According to an indictment unsealed on Wednesday, the Department of Justice has formally charged and apprehended two Sudanese brothers leading one of the most prolific hacking groups, Anonymous Sudan. The cyberattack-for-hire gang reportedly launched over 35,000 attacks in the last year, targeting major US corporations, hospitals and an Israeli defence system.
The nefarious brother duo from Sudan has been charged with conspiracy and impairing computers, including in at least one hospital in the US, according to the Washington Post. If found guilty, they could potentially be served with life sentences. The mysterious outfit, believed to have 80,000 subscribers on Telegram, is allegedly run by Ahmed Salah Yousif Omer and Alaa Salah Yusuuf Omer. Arrested in March, the brothers have been held in custody since then, Martin Estrada, US attorney for the Los Angeles region, revealed.
In addition to taking down US companies and government sites, the Anonymous Sudan group also hampered the operations of government sites in Dubai, Chad, Bahrain and other nations, according to the indictment. Israel’s Red Alert system, which was responsible for alerting citizens about incoming Hamas attacks on October 7, was also allegedly hampered by the same hacking group. Anonymous Sudan reportedly announced on its Telegram channels that it was handicapping the Israel operation while acting in solidarity with Palestinians.
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The official filing also stated that global companies, including Microsoft, ChatGPT, X, the Pentagon, the Department of Justice, Alabama’s state government and Paypal, among others, incurred a beyond-imaginable loss of millions of dollars after they became victims of the hacking attacks. Moreover, Anonymous Sudan crashed the patient portals of the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, causing ambulances to go elsewhere. This life-threatening move ultimately resulted in the Omer brothers being indicted on charges of impairing computers “and attempting to cause and knowingly and recklessly causing serious bodily injury or death.” A press release further noted that the FBI and the US Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California captured the group’s powerful hacking (Distributed denial of service) DDoS tool.
Who are these Sudanese brothers, the alleged leaders of the Anonymous Sudan group?
Although not much has been revealed about the Sudanese nationals purportedly heading the mysterious hacking group, the US government has outed their ages and ideologies. The accused, Ahmed Salah Yousif Omer, is 22 years old, whereas his brother, Alaa Salah Yusuuf Omer, is 27 years old. The attorney said that their group held a “Sudanese nationalist ideology” and charged customers $600 or less to initiate major attacks.
The Omer brother’s alleged hacking operation was initially assumed to share ties with pro-Russia political hackers. However, officials ultimately told the Post that they no longer thought that a third party, or even a government, was financially supporting their work despite their very politically motivated actions. “What’s unusual is the predominance of the ideological motive, with financial sprinkled in,” Estrada said.
Per federal prosecutors’ intel, the younger brother, Ahmed Salah, allegedly created the DDoS attack infrastructure of the hacking group. He was supposedly also responsible for posting messages on Telegram. Meanwhile, his older brother, Alaa Salah, allegedly worked on computer code and programming support. While both have been charged with a count of conspiracy to damage protected computers, Ahmed Salah has also been charged with three counts of damaging protected computers. Prosecutors accused the brothers of using the group’s Distributed Cloud Attack Tool (DCAT) to often launch dayslong DDoS hacking attacks.
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Convictions could result in Ahmed Salah facing a maximum life sentence in prison and Alaa Salah’s maximum five-year sentence. They have been held in custody abroad since their March arrest. However, US officials have stayed mum when asked which country was holding them.
So far, the officials have released only Ahmed Salah’s photo from his passport, included in the separate United States v. Ahmed Salah Yousif Omer criminal complaint dated March 20, 2024. Most of the information on the official document has been redacted.
