“Anonymous” Hacker Group Releases Address Of ISIS Recruiter, Exposes Extremist Social Media

Alex Buscemi10 years ago

In response to the Paris terror attacks that left 129 dead, hacker group Anonymous declared war on ISIS, and they’ve already done some digital damage.

The hacktivists are compiling a list of Twitter accounts belonging to ISIS extremists in an attempt to have them taken down. They’ve even released the physical address of one ISIS recruiter in Europe.

In addition to outing the extremist’s social media accounts and personal information, Anonymous is also hacking their websites and shutting them down through a process known as distributed denial of service. Basically, Anonymous floods the servers with fake traffic from bots until they overload and crash.

Anonymous claims to have removed over 5,500 accounts of ISIS extremists over the years.

The group previously declared war on ISIS in January after the Charlie Hebdo massacre in France, but they seem to have ramped things up after the attacks last week.

It’s great to have the world turning its attention to wiping out ISIS, but allow me to play devil’s advocate here. Maybe Anonymous is fucking up the long game for the government counter-terrorism hackers by exposing who they’ve been tracking.

Hear me out. Is Anonymous really that much better at hacking and exposing ISIS than the French and American governments? Or were the government hackers refraining from exposing the accounts? Perhaps if they continued to track them quietly, it could lead to someone bigger, someone higher up on the chain of command.

What if shows and movies like Mr. Robot have over romanticized the power of these underground hacker organizations? What if Anonymous are just some neck beards in Guy Fawkes masks fucking everything up? If they’re such computer geniuses, wouldn’t they know that it’s impossible to exit out of the window that pops up on their video without clicking on the damn information button?

How? Why? Who? Where’s my tinfoil cap? HOW DO COMPUTERS EVEN WORK AND WHY WON’T MY LAPTOP COOK THE SLICE OF BOLOGNA I PUT IN THE DISC DRIVE? Illuminati..

h/t Business Insider