Exclusive: Hacktivists Attack Anti-Abortion U.S. States
Last week’s controversial ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court, which overturned Roe v. Wade, sent shockwaves through the world and the web. It came as no surprise to us to see that the heated debate around abortion rights moved to the dark web. But one group, took it a step further by launching an attack against “pro-life” states in the U.S.
Using our Cyber API, we were able to detect the first cyber attack since the ruling. A new hacktivist group, SiegedSec, targeted states that support the ban on abortions, in a show of support to “pro-choice” groups.
A day after the ruling, on June 25, the group posted internal documents and files they stole from the servers of the states of Kentucky and Arkansas on their Telegram channel:
They leaked between 7-8GB of documents, including PIIs of employees of these states.
SiegedSec claimed they will continue to target servers of the states that support a ban on abortion.
Who is SiegedSec?
The group first appeared a few months ago, and has since attacked several different companies from various industries around the world including information technology, insurance, and finance.
They then leaked databases belonging to their victims, which include usernames, emails, hashed/plaintext passwords, PII, sensitive information, and more. We have not seen any proof that they extort their victims for the data they steal.
To show the extent of their attacks, the groups also claimed they had defaced over 100+ domains, but they were stopped by the companies who detected the activity and took action:
Where is the group active?
Hacking Forums
A user named YourAnonWolf posted several leaks on behalf of SiegedSec, linking himself to the group. He published on breached.co, the new popular hacking forum that attempts to replace Raidforums.
We took a closer look at YourAnonWolf and were able to find a post he had published before he was publicly linked to SiegedSec. A little over a year ago, he posted a leak of a domain that belongs to an Israeli organization on pastebin:
Twitter account
The group also created a new account, on Twitter earlier this year, as the last one was suspended:
Hacktivism against abortion ban
This is not the first time a hacktivist group targeted a U.S. state that moved to ban abortions. In October 2021, Anonymous launched a series of attacks as part of their Operation Jane campaign against a Texas law that prohibited abortions.
The famous attack was against Epik, a web hosting company used by large right-wing clients, such as Parler, Gab, 8chan as well as the Republican Party of Texas. In total, over 480GB of data belonging to Epik was stolen and leaked.
As the new Supreme Court ruling sets a new phase in the battle over abortion rights, we may continue to see more hacktivists taking a clear stance by launching new attacks against “pro-life” groups and states.
