2023-08-01 19:54:01
A hood as a logo and thinly veiled threats: “France, what are you doing? Do you want to invade Niger? Do you want to suffer the same fate as Kenya? No problem… we never liked injustice”. On his favorite communication channel, his encrypted messaging channel Telegram, Anonymous Sudan has been threatening France with a wave of denial of service (DDos) cyberattacks on institutions and their websites since Monday. Not devastating and often symbolic, these actions consist of saturating a site or service with connection requests in order to make it inaccessible. The source of their anger? The political crisis in Niger where the putschists took power last Wednesday and wrongly accuse the former colonizing country of wanting to intervene militarily.
This group of “pro-Islamist” hackers made headlines last March by parasitizing the websites of hospitals, higher education establishments and French airports. The threat had been considered sufficiently serious by the DGSI, the French intelligence services, and the Paris prosecutor’s office, for an investigation to be opened for “obstructing the operation of an automated data processing system”, according to Numerama.
“A real operational attack capability is visible and impactful”
“They don’t always carry out their threats, but since their appearance at the start of the year they have demonstrated a real operational capacity for denial of service attacks, it’s visible and impactful”, analyzes Adrien Merveille, technical director from Check Point France. Despite a few brilliant strokes, these attackers remain in the shadows and no one knows who is hiding behind this structured organization. “Their name does not guarantee that they are based in Sudan and they have no connection with the Anonymous collective because they are organized with a real hierarchy and principals”, underlines the expert.
On Telegram, the group threatens to sustain a wave of parasitic cyberattacks as it did against Kenya.
The hackers also attacked the AP-HP sites and the hospitals of Lyon and Marseille at the end of June to protest against the death of “an Algerian child, Nahel”. Close to the pro-Russian hacktivist group Killnet (supported by the Kremlin), Anonymous Sudan does not hesitate to pass its attack instructions in the Cyrillic alphabet (used in particular in Russia) in order to mobilize its community of dozens of thousands of followers worldwide. Their last message posted on Telegram on Tuesday also threatens Nigeria ready, according to them, to help “the French imperialists and fight Niger. »
Their next actions will be closely scrutinized. “They will be like all the other groups of pirates to watch in August when they are particularly active because they know that the workforce is reduced during vacation periods and public holidays”, warns Adrien Merveille who calls for vigilance against cyberattacks which would be more destructive than symbolic.
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