Hacker group: We'll wipe ISIS off the Internet

A screenshot from the Anonymous video warning ISIS of impending cyberattacks shows an announcer wearing the group's characteristic Guy Fawkes mask.YouTube screenshot by CNET

Hacker collective Anonymous has declared "war is unleashed" against ISIS, the Islamic militant group that claimed responsibility for the deadly attacks that occurred Friday in Paris.

ISIS has used the Internet to recruit new members from around the world and to spread chilling images of executions and other violence.

Anonymous, a loosely affiliated group of Internet users who hack and spread leaked information, said in a series of tweets and a YouTube video that it wants to steal information from that Web traffic and force ISIS into Internet obscurity. Indeed, its #OpParis campaign aims to strip ISIS of one of its most valuable weapons: the Internet.

In the YouTube video published Sunday, a masked announcer speaks in French. The statement was widely translated as saying, "Expect massive cyber attacks. War is declared. Get prepared."

Anonymous has leveled its ire at a huge variety of individuals, groups and companies that it perceives as crossing ethical and moral lines. Their attacks involve leaking documents and taking down websites with a form of attack called distributed denial of service, which overwhelms websites with too many requests. The group's targets have included the Ku Klux Klan, the Westboro Baptist Church (known for protesting the funerals of fallen soldiers and others in the United States), Monsanto and Koch Industries.

The list of Anonymous' targets also includes governments, such as Tunisia in 2011, in response to reports of censorship during the Arab Spring uprisings.

But ISIS, or the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, which has been a warring force in the Middle East, just struck at the heart of the Western World.

Anonymous' announcement isn't brand new. It began targeting ISIS earlier, especially after gunmen opened fire at the offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in January, killing 12.

#OpParis is aimed at ISIS' use of social media and other Web services. Beheadings and other executions of journalists, members of different Islamic groups and people accused of being gay have circulated on the Web over the past two years. Also, recruitment websites have urged people from around the world to leave their homes and fight with ISIS.

This activity has already gotten the attention of Western governments. For example, law enforcement and intelligence officers monitor recruitment websites. Anonymous seems fixed on amplifying these efforts with its brand of crowdsourced hacking, nevermind the law.

On Monday, a Twitter handle calling itself the official #OpParis account claimed a number of "pro-ISIS" accounts had been taken down.

More that 3824 Twitter accounts pro #ISIS are now #down! #ExpectUs#OpParis#Anonymous

-- #OpParis (@opparisofficial) November 16, 2015

Anonymous, however, isn't a unified group, and dissenters were tweeting their disapproval on Monday. One Anonymous-affiliated Twitter user, who goes by the handle Discordian and claims to have participated in several Anonymous hacking efforts, said he opposes #OpParis for a variety of reasons.

"[H]ow exactly do they plan to stop an international terrorist organization that has been able to plot attacks regardless of the mass-spying by governments around the globe?" Discordian wrote on a text-hosting website called Pastebin.

Predictions from those in the cybersecurity industry of whether Anonymous will be successful are mixed, with experts saying they understand why Anonymous wants to target ISIS.

Stu Sjouwerman, founder and CEO of cybersecurity company KnowBe4, is optimistic that Anonymous will be successful. "I wish Anonymous good luck with this campaign," he said.

46000 twitter accounts of IS

An image grab taken from a video released by Islamic State group's official Al-Raqqa site via YouTube on September 23, 2014, allegedly shows IS group recruits riding in armed trucks in an unknown location

Washington (AFP) - At least 46,000 Twitter accounts have been linked to supporters of the Islamic State in late 2014, a research report released in Washington showed.

The study released Thursday by the Brookings Institution found that even though many accounts were suspended by the messaging platform, the numbers remained high.

"From September through December 2014, the authors estimate that at least 46,000 Twitter accounts were used by ISIS supporters, although not all of them were active at the same time," the report said.

Authors JM Berger and Jonathon Morgan said analysis of the social media efforts of the militant Islamic group also known as ISIS needs to go beyond the core leadership.

"Previous analyses of ISIS's Twitter reach have relied on limited segments of the overall ISIS social network," they wrote in the report commissioned by Google Ideas.

"The small, cellular nature of that network -- and the focus on particular subsets within the network such as foreign fighters -- may create misleading conclusions."

Analyzing the location embedded in the tweets, the researchers found the largest number of ISIS supporters in Saudi Arabia, followed by Syria, Iraq and the United States.

Nearly one in five of the IS supporters tweeted in English, they found, with three quarters tweeting in Arabic.

Twitter said this week it was working with law enforcement officials on unspecified threats, amid reports that the social network had been targeted for blocking accounts linked to the Islamic State

The supporting accounts had an average of about 1,000 followers each, higher than most Twitter users. Accounts that tweeted most often and had the most followers were most likely to be suspended.

The authors said social media companies and the US government "must work together to devise appropriate responses to extremism on social media."

They noted that "although discussions of this issue often frame government intervention as an infringement on free speech, in reality, social media companies currently regulate speech on their platforms without oversight or disclosures of how suspensions are applied."

Twitter said this week it was working with law enforcement officials on unspecified threats, amid reports that the social network had been targeted for blocking accounts linked to the Islamic State.

A page on the online bulletin board Pastebin showed an image of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey in what appear to be the crosshairs of a rifle scope and a message in Arabic.

SITE Intelligence, a US group that monitors jihadist threats, said the post was made by Al-Nusra Al-Maqdisiya, a pro-Islamic State media group.

A translation of the message by SITE said that Dorsey and Twitter are now being targeted by Islamic militants for suspending certain accounts.

"You began this failed war, and we have told you from the beginning that it is not your war! But you did not understand. You shut down our accounts and we quickly return, but when our lone lions shut down your breathing there will be no return!" the message said.

Twitter staff received death threats from ISIS, admits CEO

The decision to suspend or block an account opens Twitter up to accusations of blocking free speech.Twitter

Twitter's employees have been threatened with assassination from the group known as ISIS, CEO Dick Costolo revealed in an interview on Thursday.

Speaking with the Aspen Institute's Walter Isaacson at the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit, Costolo talked about his company's response to ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria), a militant group that has been occupying areas of Syria and Iraq and is considered a major threat by the US and other countries, which have been battling its forces.

ISIS has been "using Twitter quite effectively" to communicate and spread its message, Isaacson noted. Costolo responded that a public information-sharing tool such as Twitter can be used for good. But he acknowledged that people are also going to "try to use it for nefarious purposes." As such, Twitter has responded in this case by removing the group's accounts as they crop up, citing such accounts as violations of the company's terms of service.

In response to the shutdown of those accounts, Costolo said that he personally and all of Twitter's employees have received threats from the group."It's against our terms of service," Costolo said. "It's against the law in many of the countries in which we operate for them to use it to promote their organization. When they do, we find those accounts and we shut them down, and we shut them down quite actively."

"After regularly suspending their accounts, which we've been doing, some folks affiliated with the organization used Twitter to declare that the employees of Twitter and the management of Twitter should be assassinated," Costolo said. "That's a jarring thing for anyone to have to deal with. And I've spent a lot of time talking to the company about it."

Twitter declined to comment on the matter.

Like other social networks, Twitter has to make the sometimes difficult decision whether to suspend or block an account that it believes is in violation of its guidelines. The decision can be difficult because Twitter can open itself up to accusations of blocking the free speech of the account that it suspends. Costolo spoke about the challenge involved in this type of debate.

"It's almost always a debate between two different perspectives about a piece of speech," he said. "One group of users feeling that this type of speech shouldn't be available on the platform, and another group of users saying 'no, no, no, it's very important that that type of speech be available on the platform.'"

In April, Twitter was hit by a ban in Turkey over the posting of tweets containing allegations of government corruption. After two weeks, the ban was lifted by the order of Turkey's constitutional court, which called it a violation of free speech and individual rights.