Anonymous group declares war on Islamic State

IN the wake of last week’s deadly attacks in Paris, a video emerged promising that Anonymous, an online collective of hacktivists, would go to war against Islamic State’s notoriously large online presence. “ISIS, we will hunt you, Take down your sites, Accounts, Emails, and expose you…From now on, no safe place for you online…You will be treated like a virus, and we are the cure”, the group said on the YouTube site.

As it continued to plague the ISIS against their Twitter account, Anonymous has now also managed to hurt ISIS the most by hacking into the main Forum website used by the terrorist group and has managed to bring it down. “Another goal is to make sure IS knows that the world knows and cancels the attacks, which will disorientate them for a while”. Their efforts, aimed at derailing hidden communications through the terrorist group’s worldwide network, are now focused on cutting them off at the knees by shutting down their social media accounts.

Anonymous vowed retribution on Islamic State, which had claimed responsibility for the Paris attacks. And Anonymous is often using very low-tech methods to take down the Twitter accounts, a GhostSec spokesman known as DigitaShadow told Tech.Mic.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation said Saturday that it was aware of the alleged threat to the Atlanta event, but lacked “specific or credible information of an attack”, Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agent in Charge Britt Johnson said. The account @YourAnonNews however is the most followed with 1.58 million followers.

“Anonymous’ online battle with the Islamic State is starting to look like much ado about nothing”, The Daily Dot reported over the weekend, quoting an unnamed Twitter spokesman who said the company wasn’t paying much attention to Anonymous.

Over the past few days, the members of the Anonymous hacking group announced they have hacked and closed down more than 5,500 Twitter accounts under the banner #OpISIS. The Hacker News reported that the message from ISIS to Anonymous came through one of the ISIS-affiliated official channels, dubbed ELITE SECTION of IS, on the messaging app Telegram. Anonymous in turn has published a “how-to” guide on the Internet for normal people to interrupt the way of Terrorist Organization and called ISIS a “virus”.

“We only take the responsibility of warning civilians”, the statement added. However, the small group of jihadi hunters denies associations with the underground hacktivist group. But at the same time, social media has proved it is an advanced weapon.