We recently explored some of the issues raised by Elon Musk and DOGE at Disruption Banking. One concern that is constantly highlighted is the security threat presented by DOGE. DOGE’s young programmers received access to extremely sensitive data, as well as the authority to make spending decisions and change lines of code. And It didn’t help when revelations about the background of one staffer known online as “Big Balls,” the alias of Edward Coristine, raised even more red flags.
In short, Coristine started a company in high school with ties to hackers. He was previously fired from an internship for leaking sensitive data. Further details emerging about his personal life included being heir to a popcorn fortune and the grandson of a KGB agent. But who is “Big Balls,” really? And should the government be concerned about his past?
Who is “Big Balls?”
“Big Balls” is the online alias of Edward Coristine, a former Northwestern University student.
The name was supposedly a joke from high school which Coristine adopted. Now, Republicans and DOGE-advocates revel as CNN reporters say the words on national television.
Coristine dropped out of Northwestern after a year to pursue an internship in Silicon Valley, eventually working as an intern at Musk’s Neuralink.
According to close friends, he was never interested in attending college. He intended from the beginning to create something along the lines of Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates. But it was Elon Musk he idolised, especially.
Coristine’s entrepreneurial spirit was perhaps inherited from his father. Charles Coristine was a trader at Morgan Stanley who quit his job to become CEO of Lesser Evil, an organic popcorn company. After purchasing the company for $250k, he has since grown it to a multi-million dollar evaluation.
But Charles is no stranger to criticism, either. A class action lawsuit claimed that Lesser Evil’s products were not as healthy as advertised.
Lesser Evil ultimately distanced itself from both Edward Coristine and DOGE. In an e-mail to customers, they wrote: “Lesser Evil is in no way affiliated with any political figures, political policies or political groups. Our values remain the same as they’ve always been: health, sustainability and affordability.”
Interestingly, according to one report, Edward Coristine is the grandson of an executed KGB spy named Valery Martynov. Of course, this doesn’t make him a security threat, but it perhaps adds to the building anxiety surrounding DOGE’s handling of sensitive information. And it’s certainly another fascinating development in the ongoing story of “Big Balls.”
“Big Balls’” High School Startups
While he was still in high school, Coristine started multiple companies related to computer programming, registered in Delaware, Connecticut, and the United Kingdom. These included MistDeck LLC, DiamondCDN LLC, and Tesla.Sexy LLC.
It was recently reported by Reuters that DiamondCDN LLC, a network services company founded in 2022, platformed a ring of cybercriminals who stalked an FBI agent.
The group claimed to have hijacked phone numbers and email addresses of law enforcement officials across Latin America and Eastern Europe, as well as operating multiple cryptocurrency thefts. In 2023, they allegedly distsributed the personal information of an FBI agent they believed to be investigating them on Telegram.
It was ultimately the practice of “swatting,” hoax phone calls intended to bring armed police to a targeted address, which attracted attention to the group. In a post on Telegram, the group explicitly thanked DiamondCDN’s “amazing DDoS protections and caching systems” for safegaurding their work.
Another startup, Tesla.sexy, also drew some attention. The company is still live and manages dozens of web domains, including websites registered in Russia. This affiliation, according to Wired, could represent a serious security threat for a government agent with the clearances granted to Coristine.
In addition to allegedly soliciting a hacking group via DiamondCDN, archived messages on Telegram shows Coristine allegedly requesting a code that would carry out DDoS attacks. A DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack is a type of cybercrime in which the attacker floods a website with traffic to prevent users from accessing it.
Most significantly, however, Coristine interned at Path Network in 2022, a cybersecurity company known for hiring former hackers. Ultimately, Coristine was fired from this internship after he allegedly leaked the company’s insiders information to a rival.
Who’s Running DOGE?
It remains a mystery how Coristine ended up in this position. And it remains unclear what the role actually involves. According to DOGE, Coristine is a “senior advisor” at the Department of State and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. On LinkedIn, he refers to himself as a “Volunteer (Intern) Plumber” at the U.S. government. And a somewhat cryptic announcement on Twitter only mentioned that he had acquired a position at the State Department.
This is due, in part, to a general lack of transparency around DOGE and its work. A court ruled recently that Elon Musk and DOGE must turn over documents related to government spending and reveal more about the staff behind it.
The White House for a long time insisted that Elon Musk was not the leader of DOGE, or even an employee, despite the group being his brainchild. Donald Trump, on the other hand, stated explicitly that Musk was running the agency. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt repeatedly refused to name who was administrating DOGE during a press briefing in February. But it finally came to light that the person running DOGE was Amy Gleason, a former US Digital Service official – a revelation that raised more questions than it answered.
Not the least because, at the time of the announcement, Gleason was on leave in Mexico.
A somewhat similar tale to Coristine’s, Gleason is a former health worker from Tennessee who found herself surprisingly promoted to a powerful government position, as well as into the spotlight that came with it. The day of this announcement, two dozen staff members submitted a letter of resignation claiming they were never notified about who was running the agency.
Is “Big Balls” fit for the job?
In their resignation letter, employees warned that many of the people brought on by DOGE were severely underqualified. This was consistent with the criticism most commonly leveraged against Corastine and other DOGE programmers: that they didn’t have the sufficient experience or qualifications for the job.
Coristine is perhaps a perfect example of this. How did a college dropout, fired from an internship for leaking insider data, with a CV of only a brief stint at Neuralink and a startup linked to cybercrime, end up making decisions that impact billions in government spending, as well as accessing and modifying sensitive State Department computer codes?
A former FBI agent approached by Wired stated that had he been involved in Coristine’s background checks he wouldn’t have recommended him for the job. A background check, he said, that found recent ties to cybercrime and Russia, and a past dismissal for leaking insider data, would have precluded him from consideration for a position that required this level of security clearance.
DOGE has not steered clear of criticism, but critics have struggled to significantly attack the agency as there seems to be little common understanding about what it is, or where it legally falls. And DOGE’s own lack of transparency hasn’t helped in this regard.
It continues to be a sticking point. In the meantime, DOGE will continue to cut spending. And as for “Big Balls,” we can only take the information at hand to decide whether we think he’s the right person for the job of reshaping how the government spends its money.
#BigBalls #EdwardCoristine #DOGE #Cybersecurity #ElonMusk #SiliconValley
Author: Sean Maguire
See Also:
How Elon Musk Disrupted the Social Security Administration | Disruption Banking
Is Hedera Being Used by Elon Musk’s DOGE? | Disruption Banking
Is Jerome Powell worried about Elon Musk’s DOGE? | Disruption Banking
