Looks like ISIS has more enemies than it would had hoped for
Anonymous is not the only hacktivist group that has declared ISIS an enemy of humanity. During the month of July, there was an ISIS supported Twitter account which had a few followers. Despite those few followers, the account was said to have given away information about a terrorist attack that would take place at a beach resort in Tunisia. This would have gone completely under the radar, had it not been for the efforts of Ghost Security Group.
Ghost Security Group has an objective that is in line with that of Anonymous; to reduce the threat of ISIS as much as it possibly can by using the resources at its disposal. The hacktivist group was previously looking for intelligence contractors that could efficiently transfer impending terrorist attacks reports to the authorities, who could then take charge and reduce the threat as much as possible. They were able to get in contact with terrorist analyst Michael S. Smith II through Twitter, and before you ask, this person works at the defense consulting firm Kronos Advisory.
Smith has spoken very highly of Ghost Security Group as he states the following:
“Without a doubt, this group has saved lives. At least into the dozens. There are people working in the national security community in the United States, Europe, the Middle East … who will never be credited with that.”
Despite the fact that hacktivists groups are considered a menace to society because they have the means and knowledge to tap into other networks and databases in search of sensitive information, there is no denying the fact that such groups have really started to put a dent in the progress of ISIS. Most members of Ghost Security Group were a part of Anonymous, but according to some of the leaders of the former, Ghost Security operates quite differently compared to its other hacking group counterpart.
According to CNN, a hacktivist member going by the name of DigitaShadow has stated that:
“We have structure and leadership. We also have a lot of counterterrorism experience. We have translators, linguists, research analysts on hand to analyze all the data that we receive.”
Given below are the statistics that outline the performance of the hacking group.
• 149 ISIS propaganda sites taken down
• 110,000 social media accounts taken down
• Over 6,000 propaganda videos taken down
However, the fight has just begun for the hacktivist members so we are sure to hear more from them in the future.
