During a campaign codenamed “ProjectSunRise”, hacktivist group Team GhostShell yesterday (January 28) exposed data including 700,000 accounts and records from universities and businesses in South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria and Algeria.
HumanIPO reported last year on hacktivist group Anonymous Nigeria, which said it used hacking as a method to fight against corruption by the state in the West African country.
Team GhostShell claims similar motives, stating: “Companies like Anglo American have decimated our vast natural resources and have paid our local workers next to nothing. In a result of that they have become angry leading to multiple strikes that have crippled our economy. But you must be thinking, strikes mining industries pah!”
The hackers are not only unhappy with the ruling party in South Africa, but also the country’s official opposition party, the Democratic Alliance.
They added: “A fast developing country like South Africa should be able to shake that off with all that 1st world investment they are getting! But corrupt politicians from both the ANC and the DA have put the country into a spiralling economic disaster!”
This new hacktivism project that GhostShell have embarked on focuses on Africa in general, but they are initially targeting South Africa and “to some extent other countries from the continent, such as Algeria, Nigeria, Kenya and Angola”.
Targeted organisations in this campaign include universities and businesses like Angola’s National Diamond Corporation, Ornico Marketing, Moolmans Africa Mining Corporation, South African Express Petroleum, State University, Kenyan Business Directory, PostNet Internet Services and also PressOffice, which is linked to BidOrBuy, one of South Africa’s largest online stores.
As part of their “modus operandi” GhostShell hackers release MySQL database dumps and post them online as pastebin notes.
GhostShell are linked with Anonymous and have declared under a new operation named #OpSAfrica they will fight against corruption in the country, aiming to make all knowledge free and help South Africa to fight crime, corruption and poverty.
Team GhostShell has performed similar hacktivism previously when they hacked and leaked approximately 120,000 records from major universities around the world. They have also leaked 2.5 million records from the Russian government.
