The City of Fort Worth, Texas, suffered a cyberattack in which internal systems were compromised, and a leftist organization called SiegedSec has reportedly taken credit. The leftist hacker group has previously attacked the government systems of pro-life states, and has now reportedly targeted Fort Worth over strong Texas laws preventing the mutilation of children in the name of “gender-affirming care.”
WFAA reports that internal systems of the City of Fort Worth, Texas were reportedly compromised in response to Texas state laws restricting child sex-change practices. Hackers broke into the city’s computer systems on June 23 and stole data, though it was not considered sensitive.
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(AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)
Kevin Gunn, the city’s chief technology officer, stated, “Cybercriminals hacked an internal information system belonging to the city and obtained data that was ‘not sensitive in nature’ — information that could have been legally obtained through Public Information Act requests.” He suggested that the objective of the hackers was to embarrass the city and make a political statement.
SiegedSec, a group that has previously attacked pro-life state governments, is likely responsible for the attack. After their 2022 attacks on pro-life entities, the group claimed to have “exfiltrated several gigabytes of sensitive data, including employee [personally identifiable information] from state government servers,” and threatened, “THE ATTACKS WILL CONTINUE!”
In a recent post on the messaging platform Telegram, the group stated, “We have decided to make a message toward the U.S. government. It just happens to be one of the largest states banning gender affirming care, and for that we have made Texas our target.”
According to SiegedSec, who identified themselves as “gay furry hackers,” they “easily hijacked” the city’s administrator account and released more than 180 gigabytes of data. Additionally, the group claimed that because it was “behind 7 proxies,” it need not be concerned about the FBI’s reactions.
Among the kinds of information hacked were “photographs, spreadsheets, invoices for work performed, PDF documents, emails between staff and other information related to work orders,” Gunn reported. He also confirmed that there was “no indication that any other systems were accessed, nor any other evidence of sensitive information such as social security or banking information was accessed or released.”
To investigate the incident, the city is currently collaborating with law enforcement and forensic specialists. “We have forced all the users to reset their passwords, and additionally we are continuing to review this volume of information to make sure we fully understand the scope and depth of this incident,” Gunn added.
Read more at WFAA here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan