A member of the US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team led by Elon Musk has provided support to a cybercrime group that boasted of trading stolen data and cyberstalking an FBI agent. Edward Coristin is the most famous among DOGE techies due to his age (he’s only 19) and nickname “Big Balls.”
A member of the US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team led by Elon Musk has provided support to a cybercrime group that boasted of trading stolen data and cyberstalking an FBI agent. Edward Coristin is the most famous among DOGE techies due to his age (he’s only 19) and nickname “Big Balls.”
From around 2022, while still in high school, Coristin ran a company called DiamondCDN, which provided network services, Reuters reported , analyzing digital data. Among its users was a website belonging to a cybercriminal group called EGodly.
Edward Coristin is listed as a “senior advisor” at the State Department and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, according to representatives from each agency. On LinkedIn, Coristin describes himself as a “volunteer plumber” for the U.S. government.
According to records collected by DomainTools, the website DiamondCDN — CDN usually stands for “content delivery network” — was registered in mid-2022. According to the Internet Archive, the site offered “great security tools” that would help “reduce your infrastructure costs.” The site states that the company “does not vet user content.”
In 2023, EGodly boasted on its Telegram channel about stealing phone numbers, hacking into the email accounts of unidentified law enforcement agencies in Latin America and Eastern Europe, and stealing cryptocurrency. Earlier that year, the group leaked the personal details of an FBI agent they said was investigating their activities, posting his phone number, photos of his home, and other private information on Telegram. The channel, by the way, has been inactive for a year.
The FBI agent who was targeted by EGodly is now retired. Reuters is not naming him for fear of further prosecution. But he told the agency that the group came to the attention of law enforcement because of its connection to swotting, a trick that involves sending an armed squad of special forces to a “victim’s” home.
Reuters was unable to determine how long EGodly had been using DiamondCDN or whether the companies were being paid by Coristin. Archived copies of DiamondCDN's website indicate that the firm planned to have both paying and non-paying customers.
Another person who was abused by EGodly was a cybercrime researcher. He had been following the group and claimed that it was made up of hardened scammers, citing its composition and the credibility of its claims.
Even if the connection between Coristin and EGodly was short-lived, Nitin Natarajan, who served as deputy director of CISA under former President Joe Biden, told Reuters that he was concerned that the person who provided services to EGodly just two years ago was part of a team that gained broad access to government networks.
