It’s not often that the South African government faces attacks from hackers. Sure, Anonymous has its fair share of information it’s retrieved over time, but this wasn’t the work of Anonymous.

This was in fact the work of a hacker who calls himself “H4ksniper”. He claims to be supporting Morocco, but more specifically, the RASD – República Árabe Saharaui Democrática.

RASD, also known as “the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic SADR, is a partially recognised state that claims sovereignty over the Western Sahara, but controls only about a fifth of the territory, which it calls the Liberated Territories or the Free Zone. Morocco controls and administers the rest, which it calls its Southern Provinces.”

On Sunday morning he went after the social development department’s web address, Population.gov.za – where the site opened up the animated graphic “Website hacked by H4ksniper”, and a graphic depicting a heart rate monitor.

He left the message beneath it:

Hello South Africa 😀 , Bad News For You IM BACK ! ..You Messed Wi[t]h Us & Now You Must Suffer..From Morocco with love.

On top of this, the Presidential National Commission and the National Population Unit’s website’s were also hacked.

Like a good hacker, he was accepting messages via a medium. But not an ordinary one – he had opened a Facebook account called Moroccan Haksnipx.

He then responded by email to a Sapa journalist:

We all know that SA is the first supporter of the [República Árabe Saharaui Democrática] RASD and the ennemi [sic] of Morocco since a long time and we are hackers and our goal is defending our country …

He said he was working alone.

Social development spokesperson, Lumka Oliphant, said the site is hosted by the South African State Information Technology Agency (Sita):

No sensitive information is on the website. … We have logged a call with them [Sita] and we await their response on the matter. The Presidential National Commission and the National Population Unit’s websites were restored by 14h00.

The hacker also left a message of greeting for his fellow hacking friends on the Facebook page:

Greets to Aresox, M.A.S, Moroccan Hunters, Ng3r Root, All Moroccan Hackers.

He seemed most pleased that the South African press were writing about him, and posted links to the various articles that had appeared across news sources.

[Source: M&G]