- Hackers have defaced select pages on the DOGE website. Reports indicate the database the page draws from can be easily accessed by outsiders.
Hackers wasted no time in infiltrating the Department of Government Efficiency’s website.
After its hasty launch this week, at least two pages of the site have been defaced by critics who seemingly have accessed a database the page draws from. Two messages appeared on two separate pages of the site, reading “this is a joke of a .gov site” and “THESE ‘EXPERTS’ LEFT THEIR DATABASE OPEN -roro.”
The hacked pages, though still accessible as of 10:00 a.m. ET on Friday morning, no longer appear to people who navigate to the DOGE website in traditional methods.
404 Media, which first discovered the hacked pages, quoted anonymous experts who said the DOGE page does not appear to be hosted on government servers and was pulling data from a database that can be accessed by third parties. That opened the doors for the embarrassing criticism.
The DOGE website is still very much a work in progress. The “Savings” tab of the page currently reads “Receipts coming soon, no later than Valentine’s day 💘” (And yes, the emoji is part of the government website message.)
Otherwise, it’s a fairly bare-bones site that largely mirrors the DOGE Twitter/X feed. It came into existence after Elon Musk mentioned to reporters in the Oval Office that DOGE posted actions to its X feed and website. The page saw more material added on Wednesday and Thursday.
DOGE has come under considerable fire for its rapid-pace changes to several government departments over the past several weeks, attracting lawsuits from unions and Democrats. The group has authorized mass layoffs and decimated diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. Its latest targets appear to be the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Department of Education.
