![\"AFRICA\"](\"https:\/\/hcsblogdotorg.files.wordpress.com\/2016\/06\/africa.jpeg?w=620\")
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In July 2012, one year after the Arab Spring shook Arab regimes around the world, an email appeared in the inbox of Mamfakinch, a Moroccan online publication critical of the government.<\/p>\n
Under the subject line \u201cd\u00e9nonciation\u201d\u200a\u2014\u200a<\/em>French for \u201cdenunciation\u201d\u200a\u2014\u200awas a single sentence. \u201cPlease don\u2019t use my name or anything else, I don\u2019t want any trouble.\u201d And under that, a link to what appeared to be a Word document with the name \u201cscandale(2).doc.\u201d<\/p>\n But instead of insider information about corrupt government officials, the file turned out to be malware, as the Canadian NGO Citizen Lab later determined<\/a>after Mamfakinch\u2019s staff got suspicious and and contacted experts.<\/p>\n Reverse-engineering the malware, Citizen Lab concluded that Mamfakinch had fallen victim to a sophisticated cyber attack, likely at the hands of Morocco\u2019s intelligence service.<\/p>\n A year later in December 2013, a similar attack targeted<\/a> the Ethiopian Satellite Television Service, an opposition media network based in the United States. Two journalists were contacted via Skype from the account of a former collaborator. The sender tried to get the reporters to download malware disguised as a Word file.<\/p>\n The software would have allowed the attacker to completely take over any compromised computer.<\/p>\n\n