These aren't furries. They're someone, or some group, pretending to be furries, probably as a cover story, or possibly just for laughs. All of their online communications read like someone doing an impression of a furry based on what they read on 4chan.
(Tongue firmly in cheek: No real group of furries would ever collectively identify as anything as ordinary as "gay". And catgirls are more of an anime thing.)
It seems rather more likely to me that this is a state-sponsored group with a silly cover story.
I'm going out on a limb and opine that the demand to research catgirls should not be agreed to. Not only would it attract more blackmail but it is a highly unethical treatment of the test human / feline genetic chimeras, which are unlikely to be viable. And the gender constraint is problematic.
They should look into the Freedom of Form Foundation or its affiliates; they're the only ones I know doing serious research about this... https://freedomofform.org/
Active research projects include (1) a Computer Aided Design (CAD) tool to safely design complete body alterations, (2) analysis of genetic targets to generate fur, feathers, or scales, and (3) sensor and motor integration for a prospective neuroprosthetic tail. More projects will follow! Additionally, we are writing strategic whitepapers and supporting external research through financial awards.
I have long been of the opinion that, if multiverse theory is correct, there must be one timeline that is the most hilarious, and I believe we are in it.
“The hacktivist group SiegedSec conducted a high profile attack on NATO last month, leaking internal documents as a retaliation against those countries for their attacks on human rights. The group commonly attacks government and affiliated organizations for political reasons, like targeting state governments for passing anti-trans legislation earlier this year.”
> They have successfully targeted companies across numerous diverse industry sectors around the globe including healthcare
Seems very problematic to me targeting healthcare companies.
> <transcribing an image 40% down the page> I do everything I do for the lulz! For entertainment and to have fun.
Yeah, very easy to hate random Joker-wannabes. Putting the expletive back in edgelord. Partisans I can like or dislike for whatever reasons. People inventing justifications for their chaos creation are crap from the get go.
> The group also appears to have close associations with GhostSec, a prominent hacking group with an extensive darknet history who has become increasingly popular for their attacks against Russia in the cyberwar.
> Very easy to hate them if: 1) Any innocents die because of their leaks.
Idaho drivers have been killing innocents on the street at a rate of one every two days for the past decade or more, yet people seem quite capable of not hating Idaho drivers, so this outcome is much less certain than you’ve declared here.
It’s much more likely that people will hate them first for being gay, furry, and/or hackers; and then claim any plausible justification for pre-existing hatred, whether imagined or real, whether statistically significant or not, so that they feel morally authorized to execute hate upon others.
I’ve always assumed this group was an hate-promoting operation, rather than a bunch of prideful idiots bearing cool labels. Either they’re incredibly stupid and are unconcerned with the hate they’ll bring down upon others — or they’re intentionally bringing down hate on the the labels present as. They seem quite able to hack, and they selected the exact labels that get the media to publicize their hacks, so it’s difficulty to defend a Hanlon’s stupidity outcome. Either way, it’s incredibly disappointing to see.
I don't know the details of what kinds of actions this group actually undertakes, so maybe I'm wrong with this assumption, but by publicly exposing sloppy security without actively endangering people or demanding ransom payments, they are probably tempering security of their targets in the long term by exposing sloppy security practices. Free pen-testing.
In the 90s, people made a decision to increase the speed from 60mph to 65mph knowing it would kill people. Based on point one, many leaders are murderers, but we typically don't view our leaders as murderers.
My question is why is it bad if some "terrorist" does it if people we know do it, it isn't a bad thing.
The state government said no more drag queen story time so they hacked into a nuke lab?
Who cares about DQST? I agree it's wrong to ban it but a ban on DQST doesn't mean you hack a nuke lab. DQST is a minor, irrelevant issue blown out of proportion by the MSM and both parties.
I don't condone these hackers. If they leaked something important we could have massive problems. Terrorists, nation states, etc could take advantage of some hypothetical leak. And to steal such valuable information because DQST... I mean come on what a dumb hill to die on.
This group said that previous attacks on state government offices this past summer were motivated by bans on gender-affirming healthcare for minors [1]. Idaho is among the states that have passed such a ban [2], but afaik the group hasn't attributed this most recent attack to it -- they've attacked many targets across the world for various not-particularly-convincing reasons. In any case, the breach data here seems unlikely to be particularly dangerous -- the article says that they leaked employees addresses and SSNs.
Drag queen story time seems completely unrelated to this story.
Those are example quotes that a hacking group would theoretically make to justify hacking, say, "Iran" in order to look good. Substitute "any random target" for "Iran" to get the general point.