Anonymous Argentina

The organisation operates under the aliases #OpAfrica, Team Hack Argentino and Anonymous Argentina, with its headquarters located in Argentina. It functions as a hacktivist collective that carries out website defacement campaigns to draw attention to social and political issues, particularly allegations of child labor and government corruption in various nations. Its activities are aligned with the broader Anonymous movement but are conducted independently from Latin American cells, allowing it to pursue distinct initiatives such as the #OpAfrica operation. The group’s primary tactic involves exploiting vulnerabilities in web applications to gain unauthorized access to servers and replace existing content with custom imagery or messages that support its stated causes. While it does not appear to engage in data theft or financial gain, its actions aim to generate publicity and pressure targeted entities or governments to address the highlighted concerns. The collective’s operational model relies on loose coordination, public communication through social media channels, and the dissemination of compromised site URLs to amplify the visibility of its campaigns.

On 12 February 2016 the group executed a large‑scale defacement effort under the #OpAfrica banner, targeting numerous South African entities hosted by the Webafrica shared‑hosting provider. Attackers identified and exploited a flaw in the Joomla content management system rather than relying on SQL injection, which allowed them to compromise thousands of websites simultaneously. Once access was obtained, they replaced the original web pages with a custom image designed to promote the campaign’s anti‑child‑labor and anti‑corruption message, without extracting or altering any underlying data. Following the defacements, the perpetrators posted links to the affected sites on social media platforms before later releasing hundreds of those URLs in bulk to further spread awareness. The incident prompted South Africa’s national cybersecurity response team to issue advisories urging administrators to patch their Joomla installations and monitor public‑facing systems for similar threats. Although no data breach occurred, the widespread defacement highlighted the risks associated with shared‑hosting environments and the potential for hacktivist groups to leverage relatively simple vulnerabilities to achieve high‑visibility impact.