120 GB of emails were hacked from Equatorial Guinea’s National Center for the Computerization of Public Administration known as the CNIAPGE, The compromised emails dated from 2017 to early 2022. The dataset of the hacking attempts is available on DDosecrests.
According to the source, the government of Equatorial Guinea has partnered with Microsoft in June 2015 in order to computerize the whole public administration. It has been a milestone agreement for the development of West African nations. The government has produced the Horizon 2020 Development Plan to kickstart the country’s economy. Microsft has worked closely with the government’s development project and the board of the National Center for Public Administration of the Computerization of Equatorial Guinea (CNIAPGE).
However, it has been reported by US cyber security giant Symantec that a massive amount of hacking campaigns hit West African countries last year.
The attacks on several West African countries have not been claimed by any hacking group. A group of low-end malware strings has been found to be responsible for causing such massive hacking campaigns all over West African nations. The malware used for the attacks can be found readily available on the hacking forum and on dedicated websites.
According to Symantec, the hackers used local tools such as PowerShell, PsExec, and Windows RDP to gain access to the Windows systems from remote locations.
According to several sources, hacking crews from Russia, and North Korea have been keeping an eye on the national banks and financial intuitions situated in Southeast Asia, Europe, and South America for the past few years.
Experts say that these nations are being attacked due to low maintenance in their cyber-security and IT infrastructures. The West African nations possibly had unsupervised networks which were found to be easy targets for data breaching.
