Anonymous Sudan claimed responsibility for recent distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks that targeted the networks of two major Egyptian telecom operators, Vodafone Egypt and Etisalat Egypt.
In a series of posts on Telegram, Anonymous Sudan, the infamous hacktivist group announced they had unleashed damaging DDoS attacks using their “InfraShutdown” infrastructure.
Vodafone Egypt, Egypt’s biggest mobile provider with over 40 million active subscribers, was one of the main targets. I personally experienced the attack’s impact, with my Vodafone service down for over 5 hours. Anonymous Sudan stated the attacks were retaliation for alleged insults against Sudanese people on social media and demanded the Egyptian government hold the offenders accountable, much like Sudan does for insults against Egyptians.
The hackers also demanded Vodafone to offer “unlimited” data package to it’s customers and accused the company of unfairly depleting customers’ paid account balances.
As per Anonymous Sudan’s announcement, Etisalat Egypt, the country’s third-largest mobile operator, was hit next with a similar DDoS attacks. Anonymous Sudan said the attacks aimed to bring awareness to a video showing police abuse against Sudanese women.
But what is DDoS attacks?: Imagine a bunch of people trying to flood a restaurant’s phone lines with prank calls, making it impossible for real customers to get through. A DDoS attack works the same, by overwhelming the target network with so much traffic that it crashes or slows down for everyone.
