The activist hacker group known as Anonymous has declared cyber war on ISIS, and the group's first action was to identify more than 900 Twitter accounts that were then suspended. The move comes in the wake of a series of terrorist attacks in France on Friday, with Anonymous bragging that its members are better hackers than OpISIS, the hacking arm of the terrorist organization.
The group posted the video below, which was delivered in French:
According to UK newspaper Metro, some of the video translates as:
Anonymous from all over the world will hunt you down. You should know that we will find you and we will not let you go. We will launch the biggest operation ever against you. Expect massive cyber attacks. War is declared. Get prepared.
The French people are stronger than you and will come out of this atrocity even stronger.
Anonymous has engaged in a Twitter campaign, too, including the following declaration:
Make no mistake: #Anonymous is at war with #Daesh. We won't stop opposing #IslamicState. We're also better hackers. #OpISIS
— Anonymous (@GroupAnon) November 15, 2015
Some may consider it a dangerous precedent having extra-governmental organizations engaged in war across the Internet. It's a cyberpunk book brought to life, after all, but Anonymous could be argued to be leveling the playing field against ISIS.
The Internet has proven a fertile field for extremist groups of all sorts to find and recruit members. Twitter is just one of those avenues, and it's a platform that has been used effectively by ISIS to spread propaganda and information alike. In this case, Anonymous publicly released a list of the 900 accounts it identified, and Twitter then suspended them.
The very least thing that can be said is that it will be interesting to see where this goes next.