‘Anonymous Sudan’ attacks Mossad, Israeli institutions
Origins of the group are murky, and Anonymous collectives have been infiltrated by intelligence agencies in the past
By
News Desk
– April 25 2023
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(Photo Credit Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
The hacking group “Anonymous Sudan” announced an attack on the website of Israel’s foreign intelligence service, Mossad, and the National Insurance Institute, Al-Rai Al-Youm reported on 25 April, citing Hebrew media sources.
According to Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, the hacker group claimed responsibility for a cyberattack on the Mossad and the National Insurance Institute (government) websites, writing on its Telegram channel that “this attack is a preparation for a major attack.”
The “denial of service attack” (DDoS) prevented browsing of the Mossad website, but Israel’s National Insurance Institute denied that its website had been downed, saying in a statement: “They are trying to attack the site even at this moment and create unavailability/blocking of the service without success.”
“The electronic warfare staff of the National Insurance monitor any such action or attempt and work to continue to secure the systems,” the statement added, according to the Hebrew website Walla.
Anonymous Sudan also carried out attacks on the websites of several major public universities in Israel earlier this month.
At the time, the Jerusalem Post reported that “sites that are not available for browsing include Tel Aviv University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, the University of Haifa, the Weizmann Institute of Science, the Open University, and Reichmann University.”
The group claimed on Telegram: “Infrastructure, universities … The education sector in Israel was brought down because of what they did in Palestine.”
Anonymous is a loose collective for online activism and protests that emerged in the early 2000s and is a label that anyone can use to organize and carry out politically motivated cyberattacks.
Following cyberattacks against the Tunisian and Egyptian governments during the so-called Arab Spring in 2011, Anonymous was shown to have been infiltrated by US intelligence agencies, with some of the most prominent hackers acting as FBI informants.
A hacker group calling itself Anonymous Sudan first emerged in 2019 during anti-government protests in Sudan, which led to a military coup that ousted Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir. The group used the hashtag #OpSudan to organize and promote its cyberattacks against the government.
According to the cyber security firm TrueSec, one of the more prominent actors in Anonymous Sudan was an individual using the moniker @GhostSec in online chat forums to organize the group’s activities. This actor has a significant follower base and has been involved in several anti-Russia and pro-Ukraine hacker operations in the past.
However, TrueSec concluded that the most recent iteration of Anonymous Sudan that has carried out cyberattacks this year is likely a different group of activists from the original group emerging to support the protests in Sudan in 2019.
The firm argues that the current iteration of the group has links to a Russia-based cyber activist group that appears to enjoy state funding.
