فاس نيوز ميديا جريدة الكترونية جهوية تعنى بشؤون و أخبار جهة فاس مكناس – متجددة على مدار الساعة
A series of cyberattacks targeted a number of websites belonging to Moroccan government sectors during the late hours of Saturday evening and Sunday morning, causing a “temporary disruption” to some and a “continuous outage” to others. The affected websites, as observed by Hespress, include the official website of the Delegate Ministry to the Head of Government in charge of Relations with Parliament, the website of the Ministry of Agriculture, Maritime Fisheries, Rural Development and Water and Forests, and the website of the Tax Directorate. As of now, no official confirmation has been issued by government authorities regarding the source of these new technical disruptions.
Experts Diagnose Attacks as “Distributed Denial of Service” and Accuse Algeria
Hassan Khourouj, an expert in cybersecurity and digital systems, classified these attacks as “DDOS,” or “Distributed Denial of Service.” In a statement to Hespress, he explained that in this type of intrusion, “hackers work to gather the largest possible number of computers to attack a single website simultaneously in order to disrupt its capacity to withstand the load.”
Hespress noted that most official government websites remained operational, with the exception of the Ministry of Agriculture’s website and the website of the Ministry of Economic Inclusion, Small Business, Employment and Skills, while a slowdown was observed in the servers of other government sectors. Expert Khourouj explained this by stating that “websites under attack experience slow service or complete shutdowns that prevent visitors from accessing them.”
He warned that the continuation of these attacks could weaken the ranking of official Moroccan websites on well-known search engines like Google, stressing the need for website backups in such cases to overcome the effects of the attacks.
Cybersecurity and digital systems expert Khourouj directly accused Algerian entities of being behind these attacks, describing them as “carefully planned.” He added that “Algeria is carrying out a very dangerous attack that only ‘hacking’ experts recognize, which is also called a Kill Chain,” explaining that “after every successful database breach, the service denial phase follows; its role is to open multiple fronts simultaneously.”
Warnings of Targeting Basic Services and “International Digital Militias”
Furthermore, cybersecurity experts warned of the possibility of these attacks targeting peak hours, which could lead to significant damage to essential citizen services. They pointed out that “choosing a late hour when the technical team is off duty is at the heart of a well-crafted plan,” considering that “the Algerian threat at the cyber level has intensified after days of leaking data of many Moroccan citizens.”
For his part, Tayeb El Hazzaz, a cybersecurity expert, also confirmed that “official Moroccan websites were subjected to an organized attack on Sunday morning.”
In his statement to Hespress, El Hazzaz indicated that Algerian “hackers” “gave instructions to carry out attacks aimed at stopping the services of a group of official Moroccan websites for 15 days.”
The cybersecurity expert added that the matter “has become an international digital militia exploited by Algeria to attack Morocco,” stressing that he “personally witnessed the attack carried out on some websites, including the Tax Directorate website, the Ministry of Agriculture website, the Ministry of Employment website, the website of the Ministry in charge of Parliament, and the website of the Delegate Ministry in charge of Relations with Parliament before it returned to service this morning.”
The expert warned that “the attacks are serious and require a different kind of vigilance; they could disrupt our country’s digital sovereignty,” anticipating that “the cyber war and the reactions of Moroccan hackers will necessarily be severe.”
El Hazzaz called for “concerted efforts among various actors to comprehensively repel the attacks and utilize an advanced server,” in addition to “benefiting from the expertise of security and military agencies, given their specific handling of data and their high-level preparedness to deal with cyber threats.” He also demanded a “comprehensive inventory of official websites, their evaluation, and the plugging of all potential vulnerabilities.”
Ministry of Economic Inclusion Confirms Attack on its Website and Clarifies Data Nature
For its part, the Ministry of Economic Inclusion, Small Business, Employment and Skills, in clarifications provided to Hespress, confirmed that its institutional website “MIEPEEC,” which has a news-oriented nature, was subjected to a cyberattack, noting that “all information published on the website is public and accessible to everyone.” However, it remains unclear whether the continued service disruption on the website is related to the previous attack or the one carried out during Sunday morning (DDOS).
