A group of self-identified “gay furry hackers” has apparently claimed responsibility for hacking the City of Fort Worth last week in retaliation for recent state legislation prohibiting the administration to minors of gender-altering drugs and procedures.
The City was reportedly hacked by SiegedSec, a group with a history of hacking various private corporations and government entities for political reasons.
“Furries” are individuals who identify as anthropomorphic animal characters online and in person. There is “an overlap between the LGBTQ+ community and the furry fandom,” according to PinkNews.
Last year, SiegedSec hackers released more than 7GB of government data from Kentucky and Arkansas after the states passed strict abortion laws in the wake of the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade. SiegedSec now claims to have leaked roughly 500,000 stolen files from the City of Fort Worth because of restrictions on what the group calls “gender-affirming care” passed by the state legislature.
On June 2, Gov. Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 14, which prohibits the provision of gender-altering treatments such as puberty blockers and sex-alteration surgery to individuals under the age of 18. The legislation will take effect on September 1.
The Dallas Express reached out to Abbott’s office for comment on the apparent retaliation but received no response by press time.
“We have decided to make a message towards the U.S. government,” said SiegedSec in a post to the group’s telegram channel. “Texas happens to be one of the largest states banning gender affirming care, and for that, we have made Texas our target. F-ck the government.”
SiegedSec claimed it stole data from the City of Fort Worth’s official government website and leaked roughly 180GB of information on Friday, June 23.
“We easily hijacked their administrator account,” the group said, claiming the leaked files include police reports, invoices, work orders, camera footage, internal documents, and emails between employees and contractors.
The City of Fort Worth held a virtual press conference on Saturday to address the cyber attack.
Chief Technology Officer Kevin Gunn said the City has “found no indication” that “sensitive information” related to residents, businesses, or City employees has been leaked, adding that most of the leaked data “is information that we would release through a Public Information Act request.”
Gunn said the hackers infiltrated an internal website used by City workers to manage maintenance activities rather than the City’s public-facing website, contrary to SiegedSec’s claim to have hacked fortworthtexas.gov.
He said they most likely obtained login credentials to the internal website, adding that there “is no indication at this time” that other Fort Worth systems have been breached.
The City said in an updated statement released on Monday:
“We can share with a high level of confidence that the method of access has been addressed, and there is no lingering unauthorized access to City of Fort Worth computer systems. Additionally, there remains no indication that sensitive data was released There has been no encryption of data or loss of access to data or computing systems.”
The City also noted that there “has been no ransom demanded of the City of Fort Worth,” marking a significant difference between this incident and the alleged ransomware attack against the City of Dallas in May.
According to cybersecurity company SOCRader, SiegedSec emerged shortly before the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and has since stolen information from at least 30 private companies and several government institutions.
Earlier this year, the group launched a series of attacks against the Colombian government, claiming to have leaked several gigabytes of confidential information.