Kosovo hacker who aided IS gets 20 years

(IraqiNews.com) Baghdad- A source in the Ministry of Interior, Iraq, informed Iraqi News on Sunday that a hacker linked with ISIS has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for he stole “personally identifiable information” (PII) of thousands of U.S. military and government personnel.

Ardit Ferizi, 20, who was also known as Th3Dir3ctorY, was arrested in Malaysia previous year and extradited to the United States, where he pleaded guilty in a Virginia federal court in June.

U.S. Assistant Attorney General John Carlin spoke after the verdict, calling the case a very real and risky threat to U.S. national security. Ferizi obtained the names by hacking into a private company’s network where he was able to located the names, email passwords with.gov and.mil extensions along with their phone numbers. The Islamic State published the names with a threat to attack.

The 20-year sentence which was handed down to the hacker is lower than the maximum of 35 years he could have been served with. That same day, on June 13, 2015, Ferizi admitted that he provided the PII belonging to the 1,300 United States military members and government personnel to Junaid Hussain, aka Abu Hussain al-Britani, a now-deceased member of ISIL.

In September 2015, Ferizi was detained by Malaysian authorities as he was trying to leave the country, and pleaded guilty in June of this year.

Assistant US attorney Brandon Van Grack said: “The defendant’s conduct has indefinitely put the lives of 1,300 military members and government workers at risk”.

Defense attorney Mullin argued that the “kill list” was merely propaganda, noting that personal and work addresses were not included. The suspect was extradited to the United States for prosecution.

In court Friday, Judge Brinkema said that “just having your name on a list, knowing that you’ve been identified by a terrorist group”, is a “terrorizing” experience, the Washington Post reported.

“I feel so bad for what I did”, he said in Albanian-accented English. “I’m so sorry.” In his letter to the court, he said he had never been loyal to the Islamic State and renounced the group completely.

“On the second night of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation airstrikes, Ardit was in the fourth year of his life”, she wrote.