this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2025
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In comedy of errors, men accused of wiping gov databases turned to an AI tool (arstechnica.com)
submitted 1 week ago by tonytins@pawb.social to c/technology@lemmy.world
6 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Two sibling contractors convicted a decade ago for hacking into US State Department have once again been charged, this time for a comically hamfisted attempt to steal and destroy government records just minutes after being fired from their contractor jobs.

The Department of Justice on Thursday said that Muneeb Akhter and Sohaib Akhter, both 34, of Alexandria, Virginia, deleted databases and documents maintained and belonging to three government agencies. The brothers were federal contractors working for an undisclosed company in Washington, DC, that provides software and services to 45 US agencies. Prosecutors said the men coordinated the crimes and began carrying them out just minutes after being fired.

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[–] nandeEbisu@lemmy.world 1 points 5 days ago

Why the F is a single contractor able to delete an entire DB without any kind of sign off by a manager for that operation, unless they were and to sign off for each other.

Imagine if a junior messed up the command? Every system I've worked on has had these controls mainly for the latter issue, by the former also shouldn't have been possible.

[–] pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 32 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Was this during the doge days? If they already hacked the government, why were they let in again?

brothers were federal contractors working for an undisclosed company in Washington, DC

[–] amarynthia@sh.itjust.works 19 points 1 week ago (1 children)

On February 18 at roughly 4:55 pm, the men were fired from the company, according to an unsealed on Thursday.

Seems like it happened in Feb so might be related to DOGE

[–] andrewrgross@slrpnk.net 9 points 1 week ago

It would explain a lot

[–] Track_Shovel@slrpnk.net 13 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

The Doge days are over
The doge days are done
The FBI is coming
So you OUU oo out better run.

[–] A_norny_mousse@feddit.org 3 points 1 week ago

Comedy Of Errors

A beautiful euphemism. We could apply it to all of the USA's current admin and its activities.