Former beauty queen leaves Anonymous and decides to help US government to bring down ISIS online
Lara Abdallat, the 2010 Miss Jordan and first runner-up to Miss Arab 2011, has left online hacktivist group Anonymous to join Ghost Security Group (not connected with GhostSec which is Anonymous affiliated group) to fight the Islamic State and its affiliates. Ghost Security is an online hacktivist group who liaises with the US Government through their intermediary Kronos Advisory Group.
Anonymous has confirmed that the former beauty queen has left the group. Earlier this month, Abdallat was involved in identifying and targeting of ISIS-affiliated social media accounts, which led to the suspension of 900 Twitter profiles belong to them.
Abdallat, 33, has since moved to Ghost Security, who claims to operate like spies rather than hackers and reports ISIS’ online activities to US authorities instead of taking their social media accounts down.
The stated mission of Ghost Security is to “eliminate the online presence of Islamic extremist groups such as Islamic State, Al-Qaeda, Al-Nusra, Boko Haram and Al-Shabaab in an effort to stymie their recruitment and limit their ability to organise international terrorist efforts”.
Abdallat said one immediate result of collaborating with their intermediary, intelligence professional Michael Smith from Kronos Advisory Group, was thwarting an impending terrorist attack in Tunisia.
“Everyone realized that while we were capturing accurate threat data, it was useless without ground assets to act on our information. Our executive director DigitaShadow has been working with US counterterrorism officials for several months and it has opened many doors for us, we are now able to influence real world actions on the battlefield”.
@j4cob we fight such extremists,people who use disgusting ways of killing such as the photos that I will post now (3) pic.twitter.com/knZUepRZOP
— LARA ABDALLAT BIBI (@LARA_ABDALLAT) June 25, 2015
She has also severed two Islamic State web platforms, which were used to distribute information among the group.
Ghost Security is an online counterterrorism squad, unaffiliated with Anonymous, which works closely with US government agencies to wear down ISIS’ online presence. The original GhostSec which is an Anonymous affiliate still shuts down ISIS accounts or DDoSes them as a way to expose and dismantle ISIS. On Thursday it took down a ISIS onion website on the dark web and told the ISIS to ‘calm down and use Viagra.’
For Abdallat, Anonymous would “always be a part of my extended family”, but the changes were a “dream come true.” “Having Ghost Security Group evolve from their original collective was a huge thing for me. More like watching your baby grow in front of your eyes and become mature, essential and successful,” she said.
