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DOGEquest attack site appears and disappears without a trace [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-03-20

It's really unusual for websites to appear and then disappear without a trace, but that's what happened with dogequest.com.

The site had a searchable map with the names, addresses and contact details of Tesla owners, showrooms and members of DOGE, along with locations of charging stations across the United States. Let's just skip over how this database could have been put together, because the only answer could be a hack of Tesla itself, or Tesla owner's associations. The DOGE employees is another question.

Trying to go to dogequest.com takes you to Afternic, owned by GoDaddy. You can't buy the domain.

If you use the Wayback Machine you see that they took five snapshots of the URL March 19th, and if you try any of them, you get a message that they have no have no storage of the URL.

404 Media did an article on them while the site was still working. Used the map and verified a bunch of Tesla dealerships as accurate. They verified that some of the people are Tesla owners, or supporters of the company or Musk, but there could be people that didn't fit into any of those categories. Also, some plots on the map didn't respond to real world locations.

What the site offered was if you could prove that you had sold your Tesla, DOGEquest would remove you from the database.

DOGEquest's motto was: "At DOGEQUEST, we believe in empowering creative expressions of protest that you can execute from the comfort of your own home."

They also said: "If you're on the hunt for a Tesla to unleash your artistic flair with a spray can, just step outside --- no map needed!"

404 did not explain the significance of the dog icons, or Tesla logo icons. The little block graphics looks like chargers. Not shown in the map graphic is that the site used a flaming Molotov cocktail as its cursor.

Link shown for No Trace Project.

Newsweek quotes a Musk post on X saying that Musk was aware of the site. "Encouraging destruction of Tesla's throughout the country is extreme domestic terrorism!!"

Reports of the site's existence started around March 17th, the same day as the 404 Media article.

"The FBI and cybersecurity experts are now working to determine the source of the leaked data and whether legal action can be taken against the site owners. In the meantime, Tesla owners impacted by the leak are being advised to monitor their personal information and report any suspicious activities to authorities."

CJRepublican went after the source of the website and traced it back to a VPN host in Canada, but that wasn't real, either.

I assume that "Kash" means Kash Patel, the FBI Director.

​​NBC News found an anonymous domain hosting company called Njalla Okta LLC had been used to register the domain.

One report and a screenshot showed that DOGEquest.com had a link to a site called The No Trace Project, with tools and information that does exactly what has happened here. When even a Google search brings up nothing but a GoDaddy link for the domain, that's a complete erasure.

I got only news stories about DOGEquest on Bing and DuckDuckgo when searching, not even the link to GoDaddy.

Many reports said the FBI is looking into the appearance, use of, and disappearance of the website. They may run into the same deadend I ran into. Maybe not. They've got cybersleuths and tools far beyond what I am able to do, and search warrants that could be slapped on the anonymous domain website hoster and registerer, Njalla Okta LLC.

This shows that Njalla was created just 3 months ago, but that doesn't jibe with other information. Their address is NJAL.la. The .LA is for Laos.

On their website you are met with "The most famous privacy protection. Ever!" and "Protect your internet traffic from snooping three-letter agencies with our three letter VPN!" The startup price is as low as €15, with cryptocurrencies an option. They also say they've been doing this for 15+ years, which doesn't jibe with the above information, but does with Wikipedia.

The opening greeting on the website is Bures (hello)! "Bures" is either Old English, Danish, or North Sami, which is Finnish. My VPN was showing me in London, so perhaps it was for Old English.

The World Intellectual Property Organization has a complaint (PDF), including Njalla, for fraudulent activities by sites they are hosting, describing a complaint on October 28, 2024. Another complaint (PDF) here on December 13, 2024.

Njalla was founded by Peter Sunde, a co-creator of the torrent sharing website The Pirate Bay. The Pirate Bay has a notorious past with server confiscations, shutdowns and domain seizures. When ISPs block access to it ordered by authorities, proxy websites circumvent the blocks. No matter what has been tried, The Pirate Bay pops up on another web address. The early days of The Pirate Bay was turned into a Swedish TV seies in 2024.

In 2020, Njalla was asked to be blacklisted by the U.S. government by the RIAA ( Recording Industry Association of America) and the MPA (Motion Picture Association). That has obviously not stopped Njalla or The Pirate Bay.

Somehow, the claim by Njalla that they can hide you from three-letter agencies might not work here. The FBI has taken over websites many times, including international ones. But they're not the only three-letter agency we have. There might be some reason they're operating out of Laos, or appearing to be. There's no way for us to know.

Seeing as how this was designed to hurt Musk indirectly and directly, you can place a bet that the full force of, and every avenue of, attack will be taken by the Trump administration to make an example of the perpetrator.

Outing DOGE employees sounds like a good idea as a way to fight back, but doxxing is bad, no matter who does it. Targeting Tesla owners, the same. Like the site said, if you want to do something to a Tesla car, there's probably one nearby. Also a bad idea. Same with Tesla showrooms and chargers.

Creative and legal ways to fight back against Musk are already available with peaceful, but loud, protests. Lawsuits also tie up government resources, no matter how hard the administration tries to suppress them and ignore court orders.

132 cases against the Trump administration showing on Just Security's Litigation Tracker this morning.

DOGEquest may have thought they were doing the right thing, but they were doing it the wrong way.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/3/20/2311390/-DOGEquest-com-appears-and-disappears-without-a-trace?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

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