Elon Musk’s DOGE website appears to have been hacked, with tech experts describing it as ‘hastily thrown together.’The tech mogul was appointed head of the U.S. government’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) by President Donald Trump. His mission: to ‘dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies.’The website officially launched on Wednesday, February 12, with Musk vowing the department would be ‘maximally transparent.’ This came after critics highlighted the irony of the world’s richest man being tasked with cutting government spending while his own companies, such as SpaceX, have benefited from federal funding.
Musk’s DOGE site has been hacked already
“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, according to 404 Media.One mysterious message was left on the site, reading: “THESE ‘EXPERTS’ LEFT THEIR DATABASE OPEN – roro.”A second message added: “This is a joke of a .gov site.”
The Twitter owner’s website has reportedly been hacked
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 leaked details in the page source code.”Experts also suggested that DOGE’s site is not running on government servers.Meanwhile, HuffPost reported that DOGE had mistakenly posted classified staffing information from a U.S. intelligence agency.The website features a function that allows users to “trace their tax dollars from the bureaucracy” and investigate Cabinet-level agencies and other departments to review staffing numbers and total wages earned.
Musk’s SpaceX has benefitted from the federal budget
A note on the page states that the data excludes the military, Postal Service, White House, and other intelligence agencies. However, DOGE’s database does provide information about the federal agency responsible for U.S. intelligence satellites.The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) is the only intelligence agency listed on the website, The Independent reports. Notably, Musk’s SpaceX holds a $1.8 billion contract to build spy satellites for the NRO.Meanwhile, SpaceX has approximately $15 billion in contracts with NASA, making it particularly noteworthy that DOGE is set to investigate the space agency’s spending.When asked whether Musk’s involvement with DOGE presents conflicts of interest at NASA, Janet Petro, the agency’s acting administrator, stated, “We have very strict conflict of interest policies,” adding that NASA’s legal office would vet any DOGE employees for potential conflicts, Reuters reported.Musk and his DOGE team have since embarked on a cost-cutting spree, leading to thousands of federal employees being fired while the department itself doubled its spending.Government records obtained by Fortune reveal that the initiative had spent $6.75 million by January, a figure that surged to $14.4 million as of February 8.
