US Government-Owned DOGE Website Vulnerable To Hacking, Data Can Change Anyone

Elon Musk, leading DOGE as well as an adviser to President Donald Trump (photo: x @SwordandFamine)

JAKARTA Cybersecurity researchers found serious loopholes in the Government Efficiency Department (DOGE) website led by Elon Musk. According to them, anyone who knows the location of the site's database can change the contents of the data displayed.

Two web development experts revealed that the DOGE site does not appear to be hosted on government servers, but uses Cloudflare Pages services. After researching the site architecture and its API endpoints, one of the researchers discovered a database containing data on government employees.

He managed to change some data entries, and the changes immediately appeared on DOGE's website. At the time of writing, there was still a message left on the site that read: see experts' left their database open - roro.

Elon Musk, who now leads DOGE and is President Donald Trump's adviser, previously stated that his team will be transparent by providing updates through X accounts and websites. However, according to a 404 Media report, the DOGE site was initially empty and was recently designed in a hurry to display feeds from X accounts as well as information about federal labor.

This incident adds to a long list of government websites under Trump's administration that appear to have been created without strict security standards. Recently, the waste.gov site had to be locked down after it was found still displaying a dummy WordPress page with placeholder text.

DOGE itself has recognized potential problems on its site. In a record on their website, it reads: This is DOGE's attempt to create a comprehensive chart of government organizations. This is a big project, and there may be an error or negligence. We will continue to strive to achieve maximum accuracy over time.

However, this security weakness raises serious concerns. How is it possible for the team assigned to cut the government budget and have access to sensitive federal systems unable to secure its own website? The decision to cut the budget of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA) in the US Department of Homeland Security now appears increasingly questionable.