A group of self-described gay furry hackers has claimed responsibility for attacks on the computer systems of five state governments this week, as The Guardian reported. The moves are the latest in a series of such hacks that began last year.
The hacker group SiegedSec announced in a Telegram channel on Wednesday that they had breached government agencies in Nebraska, South Dakota, Texas, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina, releasing a cache of information that includes documents from some states’ criminal justice departments.
Although the group did not specify the motive behind this particular attack, SiegedSec — whose members variously describe themselves as gay and transgender furries — also claimed responsibility for hacking government data in Fort Worth, TX, last week, saying they had “decided to make a message towards the U.S government” and targeted Texas due to the state’s ban on gender-affirming care.
“MOAR DAMAGE MUST BE DONE!” SiegedSec wrote in their latest message Wednesday. “Our next attack on the U.S government has arrived!” The group mockingly described defacing hacked websites with “gifts” and vowed “to give Texas another gift soon.”
“Enjoy this leak,” SiegedSec wrote, concluding with one last taunt: “gay furries pwn the government” (for the gaming-uninitiated, that means to destroy utterly). Judging by the apparent ease with which Maia Arson Crimew, another trans furry hacker, was able to leak the No Fly List in January, we can’t discount the viability of SiegedSec’s threat.
The data leaked by SiegedSec has been confirmed to be genuine by multiple news organizations, including The Guardian and The Daily Dot, and Fort Worth officials confirmed their systems had also been breached last week. Still, it’s not clear what the hackers sought to gain from the attacks, apart from simply proving they could carry them out.
An analysis of the leaked data conducted by the Daily Dot found that many of the affected documents were publicly available or did not contain sensitive information. The bulk of the private data now made public consists of the names and phone numbers of several hundred Nebraska probation officers. SiegedSec also stated in their Telegram message that they were able to access the medical records of 15,000 Pennsylvania children, but would not be releasing the data because, “well its [sic] child care.”
SiegedSec first made headlines in 2022 following the collapse of Roe v Wade, when the group released more than 7 gigabytes of data captured from government servers in Arkansas and Kentucky in retaliation for those states’ anti-abortion laws. Since then, SiegedSec has slowly seemed to settle into “hacktivist” activity, a term for hackers who work together to achieve social or political goals. But in past Telegram messages and data dumps, the group has described itself more as a “black hat” collective, hacking both governmental and corporate systems less out of a sense of justice than from a general desire to commit mischief.
Sowing chaos could be a motive on its own, but SiegedSec appears to operate indiscriminately, choosing other targets “4 the lulz” and “because why not,” per Telegram messages. That scattershot approach can expose completely random people to harm, including other LGBTQ+ people on whose behalf SiegedSec is allegedly fighting. The group first hacked Texas government systems in April, releasing what they described on Telegram as 20,000 patient records, including “full names, addresses, social security numbers, birthdates, physician names, medical imaging, and lots more!”
“It shouldn’t be assumed that SiegedSec’s motivation is as straightforward as they say,” cybersecurity analyst Brett Callow told the Daily Dot. “Hacking photos of potholes and other fairly non-sensitive data seems like a very odd way of protesting a state’s policies.”
Get the best of what’s queer. Sign up for Them’s weekly newsletter here.