The Heritage Foundation, which authored a controversial policy roadmap called Project 2025, has been hacked. The group that hacked it, SiegedSec, has now disbanded.
SiegedSec, who goes by the name of “gay furry hackers” has targeted The Heritage Foundation by releasing the passwords, usernames, and user logs of its users. SiegedSec posted around two gigabytes of data and claimed that the data was retrieved from The Heritage Foundation’s servers. The Heritage Foundation has denied its servers were hacked.
Ascii graphic attached to SiegedSec disbandment announcement
SiegedSec is a notorious cybercrime group, responsible for breaches of but not limited to Atlassian, Westboro Baptist Church, NATO, and the nuclear research facility Idaho National Laboratory. They have been observed targeting right-wing organizations and have been heavily involved in hacktivism related to the conflict in Gaza as well as in support of LGBTQ+ rights against targets that the group feels are in conflict with their beliefs. Led by an actor who goes by the name “Vio” the self-proclaimed group of “gay furries” has recently made headlines again following an attack against the heritage foundation, the author of a controversial conservative policy roadmap. With the breach being announced on July 9th, 2024, SiegedSec also released the chat logs of correspondence with the executive director, Mike Howell of the Heritage Foundation on the 10th.
Chats between Executive Director Mike Howell and Vio of SiegedSec
Following a tense and explicit exchange of snide remarks and threats Vio is told by Mr Howell that the FBI has been alerted and is working on identifying members of the group. In a turn of events on July 11th, SiegedSec posted on their telegram channel announcing a hasty disbandment of the hacktivist group. Citing heightened concerns of anonymity and safety amid the increased level of scrutiny from the FBI, and other law enforcement agencies, they announced the disbandment the day of ending the message with well wishes and thanks for the support of their community. It is yet to be seen whether this disbandment is permanent or if we will be seeing further actions on targets from this group, or its members in the future.
In a statement sent to Newsweek, The Heritage Foundation stated: “The Heritage Foundation was not hacked. An organized group stumbled upon a two-year-old archive of The Daily Signal website that was available on a public-facing website owned by a contractor. The information obtained was limited to usernames, names, email addresses, and incomplete password information of both Heritage and non-Heritage content contributors, as well as article comments and the IP address of the commenter. No Heritage systems were breached at any time, and all Heritage databases and websites remain secure, including Project 2025. The data at issue has been taken down, and additional security steps have since been taken as a precaution.
As always, after a hack, we recommend users update their password to a new passphrase that has over 16 characters and turn on MFA where possible. We will update this blog as more information is discovered.
Full screenshot of the goodbye message
*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from Blog | Enzoic authored by Enzoic. Read the original post at: https://www.enzoic.com/blog/the-heritage-foundation-hacked/