Gay furry hacker

Self-described “gay furry hackers” on July 2 breached archival data from a site that was operated by the Heritage Foundation until recently, and on Tuesday released two gigabytes of internal data originally collected by the conservative think tank.

A CNN analysis released Thursday found at least 140 people who worked in Trump’s administration involved in Project 2025—spanning across every level of his administration. “Are you aware that you won’t be able to wear a furry tiger costume when you’re getting pounded in the ass in the federal prison I put you in next year?” When vio taunted the executive for this outburst and hinted that they would be posting the conversation online, Howell replied, “Please share widely.

MAGA loyalists have been put in charge of the military and federal law enforcement agencies. ET

This article was updated to include comment from the Heritage Foundation disputing that the files released by SiegedSec were the result of a hack of its systems and were hosted instead on a third party’s website.

IT’S EVEN WORSE THAN WE THOUGHT.

What we’re seeing right now from Donald Trump is a full-on authoritarian takeover of the U.S.

government. Right-wing billionaires have pounced, buying up media organizations and rebuilding the information environment to their liking.

In this most perilous moment for democracy, The Intercept is fighting back. I'm in

In his foreword to the Project 2025 manifesto, the Heritage Foundation’s president, Kevin Roberts, rails against “the toxic normalization of transgenderism” and “the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology.” The playbook’s other contributors call on “the next conservative administration” to roll back certain policies, including allowing trans people to serve in the military.

“We’re strongly against Project 2025 and everything the Heritage Foundation stands for,” one of SiegedSec’s leaders, who goes by the handle “vio,” told The Intercept.

In its Telegram post, SiegedSec said it obtained passwords and other user information for “every user” of a Heritage Foundation database, including Roberts and some U.S.

government employees. Delivered to you. News outlets that challenge Trump have been banished or put under investigation.

Yet far too many are still covering Trump’s assault on democracy like politics as usual, with flattering headlines describing Trump as “unconventional,” “testing the boundaries,” and “aggressively flexing power.” 

The Intercept has long covered authoritarian governments, billionaire oligarchs, and backsliding democracies around the world.

“That’s why you hacked us?” he replied.

Original reporting. Group member “vio” informed the outlet that they aimed to provide “transparency to the public regarding who exactly is supporting” Heritage, and that the leaked data included “full names, email addresses, passwords, and usernames” of individuals linked to the nonprofit.

The data at issue has been taken down, and additional security steps have since been taken as a precaution. Will you take the next step to support our independent journalism by becoming a member of The Intercept?

The hacktivist collective, SiegedSec, has been engaged in a campaign called “OpTransRights,” in which it targets government websites with the aim of disrupting efforts to enact or enforce anti-trans and anti-abortion laws. Will you help us expand our reporting capacity in time to hit the ground running in 2026?

We’re independent of corporate interests.

But to do so effectively, we need to grow.

That’s where you come in. Right-wing billionaires have pounced, buying up media organizations and rebuilding the information environment to their liking.

In this most perilous moment for democracy, The Intercept is fighting back. Before he congratulates himself any more, Howell might want to at least change his passwords.

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. SiegedSec targeted the Heritage Foundation in early June, according to vio, who denied involvement in the earlier attack.

A spokesperson for the Heritage Foundation said Wednesday that the files were not obtained by hacking its systems, but that SiegedSec discovered them on a third party’s site.

“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,” said Noah Weinrich, a Heritage spokesperson.

As The Daily Dot notes, its reporters did verify that a hack had occurred, but it’s unclear whether it entailed any lasting damage to the network’s digital operation.

Bash Back

The hack, as the group declared on its X-formerly-Twitter account earlier in the week, is part of a broader offensive against transphobia and the organizations that perpetrate it.

Known as #OpTransRights2, this campaign is the relaunch of the group’s anti-transphobia crusade that saw it hack into government websites in five states after they passed bills targeting trans healthcare.

This second phase of the campaign began on April Fool’s Day, when SiegedSec hacked into Minnesota’s River Valley Church following its pastor’s transphobic screeds, which are often disguised as cries for religious freedom.

I hope the word spreads as fast as the STDs do in your degenerate furry community.”

He went on to liken furry culture to bestiality, which he called a “sin,” prompting vio to ask him, “whats ur opinion on vore.” (Vorarephilia, or vore, is a fetish typically expressed in erotic art of people or creatures eating one another.) A Twitter user shared a screenshot of this exchange Wednesday afternoon, leading Howell to quote-tweet the post with lyrics from rapper Eminem‘s 2000 single “The Way I Am.”

Hours later, Howell learned through the Daily Dot‘s reporting that vio had decided to try to quit their life of cybercrime, and that the rest of the collective agreed it was “time to let SiegedSec rest for good,” in part to avoid FBI attention.

Now an executive director at the influential organization is so hopping mad that he might as well invest in a kangaroo costume.