Spanish Intelligence Reports Moroccan Hackers Targeted Government Websites Amid Diplomatic Tensions

These cyber attacks took place on May 22, 2021, according to the CNI report accessed by El Español. That day, two websites were hacked and displayed the English message "Free Morocco", accompanied by a map of the Strait of Gibraltar with the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla marked in red.

According to the CNI, the group of hackers behind these cyberattacks, calling itself the Moroccan Revolution, belongs to the "hacktivists" family, in other words, hackers acting for political or ideological purposes. The Moroccan group has been operating in several countries since at least 2016 and generally attacks web pages with outdated software.

To read: Spanish Government Refrains from Accusing Morocco in Pegasus Spyware Scandal

It was during the same period of diplomatic crisis with Morocco that the mobile phone of President Pedro Sanchez was hacked twice using the Pegasus spyware, more precisely on May 19 and 31. Subsequently, the phones of the Ministers of Defense and Interior, Margarita Robles and Fernando Grande-Marlaska, and the then Minister of Foreign Affairs, Arancha González Laya, were also spied on.

Amnesty International and Forbidden Stories, an international network of journalists, had accused Morocco last year of using this Israeli spyware to monitor political figures like the French President, Emmanuel Macron, journalists and human rights activists around the world.