A federal grand jury unsealed an indictment Wednesday against two Sudanese brothers, accusing Anonymous Sudan of being one of the most prolific cyber attack contract organizations in history and behind tens of thousands of attacks. They were charged with operating a .
Federal prosecutors have accused him of carrying out 35,000 denial-of-service attacks against hundreds of organizations in just one year, bringing down websites and other networks as part of an ideologically motivated extortion campaign. The suspects, Ahmed Salah Yusif Omer, 22, and Alaa Salah Yusuf Omer, 27, were charged. This plan affects thousands of customers.
According to prosecutors, the pair targeted a long list of high-profile victims around the world and across the United States. microsoftChatGPT, PayPal, X, Yahoo, airports, the Department of Defense, the Department of Justice, the Alabama state government, and at least one hospital (Cedars-Sinai in the Los Angeles area).
Martin Estrada, the U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, said at a press conference Wednesday that the group has a “Sudanese nationalist ideology” and charges customers less than $600 to carry out large-scale attacks. He said he was charging.
“Anonymous Sudan sought to maximize havoc and destruction against governments and businesses around the world by carrying out tens of thousands of cyberattacks,” Estrada said. “This group’s attack was callous and brazen, with the defendants even attacking a hospital providing emergency medical care to patients,” it added.
The group also targeted government and private organizations in the Netherlands, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Chad, Israel, and the United Kingdom.
According to federal prosecutors, Ahmed Salah allegedly created the anonymous Sudanese DDoS attack infrastructure and then posted messages that read: telegram Take credit for the attack. Alaa Salah is said to have provided computer code and programming support.
A grand jury indictment charged the two with one count of conspiracy to harm protected computers. Ahmed Salah was also charged with three counts of damaging a protected computer.
If convicted on all charges, Ahmed Salah could face up to life in prison in connection with the attack on Cedars-Sinai hospital that endangered the lives of patients, according to the indictment. It is said that there is. If Alaa Salah is convicted, he faces up to five years in prison.
Estrada said if convicted, he would be the first person in the United States to be convicted of a cybercrime related to bodily harm.
An attack by Sudanese Anonymous on Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in February led to the temporary suspension of emergency services and the redirection of incoming patients to other medical facilities for about eight hours.
According to the indictment, Anonymous Sudan operated multiple Telegram channels that posted “information about attacks, DDoS tools and prices, and victims,” and at one time boasted as many as 80,000 subscribers. The group’s activities caused more than $10 million in damages to victims in the United States
Federal prosecutors allege that the brothers have used the group’s Distributed Cloud Attack Tool (DCAT) to launch devastating, sometimes multi-day DDoS attacks since early 2023. A DDoS attack (“distributed denial of service”) floods a website with traffic, rendering it unusable.
“The FBI’s seizure of this powerful DDoS tool disables an attack platform that has caused widespread damage and disruption to critical infrastructure and networks around the world,” Rebecca Day, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Anchorage Field Office, said in a statement. We succeeded in making it possible.” “Because the FBI has a unique combination of powers, capabilities, and partnerships, our reach knows no limits when it comes to combating all forms of cybercrime and protecting global cybersecurity.”
Estrada said the brothers were arrested abroad in March and have been in custody since then, but U.S. prosecutors declined to comment on the name of the country holding them or possible extradition.