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By Flynn Nicholls
US News Reporter
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A group of "gay furry hackers" has targeted right-wing think tank The Heritage Foundation—which is behind Project 2025—by releasing the passwords, usernames, and user logs of its users.
The activists, known as SiegedSec, posted approximately two gigabytes of data online that it says was retrieved from the foundation's servers. The Heritage Foundation denied its servers were hacked.
The Saturday data grab from the influential policy group came after it made headlines with its controversial Project 2025 document, which seeks to guide a future conservative administration to radically transform the federal government with a far-reaching right-wing agenda.
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In a Telegram post on Tuesday by SiegedSec, the group of self-described "gay furry hackers" wrote: "Project 2025 threatens the rights of abortion health care and LGBTQ+ communities in particular. so of course, we won't stand for that! ^-^"
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The post included a screenshot of what appeared to be lines of foundation user data and a link to a database believed to contain passwords, email addresses, and full names of The Heritage Foundation website users, including government employees and the think tank's president, Kevin Roberts.
It said that it has also accessed over 200 gigabytes of other "mostly useless files" which it said it would not leak.
The Heritage Foundation denied they were hacked and said none of their systems were breached.
In a statement sent to Newsweek, the organization said: "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.
"The story of a 'hack' is a false narrative and exaggeration by a group of criminal trolls trying to get attention."
SiegedSec is an established cyber-activist group that has previously targeted anti-abortion states. This is the second time it has targeted The Heritage Foundation this year. It also claims to have hacked NATO and Israel-related targets earlier this week, in protest against the war in Gaza.
The group wrote: "dear heritage foundation, get in touch with us! we will make fun of you endlessly :3 love, gay furry hackers <3."
At 900 pages long, Project 2025 contains policy proposals which cover a vast range of topics involving almost every branch of the federal government, including several proposals which, if implemented, would roll back protections for LGBTQ+ people and would make it more difficult for women to get abortions.
In relation to LGBTQ+ rights, Project 2025 seeks to remove labor discrimination protections which have been broadly applied to LGBTQ+ people since the 2020 Supreme Court decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, which ruled that a person could not be fired for being gay or transgender.
Project 2025 suggests that the federal government should interpret Bostock only in relation to hiring and firing practices, rather than broadly to workplace discrimination.
It advises that an incoming conservative administration "should direct [labor related] agencies to focus their enforcement of sex discrimination laws on the biological binary meaning of 'sex.'" It says the same agencies should rescind regulations which currently prohibit discrimination against people for their sexual orientation or gender identity discrimination, effectively allowing workplace discrimination against gay or transgender people. It also wants to ban transgender people from the military.
In the foreword to Project 2025, Roberts describes the "toxic normalization of transgenderism," and the "omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology."
In relation to abortion, Project 2025 seeks to restrict access to abortion in several ways. It seeks to withdraw mifepristone—which is used in 60 per cent of U.S. abortions—from the market. The policies in Project 2025 reference support for general pro-life views including the belief that life begins at conception and that abortion should not be categorized as health care. It does not however support a federal abortion ban.
In the foreword, Roberts writes that a conservative administration "should push as hard as possible to protect the unborn in every jurisdiction in America. In particular, the next conservative President should work with Congress to enact the most robust protections for the unborn that Congress will support while deploying existing federal powers to protect innocent life and vigorously complying with statutory bans on the federal funding of abortion."
Despite former president Donald Trump denying any links to Project 2025, questions have been raised about how many of its policies could be implemented if he wins November's election. A Democrat spokesperson said Trump and Project 2025 are "one big MAGA operation."
Dozens of people who contributed to Project 2025 formerly served in Trump's administration, including project director Paul Dans as well as high-profile Republicans Peter Navarro and Ben Carson.
Update 7/11/2024 4:50 a.m. ET: This article has been updated with comment from The Heritage Foundation.
Update 7/23/2024 11:38 a.m. ET: The headline has changed.
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