A senior employee of billionaire Elon Musk, now working at the U.S. Justice Department, previously boasted about hacking and distributing pirated software, according to archived versions of his former websites reviewed by Reuters.
Christopher Stanley, a 33-year-old engineer who has worked at both Musk’s social media company X and space-launch company SpaceX, is a senior advisor in the Deputy Attorney General’s office, according to a former Justice Department official and a staff directory listing reviewed by Reuters.
Stanley worked for Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, created by President Trump to reduce federal bureaucracy. While Musk claims DOGE is highly transparent, little is known about its staff.
Stanley ran websites and forums starting in 2006, at age 15, which distributed pirated ebooks, software, and video game cheats, according to archived records from DomainTools and the Internet Archive.
‘Full Trust And Confidence’
Stanley bragged about hacking into websites on forums, including one at age 19, claiming he had moved past hacking. However, a 2014 YouTube video shows his involvement in breaching customer data from a rival hacking group at age 23. The Justice Department did not comment on his current role or past but confirmed he held an active security clearance before joining DOGE.
In a statement to Reuters, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said she had “full trust and confidence in Chris’s ability to help the federal government.” Stanley, the White House, SpaceX and X did not respond to requests for comment.
After Reuters contacted Stanley, several of his old websites disappeared from the Internet Archive. Mark Graham, director of the Wayback Machine, said website owners can request content removal. National security experts were divided on the significance of Stanley’s past, with six former Justice officials expressing concerns, citing the department’s handling of sensitive information and federal investigations.
“I would have very serious concerns about hiring him in and giving him access to these kinds of records,” said Jonathan Rusch, who spent more than 25 years as a Justice Department prosecutor before going into academia. Rusch said Stanley’s background was worrisome, particularly for a Justice Department employee, because he had disclosed data which he had “acquired apparently illegally”.
Dan Guido, whose digital security firm Trail of Bits has worked with the Justice and Defense departments, was more forgiving.
Stanley’s history of hacking shouldn’t disqualify him from working at the DOJ, he said, citing Stanley’s youthfulness and the way he targeted other hackers as mitigating factors. “That is a way I’ve seen a lot of people learn.”
Reuters could not confirm Stanley’s specific role at the Justice Department or whether he still works for X and SpaceX. Although his LinkedIn profile lists his employment there, it makes no mention of his Justice Department position. A photo on X shows him in front of the Office of Justice Programs emblem. The DOJ stated that, like Musk, Stanley is a “special government employee” and does not receive a government salary.
Piracy, Video Game Cheats And Hacking
Other members of Musk’s DOGE team have faced scrutiny, including Edward Coristine, who was reported by Reuters for providing network infrastructure to cybercriminals. This sparked calls from Democrats in the Republican-led House Oversight Committee for a full investigation into those working for DOGE.
Stanley, who joined SpaceX after running online forums on software piracy, video game cheats, and hacking, used pseudonyms like eNkrypt and Reneg4d3. Reuters linked these sites and usernames to Stanley through registration data and biographical details.
On some of Stanley’s earliest sites, he claimed credit for hacking. The website, fkn-pwnd.com, launched in 2006 while he was in high school, boasted of “Fucking Up Servers!” and featured a crude sketch of a penis, according to a copy of the site preserved by the Internet Archive.
On reneg4d3.com, which he registered the following year, the archives show Stanley described how he hijacked a competing message board. “Got admin access,” he said in a 2008 post, just before he turned 17, describing the site’s operators as “stupid noobs.” “Easy exploit,” he wrote.
Around that time, a rival video game-cheating website, rev0lution-cheats.com, was hijacked and defaced with the message: “This site has been hacked by RENEG4D3.com.” Reneg4d3.com was suspended by its internet service provider a few months later, according to a screenshot of the site preserved by DomainTools.
Reuters could not verify some details of Stanley’s claimed hacking activities, such as the identity of the site he allegedly hijacked or the circumstances of rev0lution-cheats’ defacement. He later started other websites, including error33.net and electonic.net, where he and others discussed hacking, video-game cheating, and piracy, according to the Internet Archive’s records.
‘I No Longer Hack’
At age 19, Stanley distanced himself from malicious cyber activity in an archived 2010 post on electonic.net, writing: “I no longer hack into Paypals, gain root access into other peoples computer (sic), or exploit online websites like StickAM” – an apparent reference to a video streaming service that shut down in 2013.
In that same post, he said he’d been threatened with a lawsuit by the South Korean gaming company Nexon Co for “infiltrating their game software and altering certain aspects of the game”.
“They did not take kindly to this,” he said.
Reuters could not verify Stanley’s claims of theft, computer hijacking, or software tampering, and Nexon said it couldn’t find any related information.
PayPal did not respond. Despite this, discussions on his forum, electonic.net, showed Stanley remained involved in hacking, offering pirated ebooks and software.
In December 2014, at 23, Stanley posted footage of himself hacking the customer database of Lizard Squad, a group known for high-profile cyberattacks. He shared the footage on his YouTube channel, where he still uses the Reneg4d3 nickname and a photo with Elon Musk.
(With inputs from Reuters)
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