What to Do About Islamic State’s Cyber Army

Islamic State has taken cyber-terrorism to a whole new plateau. What is the NSA, the Cyber-Command, ODNI or partners do about this electronic war?

ISIS Establishes A Cyber-Alliance With Anti-Israel Hackers

Sev­eral pro-ISIS Twit­ter accounts that pro­mote the ter­ror­ist group’s pro­pa­ganda are col­lab­o­rat­ing with estab­lished anti-Israel hack­ers in an effort to increase cyber-attacks on behalf of ISIS.

isis-alazm-center-terrorists-team-electronic-jihad-israel

“Ter­ror­ists Team for Elec­tronic Jihad” claim of responsibility.

On Jan­u­ary 13, the Alazm Cen­ter Twit­ter account, which has over 5,000 fol­low­ers, called on hack­ers to con­tact them. Since then, a group of anti-Israel hack­ers call­ing them­selves “Ter­ror­ists Team for Elec­tronic Jihad” has claimed respon­si­bil­ity for sev­eral attacks against Israeli web­sites on behalf of ISIS.

The group claims to have hacked the web­site of a secu­rity con­trac­tor in Israel, a tour orga­nizer and few other Israeli busi­nesses by redi­rect­ing vis­i­tors to web­sites fea­tur­ing the name and flag of ISIS along with the sig­na­ture of “Ter­ror­ists Team for Elec­tronic Jihad.”

“Ter­ror­ists Team for Elec­tronic Jihad” claimed respon­si­bil­ity for these attacks in a state­ment on JustPaste.it, a file shar­ing site ISIS has been using to pub­lish its state­ments anony­mously. The state­ment said, “Thanks to God, below is today’s sum­mary of hack­ing web­sites which is part of a cam­paign against Zion­ist web­sites” and included a list of indi­vid­ual hack­ers affil­i­ated with “Ter­ror­ists Team for Elec­tronic Jihad.”

Videos of the hacks were also made avail­able on Aljyyosh (“the armies” in Ara­bic), an online forum for Arab hack­ers that have claimed respon­si­bil­ity for steal­ing per­sonal infor­ma­tion belong­ing to Amer­i­can Jews and Israelis. The videos show the hacked web­sites defaced with ISIS flags and the logo of the “Ter­ror­ists Team for Elec­tronic Jihad” along with a song that begins with, “Report our greet­ings to Abu Bakir [ISIS’ leader].”

Sev­eral of the names listed in that state­ment have pre­vi­ously taken part in other cyber-attacks against Israeli web­sites on behalf of groups in North Africa such as Al Falaga, a Tunisian hacker group that par­tic­i­pated in a large-scale cyber-attack on Israel on Holo­caust Remem­brance Day in 2013.

Another ISIS Twit­ter account, Mo7_AbuAzzamNM, which has over 1,000 fol­low­ers and iden­ti­fies itself as the “Hacker of the Caliphate State,” posted other state­ments prais­ing the hack­ing of “Zion­ist web­sites” and shar­ing links to the state­ment by “Ter­ror­ists Team for Elec­tronic Jihad.” On Jan­u­ary 16, Mo7_AbuAzzamNM Tweeted “Amer­ica has drones, but we have cyber expe­ri­ence. Oh mule of the Jews [Obama], the com­ing days will show you.”

Prior to their appar­ent col­lab­o­ra­tion with ISIS, “Ter­ror­ists Team for Elec­tronic Jihad” posted a video on YouTube on Novem­ber 29, 2014, declar­ing its alle­giance to the Islamic State. The video showed a masked man read­ing a mes­sage in Ara­bic say­ing, “We the Ter­ror­ists Team for Elec­tronic Jihad declare our sup­port for the Islamic State in Iraq and Lev­an­tine with all our force and capa­bil­i­ties.” It is pos­si­ble that the video attracted the atten­tion of ISIS, and led to the more recent col­lec­tive efforts.

Alazm Center's Twitter Logo

“Ter­ror­ists Team for Elec­tronic Jihad” also oper­ates a Face­book page and a Twit­ter account that have included mes­sages in sup­port of ISIS. “May allah bless the #ISIS,” read one post on Octo­ber 8.

Another promi­nent hacker group that has tar­geted Jew­ish, Israeli and Amer­i­can web­sites called AnonG­host is also show­ing increas­ing inter­est in ISIS. A Twit­ter account of Mau­ri­ta­nia Attacker, the pre­sumed leader of AnonG­host posted sev­eral com­ments in the past few days related to cyber-attacks in the name of ISIS and shared a video claim­ing to show ISIS how to avoid being mon­i­tored by the CIA.

Cyber-attacks on behalf of ISIS have increased over the past sev­eral months. In addi­tion to the hack­ing of Twit­ter and YouTube accounts affil­i­ated with U.S. Cen­tral Com­mand, Jew­ish insti­tu­tions, uni­ver­si­ties and other web­sites and been tar­geted as well.

***  How effective is Islamic State’s cyber army?

Although it is already force to be reckoned with, the presence of the Islamic State on Twitter is not as strong as it might seem.

MOSCOW, January 28 (Sputnik) – The Islamic State, also known as ISIS, relies on as many as 45,000 Twitter accounts to wage its propagandistic and recruitment campaign in social media, according to researcher J.M. Berger.

.M. Berger described the social media campaign by the Islamic State as “highly organized,” adding that the radical Sunni group “uses deceptive tactics and shows a sophisticated understanding of how such networks operate.” However, the Islamic State’s network on Twitter has suffered a heavy blow since then.

As many as 18,000 Twitter accounts affiliated with the militants were suspended in recent months. “ISIS supporters on Twitter are under significant pressure, with the most active and viral users taking the brunt of the suspensions,” Berger told House Committee on Foreign Affairs, probing terrorist propaganda after a deadly attacks in Paris.  Testimony in part:

In a forthcoming study on ISIS’s use of Twitter, commissioned by Google Ideas and to be published by the Brookings Institution’s Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World, technologist Jonathon Morgan and I set out to develop metrics that could define the size and function of this coordinated effort on Twitter.

While our analysis is not complete, we can confidently estimate that during the autumn of 2014, there were at least 45,000 Twitter accounts used by ISIS supporters. This figure includes accounts that were both created and suspended during the time it took us to collect the data. 

We found that the vast majority of ISIS supporters on Twitter, about 73 percent, had fewer than 500 followers each. During that period of time, we found no accounts actively supporting ISIS that possessed more than 50,000 followers, a sharp change from early 2014 when some ISIS users could be found with more than 80,000 followers.

  

The researcher warned that the Twitter campaign against the Islamic State should continue. Otherwise, the network will reemerge. He also said that although Twitter should suspend accounts of the most active users affiliated with the jihadist group, some low profile accounts could be kept active to be used as an open source for gathering intelligence.

 

 

Posted in Citizens Duty, Cyber War, DOJ, DC and inside the Beltway, Failed foreign policy, government fraud spending collusion, History, Human Rights Violations United Nations, Insurgency, Iran Israel, Middle East, NSA Spying, Terror.

Denise Simon