Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team has recently come under scrutiny for its access to the US Treasury Department’s payment systems, sparking concerns of potential insider threats within the government. The threat intelligence team at one of the department’s agencies has recommended monitoring DOGE members, as they have had access to sensitive payment systems for over a week.
According to sources, members of the Bureau of the Fiscal Service’s IT division and others received an email outlining these concerns. The email, reviewed by WIRED, highlighted ongoing litigation, congressional legislation, and widespread protests related to DOGE’s access to Treasury and the Bureau of the Fiscal Service. It recommended suspending DOGE members’ access to payment systems immediately and conducting a thorough review of their actions on these systems.
Despite denials from Treasury and White House officials, WIRED reported that DOGE technologists not only had the ability to read the code of sensitive payment systems but also to rewrite it. Marko Elez, a young man with little government experience associated with DOGE, was granted read and write privileges on critical systems like the Payment Automation Manager and Secure Payment System at the BFS, an agency that handled $5.45 trillion in payments in fiscal year 2024.
The email further suggested that DOGE members might have made unauthorized changes and locked civil servants out of sensitive systems they accessed. It recommended placing DOGE members under insider threat monitoring and alerting after revoking their access to payment systems, emphasizing the significant risk they pose to the Bureau of the Fiscal Service.
## Insider Threat Concerns
The recommendations, part of a weekly report from the BFS threat intelligence team, were sent to hundreds of staffers. Insider threat risks are typically covered by the team, but identifying an insider threat risk within the bureau was unprecedented. The Treasury Department and the White House did not respond immediately to requests for comment on the matter.
The email also detailed a Treasury lawsuit that led to a federal judge issuing an order on February 6 to temporarily restrict DOGE staffers from accessing and altering payment system information. In the aftermath of the lawsuit, the email highlighted the court order formalizing an agreement that restricted DOGE’s access to Treasury, with limited “read only” exemptions for specific members, including Marko Elez and Thomas (aka Tom) Krause.
Elez, who previously worked for SpaceX and Musk’s social media company X, resigned following inquiries about his connections to a deleted social media account advocating racism and eugenics. Despite the controversy, Elez did not provide an immediate comment on the situation. Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon expressed suspicions about Treasury’s lack of transparency regarding DOGE’s actions and requested logs of Elez and other DOGE-affiliated personnel regarding their access to Treasury’s systems in a letter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on February 7.
The ongoing saga surrounding DOGE’s access to sensitive government systems underscores the importance of cybersecurity measures and vigilance in protecting critical infrastructure from potential insider threats. As the investigation continues, the implications of this incident on national security and data integrity remain a top priority for government officials and cybersecurity experts alike.
