Ride the Lightning

Anonymous Rickrolling ISIS Social Media Accounts May Hinder Counter-Terrorism

November 25, 2015

I know some of you are asking "Rickrolling" – what's that?" Well, it's the prank of posting links on social media accounts that link to Rick Astley's 1987 music video "Never Going to Give You Up."

Who would imagine that the hacktivist group Anonymous would attack ISIS through Rickrolling? But yesterday, groups claiming affiliation with Anonymous said that they were indeed going to launch Rickrolling attacks against verified ISIS Twitter accounts. There certainly is an element of humor in that. Even though the video always makes me smile.

But as Naked Security pointed out in an article, intelligence agencies are not amused by Anonymous and its tactics. They say that finding and shutting down as many Daesh-affiliated social media accounts as they can find is hindering counter-terrorism.

One of the non-governmental security groups that relies on the terror group’s social media presence to infiltrate and monitor jihadist accounts and forums is Ghost Security Group, known as GhostSec. Like Anonymous with its denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, GhostSec also takes down terrorist sites aiming primarily for recruitment sites.

But it also reaps information from Daesh accounts. Any important information it gathers, such as plans for major terrorist attacks and bomb-making instructions, it passes on to American intelligence agencies, such as the FBI.

GhostSec once passed information through a third party to the FBI that reportedly disrupted a suspected Daesh-linked cell in Tunisia as militants plotted a 4th of July repeat of the Sousse beach massacre. As Foreign Policy reports, GhostSec pulled it off with a mixture of Twitter tracking and geolocation via Google Maps.

A GhostSec spokesman known as DigitaShadow had this to say about the unsubtle methods of Anonymous: "When it comes to terrorist attacks, one of the big worries is that you could take down forums and cost someone their lives. Anonymous has a habit of shooting in every direction and asking questions later."

An interesting quote from a group that is often identified as an offshoot of Anonymous.

E-mail:    Phone: 703-359-0700
Digital Forensics/Information Security/Information Technology
http://www.senseient.com
http://twitter.com/sharonnelsonesq
www.linkedin.com/in/sharondnelson