Whistleblower claims DOGE triggered Russian cyberattack at US labor watchdog
A DOGE whistleblower is claiming that online activities carried out by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency have resulted in a massive data breach at the National Labor Relations Board ( NLRB) – potentially compromising the data of hundreds of millions of Americans.
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A DOGE whistleblower is claiming that online activities carried out by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency have resulted in a massive data breach at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) – potentially compromising the data of hundreds of millions of Americans.
The protected whistleblower and NLRB civil servant, Dan Berulis, said he witnessed DOGE workers harvesting “nearly the entirety” of the labor board’s “critical information systems.”
According to the Washington, DC-based advocate group Whistleblower Aids, DOGE’s activity with the Board’s IT infrastructure “has exposed the data in those systems for exploitation by foreign adversaries, posing a grave risk to national security.”
In fact, the non-profit organization claims that, besides "unlawfully plundering the data of millions of Americans," it's no coincidence that a short time after DOGE accessed NLRB's systems, Russian threat actors attempted to log into the network – even using the correct login credentials.
“Within minutes of DOGE personnel creating service/user accounts in NLRB systems – someone or something within Russia appeared to attempt to log in using all of the correct credentials (eg, Usernames/Passwords) on several occasions,” said Whistleblower Aid Chief Legal Counsel Andrew Bakaj.
Private data such as lists of union activists and ongoing labor cases are what could have been harvested by DOGE, exposing @NLRB’s data to exploitation by foreign adversaries, according to our brave client.
undefined Whistleblower Aid (@wbaidlaw) April 15, 2025
Read more here https://t.co/h3vDpwuUvO pic.twitter.com/HVceSy5Arh
Bajak pointed out that the “near real-time unlimited access” by Russian threat actors has raised concerns to the ultimate level and “could have destroyed the agency’s entire infrastructure in a matter of minutes.”
"The practical, legal, and national security implications of such an intrusion are vast,” he said.
Established in 1935, the National Labor Relations Board is an independent federal agency created to safeguard employees' rights to organize, seek better working conditions, and use a collective bargaining representative to negotiate on their behalf, the NLRB website states.
The organization said the information allegedly housed in the watchdog’s IT systems may include "lists of union activists, ongoing labor cases, sensitive corporate information, and personally identifiable information. "
Berulis further noted that the amount of data he witnessed taken by DOGE “is equivalent to a section of the New York Public Library," adding that the "amount of people it could impact is in the hundreds of millions.”
“Our information systems appear to have been assaulted, and someone with the capacity and mandate to investigate needs to do so,” the whistleblower said.
Several Union organizations also commented on the claims, calling out President Donald Trump and Elon Musk for the DOGE improprieties.
The Massachusetts AFL-CIO, which represents about 500 thousand workers across the New England state, said that the DOGE founders are “trying to weaponize the NLRB into a tool for corporations and shady contractors to hack away at workers’ most fundamental rights.”
“This is all so they can stuff the pockets of their billionaire buddies. Shameful,” the worker’s rep said.
Trump and Musk are trying to weaponize the NLRB into a tool for corporations and shady contractors to hack away at workers’ most fundamental rights.
undefined Massachusetts AFL-CIO (@massaflcio) April 15, 2025
This is all so they can stuff the pockets of their billionaire buddies. Shameful https://t.co/rFfeTWtmmN
Whistleblower Aid further claims that until Berulis officially came forward, he had faced “direct threats” from top brass at the US government agency.
“The targeted, physical threats, and surveillance of my client takes this to another level," Bakaj said. “It is time for Congress to act and investigate to keep our democracy from slipping away, something that could take generations repair," the legal counsel said.
Neither DOGE, Trump, nor Elon Musk have commented on the whistleblower claims at the time of this report.
