SiegedSec hacker group claims two cyber attacks on the City of Fort Worth in as many weeks

The notorious SiegedSec hacker group claims to have infiltrated the internal network of the city of Fort Worth in Texas for the second time and exfiltrated almost 40 GB of data from the city.

 

Last week, the SiegedSec hacker group listed the city of Fort Worth as a victim on its Telegram channel and said that it stole “roughly 500k” files from the city’s systems.

 

“We easily hijacked their administrator account. The files leaked include Work orders, employee lists, invoices, police reports, emails between employees/contractors, internal documents, camera footage, and lots, lots, lots more! The total size of this data leak is around 180GB,” the group posted.

 

“We have uploaded this leak in 10 different links, each containing 20GB of government files (except the last one). If any links go down, we assure we’ll have it up again very soon.”

 

Fort Worth’s IT Solutions Director Kevin Gunn acknowledged the cyber security incident and said the data leaked by the threat actors wasn’t sensitive in nature and most of the data would be released through a Public Information Act request. Gunn added that preliminary investigation revealed that the group stole login credentials but the city is yet to identify how the group got its hands on the credentials.

 

Over the weekend, the group uploaded another post on its Telegram channel, claiming to have conducted a “final attack” on the City’s Transportation & Public Works department and siphoned 40GB of data.

 

“The final attack on the U.S has arrived. Starting off, the Fort Worth TPW leak contains ~40GB of documents, most being boring, but with a few hidden gems. (sorry kevin gunn),” the group posted.

 

“We are glad to participate and lead attacks in this operation, we have seen the support and encouragement of many, and we are very glad our attacks have inspired others to take action themselves.

 

“This will be the conclusion of SiegedSec’s attacks on the U.S. Our intention throughout this operation was to make a statement and encourage others to do the same. We have proudly succeeded in our goal. Until next time,” the group added.

 

Officials from the City of Fort Worth have, however, denied being attacked for a second time. Assistant city manager Fernando Costa said that the City investigated the claims of the threat actors and determined that the leaked data “consists of public information posing no risk of identity theft or financial fraud.”

 

In a statement shared with Recorded Future News, the city’s IT department said, “IT staff validated the source of the data is previously released data in response to a Public Information Act request. The underlying server, database, and storage, again, was not compromised.

 

“All the data posted by the attacking group is public information and not sensitive information that could result in identity theft or financial fraud.”