Hackers steal Kenya’s foreign ministry documents

Hackers steal Kenya’s foreign ministry documents

Friday, April 29, 2016 9:18 am


A member of the hacking Collective known as Anonymous

A member of the hacking Collective known as Anonymous

Online activists who claim ties to Anonymous said on Thursday they had begun to leak documents from Kenya’s foreign ministry as part of a campaign to expose government and corporate corruption across Africa.

HackRead, a cyber security news site, reported that a hacker affiliated with “Operation Africa” had told it: “In (a) few days you will receive full disclosure of the data – We the Anonymous will stand against corruption, child abuse, and child labour!”

A link to a sample of 95 documents was published to a widely known Anonymous Twitter account, part of what it claimed was a one-terabyte stash of date from Kenya’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. The sample documents cannot be read using standard Web browsers but can be viewed using TOR.

The documents, viewed by Reuters, appear to consist of mostly routine correspondence between Kenyan foreign ministry officials and other diplomatic missions, trade partners and international companies around the world.

A news release in January by activists described Operation Africa as an effort to mount computer attacks on governments in Rwanda, Uganda, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Sudan and South Sudan and Ethiopia. The Kenyan government was not on the initial list.

The Kenyan ministry documents leaked on Thursday included email discussions of security preparations for diplomatic trips, trade deals and a status report on the conflict between Sudan and South Sudan, dated from the middle of this month.

One document, from last August, contains a warning to ministry staff of hacking attempts using phishing techniques containing links to malware.

A spokesman for the ministry declined to comment on the alleged breach and referred Reuters to Kenya’s Ministry of Information and Communications Technology (ICT).

 


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