The personal data of almost 2 million Moroccans were leaked online by hackers, a French cybersecurity website Zataz reported on September 3. The leak of private and sensitive data occurred on Friday night.
Two million Moroccan internet users had their identity, occupation, employer name, and email address stolen in a cyber-attack. Personal accounts were placed online in three free cloud spaces by a hacker using the identity of Adolph Hitler, the founder of Nazism.
The hacker used the social networking site LinkedIn to obtain this information. A database containing leaked information has been circulating on the dark web for some weeks.
Cyber-snooping is a widespread practice that involves secretly accessing and stealing people’s private information, often from social media sites, as happened in this case.
Previously, a hacker leaked the data of over 2,181 students of the Mohammed V University of Rabat in Morocco, including over 2,000 resumes dating back to 2013. He illegally accessed the photos, email, and postal addresses of thousands of students in mechanics, computer modeling, electrical, civil, and industrial engineering, computer engineering, and telecommunications engineering fields.
The hacker responsible for the large database breach did not explain how he obtained information on university students.
“The hacker behind this massive database leak did not explain how he was able to extract information related to university students,” said Damien Bancal, founder of Zataz.
The same hacker was reportedly selling data of over 40 million French individuals on the dark web, indicating that “the hacker behind the stolen database has set up a real marketing plan to resell all the data collected,” according to Bancal.
With Morocco’s elections on September 8, such leaks of personal data are a significant concern, and many individuals in the country have expressed their dissatisfaction with the invasion of their privacy.
