Cyber Incident Victim: Egypt Information portal
Date:
Oct 2015
Location:
Egypt
Summary
Anonymous-affiliated hackers breached multiple Egyptian government websites, including the presidency and several ministries, defacing pages and causing temporary outages. The attackers, operating under the name Anonymous Rabaa, claimed the action was retaliation for human rights abuses during the 2013 Rabaa Square crackdown, denying affiliation with Islamist groups. They displayed protest symbols and messages demanding justice for killed protesters while asserting no major systems were compromised beyond superficial disruptions. The group vowed continued cyber operations against the government.
| CIA Posture | Motives | Tactics, Techniques & Procedures |
|---|---|---|
| Available to members | 2 motives | 2 techniques |
| Threat Actor | Type | Location |
|---|---|---|
| 1 actor | Available to members | Available to members |
Description
On October 24, 2015, the Egyptian presidency website experienced a cyber attack attributed to the Egyptian branch of the hacktivist collective Anonymous, specifically operating under the name Anonymous Rabaa. The attack occurred on a Thursday, rendering the presidency website offline temporarily. Egyptian Cabinet spokesperson Hossam al-Qawish confirmed the incident to Al Arabiya News, clarifying that hackers compromised only the main page for a few minutes without penetrating major systems or causing significant data damage. Concurrently, the Cabinet Decision Support Center (IDSC) website faced an attack, prompting its technical team to temporarily shut it down as a precaution. Additional government websites were compromised, including those belonging to the Ministry of Tourism, Ministry of Planning, Supreme Council of Press, Center for Information and Decision Support, Egyptian Information Portal, Egyptian Observatory site, and National Planning Institute. The hackers provided evidence of their actions through Zone-h archives and their official Facebook page, publishing defaced website screenshots and video footage documenting alleged human rights violations in Egypt.
Anonymous Rabaa claimed responsibility for the coordinated attacks, framing them as acts of solidarity with protesters killed during the 2013 Rabaa Square massacre and other incidents of state violence, including clashes at the Presidential Palace and Sinai operations. The group explicitly denied affiliation with Egypt’s banned Muslim Brotherhood while declaring itself a defender of victims’ rights. Their defacement of the presidency website featured a four-fingered Rabaa symbol—a gesture associated with the 2013 protests—alongside messages demanding accountability for human rights abuses. This incident followed an earlier August 2015 attack on Cairo Airport’s website, which Anonymous Rabaa had conducted to mark the first anniversary of the Rabaa crackdown. Egyptian authorities responded by restoring affected websites, with al-Qawish minimizing the incident’s severity by emphasizing the limited technical impact. At the time of reporting, all targeted sites, including presidency.gov.eg, remained offline. Anonymous Rabaa issued warnings of continued cyber attacks against Egyptian government infrastructure, citing unresolved grievances related to political repression and violence against dissenters.