Heritage Foundation insists ‘hairy gay hackers’ did not breach its systems

A group of self-proclaimed “hairy gay hackers” claims to have breached the Heritage Foundation earlier this month, releasing two gigabytes of data. internal data from the right-wing think tank on Tuesday. On its Telegram channel, the hacktivist collective SiegedSec — which has already taken responsibility for hack NATO computer systems – said the Heritage hack was part of its #OpTransRights campaign, which also targeted the far-right media outlet The true voice of America and the megachurch Hillsong. The group also cited its objections to Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s policy proposal for a second term for former President Donald Trump, as a motivating factor.

In an email to On the edgeHeritage Foundation spokesman Noah Weinrich denied that Heritage was hacked, calling it a “false narrative and an exaggeration by a group of criminal trolls trying to get attention.”

“An organized group came across a two-year-old archive of The Daily Signal website that was available on a public website owned by a contractor,” Weinrich said in an emailed statement. “The information obtained was limited to usernames, names, email addresses, and incomplete password information of Heritage and non-Heritage content contributors, as well as article comments and the commenter’s IP address. No Heritage systems were breached at any time, and all Heritage databases and websites remain secure, including Project 2025. The data in question has been removed and additional security measures have since been taken as a precaution.”

The Heritage Foundation claims the alleged hack was an attention-getting exaggeration, but in the meantime, Mike Howell, the executive director of the foundation’s Oversight Project, has triumphantly taken credit for dismantling “the Gay Furry Hackers.”

SiegedSec released chat logs from a conversation one of its members claimed to have had with Howell on Signal. Chat logs show a person claiming to be Howell asking a member of SiegedSec why the group hacked the Heritage Foundation and threatening to expose the hackers.

We are in the process of identifying and publicizing members of your group

Reputations and lives will be destroyed

Closeted Furries will be introduced to the world by the degenerate perverts they are

You can’t hide. Your means are minuscule compared to mine. Now you can surrender or you can cooperate

Howell confirmed the legitimacy of the messages in an X exchange common Daily Point news reporter.

Weinrich has not commented on the alleged messages between Howell and SiegedSec.

The messages also show Howell claiming to be “tied up with the FBI issuing a 2702 order” on SiegedSec’s social media. SiegedSec did in fact disband, a decision its members attribute to his “own mental health, the stress of mass publicity, and to avoid the attention of the FBI.”

A SiegedSec representative who works by phone said On the edge they “completely expected” Heritage to deny it had been hacked. “Many companies try denial to save face,” Vio said. “The server we hacked was linked to The Daily Signal, and the server was called ‘foundation-first-inheritance’. Clearly, Heritage was genuinely hacked.”

“Mike’s threats and insults showed an anger that confirmed what Heritage denied,” Vio said.

In a statement on Telegram, SiegedSec said the aim of the hack was to draw attention to – and combat – the Heritage Foundation’s anti-LGBT and anti-abortion policy proposals.

“The Heritage Foundation is a conservative think tank in America, among the most influential public policy organizations,” wrote a SiegedSec member on Telegram. “This organization is responsible for leading Project 2025, an authoritarian Christian nationalist plan to reform the United States government.” The hacked data, which was reviewed by CyberScoopincludes blogs from the Heritage Foundation and related material from The Daily Signal, a news website affiliated with the organization.

Published heritage Project 2025, its comprehensive recommendations for a second Trump term in April 2023, with a “broad coalition” of more than 100 other conservative organizations. The more than 900-page “mandate for leadership” covers virtually all sectors of the executive branch, from the White House to the range of federal agencies under the president’s control.

Broadly speaking, his recommendations involve expanding presidential power, purging career officials from federal agencies and replacing them with Trump loyalists. The mandate calls for the dismantling of entire federal departments – including the departments of Commerce, Education and Homeland Security, the latter of which would be replaced by a new agency that is more extreme in its mission and less subject to oversight. Project 2025 also urges Trump to reverse the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of abortion pills, eliminate policies that promote “abortion as health care,” ban pornography, and shut down “telecommunications and technology companies that facilitate its propagation”.

The mandate chapter on the Federal Communications Commission – written by Brendan Carr, the head of the agency under Trump — calls for the imposition of “big tech transparency rules” and a review of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the law that states that “interactive computer services” cannot be treated as publishers or speakers of third-party content published on their platforms. Carr claims that Section 230 allows tech companies to “censor protected speech,” echoing claims that major social media companies suppress right-wing views.

Trump has recently tried to distance himself from Project 2025, claiming he has “no idea” who is behind the plan – although a CNN analysis found that more than 140 former members of his administration were involved in drafting the mandate.