do. I have wanted to update my “How does Bluesky work?” post for a while now, but I’ve been super busy. So, let’s ignore the product question for now, and focus on the technical question. How does verification work?..”

See also TechCrunch – “Bluesky announced on Monday that it is rolling out blue check verification, confirming previous rumors that this feature was on its way to the platform. 


Like Twitter’s original blue check (RIP), Bluesky’s blue check will verify that notable accounts are legitimate, making it easy for users to trust that an account’s posts are real. In its earliest phase, Bluesky will work with a select few “Trusted Verifiers,” which are independent organizations that can verify accounts as members of their team.


 For example, a company could verify members of its public relations team with blue checks, making it easier for users to see that these people can be trusted as sources of company news. Bluesky says that its moderation team will verify each new verification to validate authenticity…”

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How this Russian disinformation network uses BRICS to advance its narratives in Australia

 I never gave anybody hell! I just told the truth and they thought it was hell.

Cauble: Channels Of Tax Law (Mis)Information







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Exclusive Brethren don’t vote but are secretly campaigning for the Coalition

Exclusive Brethren don’t vote but are secretly campaigning for the Coalition

By Michael Bachelard, Kieran Rooney and Sumeyya Ilanbey

A separatist Christian sect which tells its members to hate the world and which objects to voting is campaigning for the Liberal and National parties ahead of Saturday’s federal election.
The Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, formerly known as the Exclusive Brethren, has dispatched hundreds of its members to pre-polling booths in marginal seats while instructing them to keep secret that they are members of the controversial religion.
Campaign workers in five marginal seats in Victoria and NSW told this masthead they had encountered 20 or more Brethren members wearing Liberal or National campaign T-shirts handing out how-to-vote cards, some of whom identified themselves as members of the sect.
The seats – Kooyong, Gorton, Hawke, Gilmore and Calare – are held by Labor or independents.
The accounts were backed by Labor Party campaign sources, speaking anonymously because they were not authorised to speak publicly, who claimed the Brethren members were active in seats in NSW, Victoria, Queensland and Tasmania, including Bennelong, Parramatta, Whitlam, Macquarie, Paterson, Lyons, Reid and Blair.
A Brethren member (right) allegedly blocking a Labor campaign worker from reaching voters.
A Brethren member (right) allegedly blocking a Labor campaign worker from reaching voters.
In some seats, campaigners have said people identified and confirmed by this masthead as Brethren members had physically and verbally intimidated members of other parties.
Workers across the spectrum said the Brethren members were saying the same line to voters: “Make Australia Smile Again.”
This masthead has seen documents from senior leaders of the controversial sect that show the church is co-ordinating the effort centrally but ordering its members to remain “undercover” and not to identify themselves as members.
A Plymouth Brethren Christian Church spokesman said its members had the right to volunteer in elections like every other citizen but the strategy was not co-ordinated by the church. He did not answer a question about whether there was an agreement or understanding with the Liberal or National parties to supply workers.
A Coalition campaign spokesperson denied there was any agreement with any religious organisation and said the Coalition had “never asked volunteers or members what their religious beliefs are”. Labor declined to comment
The Plymouth Brethren Christian Church is a closed global church led by Sydney-based “Man of God” Bruce Hales, who preaches a “hatred” for people outside the church. Women are treated as second-class citizens and homosexuality is not tolerated. Evolution is taught in schools as a theory only. Brethren followers, known to each other as “saints”, believe Hales is “so close to the Lord Jesus that he can feel his heartbeat”.
Companies associated with the church’s leaders are under investigation by the Australian Taxation Office’s Private Wealth – Behaviours of Concern section, which raided the headquarters of what’s known as the Brethren “parent company” without notice last May. The companies are suspected of “tax evasion, fraud, secrecy or concealment”.
Former Brethren insiders, speaking anonymously to protect their sources, have told this masthead that senior Brethren leaders based in Sydney recently held a Zoom meeting on what they described as the “King’s business”, meaning its contents should be kept secret. At the meeting, which happened as Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s poll numbers began to decline, invited elders were told to organise hundreds of Brethren members to go to polling booths to support Liberal and National candidates.
Documents that emerged after the meeting, sighted by this masthead, show the elders were told to “pray and take action” and that the church’s volunteers should be “fired up each day to dominate the play”.
In Macquarie, Liberal candidate Mike Creed, who is a married gay man, is being supported heavily by Brethren members. Hales has described homosexuality as “unnatural against the anatomy”. Creed has been approached for comment.
Ex-Brethren member Ben Woodbury said he was astonished that his former community was supporting that candidate. Woodbury was persecuted for being gay – causing him to leave the church – and then forbidden from seeing his family again.
“It’s the [church’s] hypocrisy that gets me,” said Woodbury, who has revealed details of the Brethren’s political campaign on his @excultboy Instagram and TikTok feeds.
A young Plymouth Brethren Christian Church woman’s farewell card from her workplace.
A young Plymouth Brethren Christian Church woman’s farewell card from her workplace.
In one Brethren group chat on the encrypted app Signal, sighted by this masthead, female church members were described as “secret weapons” in the campaign.
Men were told to bring their wives or daughters with them to polling booths. The men should do the talking, but the women should hand out brochures because they were “so attractive no one will say no”, the message said.
The documents show workers being told to stand up to any opposition they encountered, but to leave quickly in the event of media attention.
Brethren sources with knowledge of the insider communications, but too fearful to speak publicly, say they have been told that while working on the campaign, they should not consider themselves Plymouth Brethren Christian Church members.
A number of the men have been photographed at polling booths wearing shorts despite Brethren doctrine that “God takes no pleasure in the legs of a man”.
The women are mostly wearing short, netball-style skirts and often leggings, despite the church’s normal requirement that they dress modestly in skirts below knee-length and avoid wearing trousers. The women have also removed the “token” – often a bow or hair clip that has replaced headscarves – from their hair.
Some of the reported behaviour of Brethren booth workers has been aggressive.
Labor campaign workers in the NSW seat of Macquarie, who are not authorised to speak publicly, have said Brethren volunteers in Liberal T-shirts were overheard telling constituents a “vote for Labor is a vote for adultery” and that “Labor wants to kill babies”.
In the NSW seat of Reid, where the Liberal Party is challenging ALP incumbent Sally Sitou, a man confirmed independently by this masthead as a Brethren member stood in front of the Labor volunteer, physically blocking her from handing out how-to-vote cards. The Labor campaign described the behaviour as “intimidating and bullying”.
i
In Gilmore, on the south coast of NSW, campaign workers for Labor MP Fiona Phillips said about 10 Brethren members, who did not live in the area, had been handing out how-to-vote cards but did not know any of the Liberal Party’s policies and were “aggressive and non-respectful”.
Labor state MP Anna Watson, the NSW Parliamentary Secretary for Roads, said she had been handing out cards for Phillips at the Shellharbour Council Civic Centre and had heard the “Make Australia Smile Again” slogan and seen volunteers intercepting individuals at their cars to take them personally into the polling centre.
“If someone pulled up with an older person in the car, they’d be on it like blowflies. Helping them out of the car, walking them in … and tell them how to vote Liberal. It’s against the rules,” Watson said.
In Calare, a regional seat west of Sydney where independent Andrew Gee is facing a battle with the National Party’s Sam Farraway, a campaign worker for Gee said perhaps 20 members of the church had followed the candidate from booth to booth at the weekend in what they had interpreted as a “hamfisted way of trying to keep him from handing out”.
“It was all very strange,” said a source close to the campaign who was not authorised to speak publicly. “Andrew’s been in politics for a while, so if it was designed to intimidate, it was a fail.”
In the Victorian seat of Kooyong, where teal candidate Monique Ryan is being challenged by Liberal Amelia Hamer, photos and videos have emerged of dozens of people identified as Brethren members by former church insiders and dressed similarly at and around a polling booth.
Ryan said the workers had used the “Smile Again” slogan until the Liberal booth manager told them to stop.
“It’s been clear from conversations with them that many of the Liberal volunteers at Kooyong pre-poll are from outside the electorate. I’m disappointed to see the Liberal Party so closely engaged with a group opposed to gender equity and evolutionary science,” she said.

In Hawke, in outer Melbourne, where the Liberal Party is trying to unseat Labor incumbent Sam Rae, Labor campaign workers identified dozens of Brethren members using the “Smile Again” slogan.
This masthead visited polling booths in Melton and Burnside Heights on Monday, where Simone Cottom is trying to oust Rae and John Fletcher is facing off against Labor’s Alice Jordan-Baird in Gorton.
Fletcher and Cottom both declined to comment when approached by this masthead about their campaign’s arrangement with the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church. Both directed questions to Liberal Party headquarters.
The Brethren spokesperson said the church did not campaign for or support any political parties and had “not organised or co-ordinated any volunteer efforts of any type in any location”.
He said he had “reached out to some of our parishioners” and been “made aware that many have decided to volunteer this year for candidates from various parties”.
“When individual members of our church volunteer for politicians or candidates, this is at their discretion, and they do not represent the church’s view when doing so,” the spokesman said.
As for the church’s policy on voting, he said: “Australians were allowed to not vote on religious grounds and some members exercised their right, while others do not.”
The Australian Electoral Commission said that over the first week of pre-poll voting, it had received a small number of complaints about behaviour, and “on several occasions, we have reminded campaign volunteers from parties across the political spectrum to interact respectfully and with civility at all times”.
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