Idaho National Laboratory (INL), one of the largest nuclear labs in the US, confirmed this week that it has been hacked. The group behind the data breach was self-described “gay furry hackers” Sieged Security aka SiegedSec, who have demanded the INL put its efforts and resources into creating real-life catgirls.
They probably aren’t being serious, but they did hack into a huge nuclear lab, so who knows.
According to SiegedSec, the hacktivist group has accessed thousands of records of user and employee data held by INL. This includes people’s full names, birthdays, email and home addresses, phone numbers, social security numbers, employment information, and “lots lots more.”
“woah so much crunchy data :3” SiegedSec wrote on their Telegram account, which gives you an idea of their communication style.
When hackers breach targets such as the INL, they frequently demand a ransom in exchange for keeping the organisation’s data private. Often they want it in the form of cryptocurrency, so it’s difficult to trace.
In this particular case, SiegedSec’s demand is a little more unconventional.
“We’re willing to make a deal with INL,” SiegedSec wrote in their announcement of the breach. “If they research creating irl catgirls we will take down this post [with a link to the leak].”
“On Monday, Nov. 20, Idaho National Laboratory determined that it was the target of a cybersecurity data breach in a federally approved vendor system outside the lab that supports INL cloud Human Resources services,” INL said in a statement to Engadget. “INL has taken immediate action to protect employee data.”
SiegedSec is known to take an exceedingly casual approach to its communications, with the group largely motivated by their own amusement (though it has also attacked targets for political reasons). As such, SiegedSec’s request for catgirls is likely a joke simply intended to indicate that they have no intention of taking the hacked information down — if the fantastical nature of their demand wasn’t already a pretty big clue.
“Many people ask ‘why?’ for the INL breach,” SiegedSec wrote on its Twitter / X account. “We are cats, intricacies such as ‘why’ do not concern us.”
A common character archetype in anime and manga, catgirls are human or humanoid women who have some feline physical characteristics. Usually these characteristics are restricted to a pair of cat ears and a tail, though the character may also have other feline features or display catlike behaviour, instincts, or abilities.
Memes about “genetically engineered catgirls” have playfully pondered how these feline mutants might be created in real life using actual scientific methods, and jokingly advocated for funding such a project. Many anime fans consider catgirls to be cute, sexy, highly idealised sexual partners.
It’s unclear what expertise SiegedSec might have thought INL holds when it comes to creating catgirls. INL’s research is more focused on nuclear and integrated energy than anything that might produce human-cat hybrids.
Since announcing the breach, SiegedSec further revealed it has also accessed hundreds of government employee records from the City of Hendersonville, North Carolina “while the FBI and CISA was still investigating [their] INL hack.” They have not demanded Hendersonville’s local government attempt to create catgirls, nor have they made any other requests.
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Cybersecurity