Anonymous hacker charged with seeking to kill after cyberattacks hit hospitals globally

Two brothers have been accused of being Anonymous Sudan, a group that allegedly targeted hospitals in a series of serious cyberattacks.

Anonymous hacker charged with seeking to kill after cyberattacks hit hospitals globally
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The US Department of Justice has charged two brothers who were allegedly behind a series of cyberattacks launched at hospitals across various countries.

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Reports indicate the Sudanese brothers are behind the hacktivist group Anonymous Sudan, which the US Department of Justice believes is behind a series of cyberattacks launched at various hospitals around the world. The Department of Justice recently unsealed the charges against the brothers, accusing them of launching more than 35,000 distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against hundreds of organizations. The targets of these attacks were websites, network systems, services, media companies, airports, and government agencies such as the Pentagon, FBI, and Department of Justice.

The indictment revealed the brothers had their own ideological reasons behind the attacks but were also making their services available for hire. This would include launching cyberattacks against entities on behalf of clients, and according to US prosecutors and the FBI, their victims include Microsoft's Azure cloud services, OpenAI's ChatGPT, video game companies, and even hospitals. The last point is a particular point of interest for the prosecution as the brothers are accused of launching attacks on Cedars-Sinai Health Systems in Los Angeles, which resulted in multiple hours of downtime and patients having to be moved to different hospitals.

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"Bomb our hospitals in Gaza, we shut down yours too, eye for eye," Ahmed Omer allegedly wrote on Telegram in the midst of the attack

The US prosecution and the Justice Department claim at least one of the brothers was seeking to cause deadly harm, which is why this brother's charges carry a potential life sentence. According to prosecutors, if the brother is convicted of a life sentence, it will be the most severe criminal charge laid against a hacker accused of DDoS attacks.

"We declare cyber war on the United States," Ahmed Omer posted in a message to Anonymous Sudan's Telegram channel in April of last year, according to the indictment. "The United States will be our primary target."

"The actions taken by this group were callous and brazen," Martin Estrada, a US attorney for the Central District of California and lead prosecutor in the case, told reporters in a conference call. "This group was motivated by their extremist ideology, essentially a Sudanese nationalist ideology."

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Jak joined the TweakTown team in 2017 and has since reviewed 100s of new tech products and kept us informed daily on the latest science, space, and artificial intelligence news. Jak's love for science, space, and technology, and, more specifically, PC gaming, began at 10 years old. It was the day his dad showed him how to play Age of Empires on an old Compaq PC. Ever since that day, Jak fell in love with games and the progression of the technology industry in all its forms.

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