A collective of self-described “Gay furry hackers” called SiegedSec managed to hack into the right-wing Heritage Foundation affiliated with Project 2025 in a massive cyber attack. The hackers released two gigabytes of data, including Heritage Foundation member names, email addresses, passwords, and usernames.
SiegedSec claimed responsibility for the hack on Telegram, sharing that they breached online databases and secured 200GB worth of files from the right-wing think tank, which included passwords and user information for “every user” in the database.
The files obtained are also said to include an archive of the Heritage Foundation’s blogs and a Heritage-aligned media site, The Daily Signal, with data from 2007 through November 2022.
The hackers say they gained access to the data on July 2 and released it to provide “transparency to the public” about who is supporting the Heritage Foundation.
The attack was part of SiegedSec’s #OpTransRights campaign, which aims to stand up to transphobia and the organisations that perpetrate it. The “Gay furry hackers” target right-wing organisations who attempt to restrict trans rights.
The Heritage Foundation is a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organisation that leads Project 2025, a collection of right-wing policies that aim to reshape the United States federal government and consolidate executive power to the next conservative administration, which would be in 2025 if Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump were to win the 2024 US Presidential Election.
Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts has previously vowed to end the so-called “toxic normalisation of transgenderism” and the “propagation of transgender ideology”.
Donald Trump’s re-election would likely result in anti-LGBTQ+ laws and revert rights the queer community fought hard for. He has promised to eliminate transgender healthcare protections, ban gender-affirming care for minors, and limit workplace discrimination protections for LGBTQ+ people.
While Trump has claimed to know nothing about Project 2025, SiegedSec has described it as: “an authoritarian Christian nationalist plan to reform the United States government.”
Among other things, Project 2025 aims to restrict the rights of women and LGBTQ+ people by limiting the availability of abortion medication and birth control, and enforcing a Bible-based definition of marriage and family. It also targets diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) programmes in higher education, as well as immigration.
SiegedSec co-leader, known by the username Vio, told The Intercept: “We’re strong against Project 2025 and everything the Heritage Foundation stands for.”
In addition to targeting Project 2025, hackers from SiegedSec previously infiltrated a transphobic pastor’s US-based church website and used his Amazon account to buy thousands of dollars worth of inflatable sea lions.
While some LGBTQ+ advocates have said this kind of digital aggression reflects badly on queer activists, SiegedSec wants to fight back against bigots. In a Telegram statement, SiegedSec said: “The thing is, these types of people will blame the LGBTQ+ community regardless of what we do. They will look for a reason to hate, they won’t listen to reason, they want to spread lies to shun people different than them.”
SiegedSec said they are committed to: “fighting back in our own way, delivering justice to those who spread hate.”
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