Hacktivism Against States Grows After Overturn of Roe v. Wade
State and local governments need to prepare and respond to a new round of cyber attacks coming from groups claiming to be protesting the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade last Friday.
As both protests and celebrations accelerated over the weekend in cities across the country after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade on Friday, June 24, heated debates also surged on social media and numerous websites and other media.
A ransomware group breached anti-abortion U.S. state governments to foment unrest in possible new front in Russia’s misalign influence campaign. SiegedSec, a ransomware group that came onto the scene coincidently days before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has quickly progressed in lethality by increasing the group’s volume of victims announced in recent months.
Today, SiegedSec announced on its public Telegram board that it has breached the servers of the Arkansas and Kentucky state governments in response to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade: “Time for some H4CKTIVISM!”
Like many, we are also pro-choice, one shouldn’t be denied access to abortion. As added pressure to the U.S. government, we have leaked many internal documents and files retrieved from Kentucky’s and Arkansas’ government server. These docs have plenty of employee PII and lots more.
“THE ATTACKS WILL CONTINUE! Our main targets are any pro-life entities, including government servers of the states with anti-abortion laws.”
ANALYSIS OF CYBER ATTACKS
MORE BACKGROUND ON THIS HACKTIVISM ISSUE
For several hours on September 11th, 2021 — a little more than a week after the most restrictive abortion ban in the country went into effect — the Texas GOP’s website was plastered with an army of adorable, amphibious Pokémon. Scroll a little further down the home page and you would find a Rick Astley music video, a mission statement attributed to the “Republican Party of Fucking Over Women,” and a joke about U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz being the Zodiac Killer.
A button up top encouraging visitors to “Join Operation Jane” redirected to Twitter, where a splinter group of the hacktivist collective Anonymous were documenting guerilla efforts to push back against Texas’ six-week abortion ban. (Before targeting the Texas GOP, for instance, the group encouraged supporters to flood ProlifeWhistleblower.com — a site designed for users to anonymously inform on abortion providers violating S.B. 8 — with fake tips and Shrek porn.)
Abortion rights groups are using software that protects privacy and are honing other strategies to combat digital threats that they expect will worsen in a post-Roe world. …
The question is whether the tools and strategies abortion rights groups have developed will be enough for what advocates and cybersecurity specialists say is likely to become a more sophisticated and widespread surveillance operation in states that restrict abortion if the Supreme Court overturns Roe, as a draft opinion obtained by POLITICO indicates it plans to.
Abortion rights groups have for years faced anti-abortion activists shutting down their websites, stealing provider and patient information and using phone location data to advertise anti-abortion materials to people who visit family planning clinics. Prosecutors have also relied on online searches and patient data to inform abortion-related arrests.
FINAL THOUGHTS
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*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from Lohrmann on Cybersecurity authored by Lohrmann on Cybersecurity. Read the original post at: https://www.govtech.com/blogs/lohrmann-on-cybersecurity/hacktivism-against-states-grows-after-overturn-of-roe-v-wade