Jenna McLaughlin

So normally anyone working on these systems, once they create an account, there's a ticket filed. You get to track a little bit about what that account is doing. But when the Doge staffers came in, Barula said that his colleagues were asked not to track anything, to just completely act like they were never there.

It's really unusual. Every expert I talked to for this story, over 10 people said... There's absolutely no reason that you wouldn't want your activity logged if you're doing something legitimate, because at the bare minimum, it allows you to troubleshoot, to fix errors that are completely benign.

It's really unusual. Every expert I talked to for this story, over 10 people said... There's absolutely no reason that you wouldn't want your activity logged if you're doing something legitimate, because at the bare minimum, it allows you to troubleshoot, to fix errors that are completely benign.

It's really unusual. Every expert I talked to for this story, over 10 people said... There's absolutely no reason that you wouldn't want your activity logged if you're doing something legitimate, because at the bare minimum, it allows you to troubleshoot, to fix errors that are completely benign.

If there is a potential breach or a concern about a cybersecurity issue, it gives you a lot of clues about what systems affected, what happened, which users were involved. So, yeah, it's extremely problematic, and it really set off some red flags for Berulis.

If there is a potential breach or a concern about a cybersecurity issue, it gives you a lot of clues about what systems affected, what happened, which users were involved. So, yeah, it's extremely problematic, and it really set off some red flags for Berulis.

If there is a potential breach or a concern about a cybersecurity issue, it gives you a lot of clues about what systems affected, what happened, which users were involved. So, yeah, it's extremely problematic, and it really set off some red flags for Berulis.

It's important to say when we asked NLRB for comment on this story, they said they had no official record of Doge visiting, that they'd never authorized Doge accessing their systems, that Doge had never requested access. Of course, that's counter to Brulis' official disclosure, plus records of internal communication seen by NPR and the forensic evidence that we've been looking at.

It's important to say when we asked NLRB for comment on this story, they said they had no official record of Doge visiting, that they'd never authorized Doge accessing their systems, that Doge had never requested access. Of course, that's counter to Brulis' official disclosure, plus records of internal communication seen by NPR and the forensic evidence that we've been looking at.

It's important to say when we asked NLRB for comment on this story, they said they had no official record of Doge visiting, that they'd never authorized Doge accessing their systems, that Doge had never requested access. Of course, that's counter to Brulis' official disclosure, plus records of internal communication seen by NPR and the forensic evidence that we've been looking at.

It's really possible that this first visit and this request not to log access was outside senior leadership's awareness, that they didn't know about it.

It's really possible that this first visit and this request not to log access was outside senior leadership's awareness, that they didn't know about it.

It's really possible that this first visit and this request not to log access was outside senior leadership's awareness, that they didn't know about it.

Yeah, Aisha. So for the first couple of days, Berulis was continuing to do his job as normal. He went home on the weekend and then he noticed that this political reporter, Roger Sullenberger, tweeted about one of the Doge engineers and his public GitHub page. So basically, that's a place where you can host coding projects, collaborate with other people on that project.

Yeah, Aisha. So for the first couple of days, Berulis was continuing to do his job as normal. He went home on the weekend and then he noticed that this political reporter, Roger Sullenberger, tweeted about one of the Doge engineers and his public GitHub page. So basically, that's a place where you can host coding projects, collaborate with other people on that project.

Yeah, Aisha. So for the first couple of days, Berulis was continuing to do his job as normal. He went home on the weekend and then he noticed that this political reporter, Roger Sullenberger, tweeted about one of the Doge engineers and his public GitHub page. So basically, that's a place where you can host coding projects, collaborate with other people on that project.

And he noticed that a project was deleted or made private before he was able to figure out what it was. But the name was really interesting. The name of that project was NXGen B-Door Extract. NXGen is the name of an internal system that was designed specifically for the NLRB in-house, built just for them. And because of that name, Berlis was freaked out.

And he noticed that a project was deleted or made private before he was able to figure out what it was. But the name was really interesting. The name of that project was NXGen B-Door Extract. NXGen is the name of an internal system that was designed specifically for the NLRB in-house, built just for them. And because of that name, Berlis was freaked out.

And he noticed that a project was deleted or made private before he was able to figure out what it was. But the name was really interesting. The name of that project was NXGen B-Door Extract. NXGen is the name of an internal system that was designed specifically for the NLRB in-house, built just for them. And because of that name, Berlis was freaked out.

Yeah, every single person I talked to about this immediately just gasped. They were shocked that someone would actually call something this. Because the name B-Door essentially implies that you're building a backdoor or a way to get into a system that's not authorized. A possible way to extract information.