An investigation carried out by Amnesty International revealed dozens of Egyptian human rights activists and government critics being targeted with phishing attacks, amid an intensifying violent crackdown on dissent being carried out by the government.
Since the beginning of the year, Amnesty International has analyzed suspicious emails sent to activists and journalists in Egypt and found an organized phishing attack to gain access to private accounts.
The attacks correlate to key political moments such as the anniversary of Egypt’s uprising on January 25th. Another cluster of attacks occurred during French President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to Cairo to meet with Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi on the 28th and 29th of January.
The individuals and organizations targeted has significant overlaps with the targets in an older phishing attack, known as Nile Phish, disclosed in 2017 by the Citizen Lab.
Image: “Phishing red text between blue binary data on screen” by Marco Verch is licensed under CC BY 2.0
ANARCHIMEDIA 