A 25-year-old engineer tied to Elon Musk has been given full control over the computer code that directs Social Security payments, tax returns and other payments owed to Americans — and sources inside the Treasury Department are freaking out and don't know where to turn for help.
Marko Elez, who previously worked for two Musk companies, has been granted "read-and-write" access to Treasury Department systems responsible for nearly all payments made by the U.S. government, three sources told WIRED, giving him the ability to write code on the highly sensitive Payment Automation Manager and Secure Payment System at the Bureau of the Fiscal Service.
“You could do anything with these privileges,” said one source with knowledge of the system, adding that there's no conceivable reason to grant Elez the ability to change code for the purposes of rooting out fraudulent payments or analyzing disbursement flow.
Those admin privileges would give users the ability to bypass security measures and potentially make irreversible changes to those systems, which researcher Nathan Tankus said was extremely complex and could easily be disrupted by someone who didn't know what they're doing — which he said Elez almost certainly would not.
"There is specific code which tells you where to direct specific payments in specific ways and the structures, and why they are structured the way they are, require deep contextual knowledge," Tankus wrote at his Crises Notes website. "This is 'business logic.' The entire issue with COBOL and why it has been such a struggle to maintain it is that COBOL systems (both private and public) developed for decades with very little documentation, have a million different path dependent coding choices."
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A source told Wired they're worried that data could be passed to operatives working for the so-called Department of Government Efficiency within the General Services Administration, which has been infiltrated with Musk allies who have attempted to gain access to that agency's technology.
"Technically I don't see why this couldn't happen," a federal IT worker told WIRED. "If you would have asked me a week ago, I'd have told you that this kind of thing would never in a million years happen. But now, who the f--k knows?"
Elez graduated in 2021 from Rutgers University and has worked for Musk at SpaceX and then X, focusing at those stops on vehicle telemetry, starship software, satellite software and search AI. Talking Points Memo founder Josh Marshall reported that sources say he's already rewriting code at the Bureau of the Fiscal Service.
"Not only does Marko [Elez] have full privileges in this system but has indeed begun rewriting the code base of this critical system, significantly rewriting the software for this critical system," Marshall reported.
"I was talking to staffers to today detailing one of the gizmocrats who is largely on his own rewriting the code base of one of the U.S. government's most mission critical computer systems," Marshall reported Monday night, before confirming Elez's name. "And as it was described to me the staff programmers who used to manage that code and system are sort of like helping him because they’re so terrified that he’s going to go haywire, but also begging him to be careful etc.
"Meanwhile they only know this guy as 'Fred' (I’ve substituted a different name for now). So you’ve this crazy situation and in addition to all the other absurdity of the situation as they try to help or beg 'Fred' to be careful they’re don’t even know who 'Fred' actually is, as in a last name, or whether 'Fred' is even his name. That’s what happening right now in your federal government."
Tankus said he's been hearing from sources inside the agency who feel there's no one left in the federal government to whom they can report security breaches.
"I do not wish to harm my agency in any way – I loved working here," one source told the researcher. "We did some of the most important work in the country and barely anyone knew who we were. In normal times, I would report insider threats to the appropriate security channels inside the government, but there is no one left for me to report it to."
Tankus reported that he has also confirmed that Elez has the ability to write new code in the bureau's systems, and sources told him that "IT leadership" was hesitant to give him access but eventually and reluctantly granted those privileges.
“This level of unchecked access is critically dangerous to the economy and the government," current IT employee of the Bureau of the Fiscal Service told him.
Tankus replied that giving the Musk ally write access was "terrifying," and the employee said it was worse than catastrophic.
“Yeah it's not good," that bureau source said. "Read privileges on its own still would have left room for catastrophe, but read and write is apocalyptic.”