Morocco’s Security Pole Denies Any Database Breach, Points to Old Insurance Data

Marrakech – Morocco’s top security bodies have categorically rejected claims that their computer systems were hacked, tracing a recent online dump of personal data instead to old files once held by insurers and social-coverage bodies.

In a statement issued Thursday, the pole grouping the General Directorate of National Security (DGSN) and the General Directorate of Territorial Surveillance (DGST) denied the recording or occurrence of any breach of its IT systems and secured databases, which it noted fall under the highest information-security standards.

The personal data circulated in recent days, according to the communiqué, “are in no way the result of a cyberattack against secured information systems,” but rather “old data downloaded from databases and information systems managed by insurance companies and medical and social coverage organizations.” The pole added that its data systems “are not connected to networks open to the internet.”

The statement also cautioned against the recurrent publication of “doctored photos, presented in a misleading and malicious way” as images of security personnel, alongside “altered and falsified documents” passed off as official.

Alongside the erroneous visual identities and glaring linguistic errors in the documents, it argued, their fake character is plainly given away by the material’s reliance on “regulation uniforms and military ranks that do not exist in Morocco” and were never adopted by the national security apparatus.

The two directorates added that their inquiries would continue under the supervision of the competent prosecutor, in order to identify and arrest everyone involved in fabricating, preparing, and disseminating the false content.

The denial comes after a Telegram release on August 24 by a self-styled hacker group calling itself “Jabaroot.” The group claimed to have exposed the names of some 70,000 members of Morocco’s security and intelligence services “posted in Europe and within strategic Moroccan institutions.” That figure alone drew sharp skepticism at home.

A figure that collapses under scrutiny

In a fact-check, the Moroccan outlet Médias24 argued that 70,000 “spies” would give Morocco a clandestine workforce larger than the CIA and FBI combined.

The vast majority of those listed, it found, are ordinary DGSN police officers whose names were most likely lifted from earlier breaches of public social-protection bodies to which every civil servant is affiliated – a practice it called “repackaging,” the recycling of already-compromised data dressed up as a fresh leak.

Médias24 warned against confusing volume with veracity, noting that a crude operation can still produce a file that looks impressive to the naked eye. It also pointed to the staging around such dumps: release on a politically charged date, martial language, promises of “massive” revelations, and a media echo chamber that magnifies the effect.

Jabaroot, which presents itself as a group of Algerian hackers active against the Moroccan state, said it acted in reaction to the late-July migration surge toward occupied Ceuta, accusing the DGST of direct involvement without offering any evidence. Much of the amplification, Médias24 observed, came from Spanish and Algerian outlets, in a climate it characterized as hostile to Morocco since the Ceuta crisis.

A smear built for a hostile audience

The spreadsheets seen by Le Monde list service numbers, identity-card and bank-account details, and recruitment and birth dates, including those of DGSN and DGST chief Abdellatif Hammouchi, whose information had never before been made public.

Yet several people named are dead, among them Abdelhak Khiame, and the most recent recruitment date is 2020 – indicating the data, if authentic, is old. Security specialist Akram Kharief cautioned that “nothing today allows one to affirm that these 70,000 people are that many Moroccan spies,” adding that many could be police or administrators with no clandestine role.

The old-data thesis is reinforced by earlier incidents attributed to the same brand. In April, a breach of a public social-protection fund (CNOPS) exposed the records of three million affiliates, and through 2025 leaks tied to Jabaroot ran from palace staff rosters to the pay of two million public employees. The most recent dump mixes DGSN and DGST names, which further complicates any claim that all belong to intelligence operatives.

Le Monde, citing its own sources, claims the dump is the handiwork of five former DGST agents who fled to Europe and now agitate for a shake-up at the top, going so far as to demand that “the king must act and fire Hammouchi.” That framing deserves to be named for what it is: deserters turned agitators, dressing personal grievance and betrayal as reform, and handing a foreign audience exactly the story it wants to hear.

The same figures threatened to release so-called mission orders supposedly proving that Moroccan security services engineered the late-July departures toward occupied Ceuta, where more than 70,000 migrants crossed on July 30 and 31. Not a shred of evidence accompanies the charge. The threat is pure theater – a promise of revelations timed to wound, floated precisely because it cannot be substantiated.

Layered on top are claims of Pegasus surveillance targeting Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, another allegation advanced without a single verifiable document. Each accusation follows the same script: assert the spectacular, skip the proof, and rely on hostile outlets to carry it.

That the smear lands now is no accident. It arrives as Rabat-Madrid ties fray and as a segment of the Spanish press, along with its Algerian counterparts, rushes to pin the border crisis on Moroccan services – again, without a shred of tangible proof.

What is presented as a leak looks far more like a coordinated attempt to bruise one of the kingdom’s most effective institutions and the man who leads it, built on recycled data, forged documents, and the wishful reporting of an audience already predisposed to believe the worst about Morocco.