‘We are in your emails and computer, watching and recording your every move': British hacker who joined ISIS' top ranks orchestrated cyber attacks to leak identities of US military officials for the terror group's 'kill list'

  • A British born hacker who joined ISIS’ top ranks carried out a global cyber attack which comprised the identity of US military personnel
  • Junaid Hussain was the Number Three leader of the Islamic State in Syria
  • He was married to the 'White Widow' Sally Jones, who was a key recruiter of British aspiring ISIS fighters and moved to Syria after converting to Islam
  • In March 2015  he posted a 'kill list' of 100 airmen from two US Air Force bases
  • Hussain was killed with two of his bodyguards in a US drone strike on a car in a Raqqa petrol station in August 2015 with his death denied by ISIS for weeks 

By Leah Mcdonald For Dailymail.com

Published: 20:02 EST, 21 November 2018 | Updated: 22:01 EST, 21 November 2018

A British hacker who joined ISIS’ top ranks carried out a global cyber attack which compromised the identity of US military personnel because he wanted ‘revenge’ against western society.

In 2015 Junaid Hussain became the Number Three leader of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and was on the American government’s most wanted list.

A British terrorist of Pakistani descent who was based in Syria, he recruited a Kosovan hacker to enable attacks on American servicemen and women inside the United States.

Junaid Hussain became the Number Three leader of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and was on the American government’s most wanted list

Junaid Hussain became the Number Three leader of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and was on the American government’s most wanted list

Hussain helped encourage Isis leaders to start posting chilling videos of beheadings in Syria

Hussain helped encourage Isis leaders to start posting chilling videos of beheadings in Syria

 

At one point he carried out cyber attacks against the US every week with FBI surveillance teams determined to track him down and bring him to justice.

Hussain was killed with two of his bodyguards in a drone strike on a car in a Raqqa petrol station on August 24, 2015.

Hussain, 21 at the time of his death, was married to the ‘White Widow’ Sally Jones, 45, a fellow Briton who had joined ISIS in 2014. She had denied his death through IS-linked Twitter accounts.

His story is now the subject of a book titled Dawn of the Code War: America’s Battle Against Russia, China, and the Rising Global Cyber Threat by John Carlin.

Carlin was a former Assistant Attorney General for the US  Department of Justice’s (DOJ) National Security Division.

According to an interview he gave in 2012, Hussain, who originally went online by the moniker TriCK, said he started hacking at around age 11.

He began playing a game online when another hacker knocked him offline. 'I wanted revenge so I started googling around on how to hack', he explained.

'I joined a few online hacking forums, read tutorials, started with basic social engineering and worked my way up.    

'I didn’t get my revenge, but I became one of the most hated hackers on this game’.

By 15, he became more interested in politics and found himself sucked online into watching videos of children getting killed in countries like Kashmir and Pakistan and swept into conspiratorial websites about the Freemasons and Illuminati.

Hussain was married to ‘White Widow’ SallyJones (right), a fellow Briton who had joined ISIS in 2014.
Hussain was married to the ‘White Widow’ Sally Jones, a fellow Briton who had joined ISIS in 2014.

Hussain (left) was married to ‘White Widow’ Sally Jones (right), a fellow Briton who had joined ISIS in 2014. She had denied his death through IS-linked Twitter accounts

Sometime soon after his release, he made his way to ISIS’s territory in Syria and married another British national Sarah Jones.

There, he threw himself into ISIS’s online propaganda war, remaking himself as Abu Hussain al-Britani with a Twitter avatar that showed him, his face half-covered by a mask, aiming an AK-47-style rifle at the camera.

Marlin notes that online Terrorism presented a new threat as the United States was now involved in a conflict where the enemy could communicate from overseas directly with the American people.

Hussain was now using the internet internet to turn the jihadist movement into a networked global threat, with a reach far beyond the war zones of Afghanistan, Iraq or Syria.

Hussain represented the same threat as Osama Bin Laden (pictured) due to his highly sophisticated cyber attacks on US military websites and on social media sites 

Hussain represented the same threat as Osama Bin Laden (pictured) due to his highly sophisticated cyber attacks on US military websites and on social media sites 

As ISIS advanced on Baghdad in 2014, social media showed photos of its black flag flying over the Iraqi capital, and the terrorist army tweeted 40,000 times in just a single day.

ISIS’s large and sophisticated propaganda arm understood how to command the public’s attention. 

They did this by showing horrific graphic executions of Syrian fighters, hostages and almost anyone else who crossed ISIS’s path.

ISIS eluded all of FBI's well-placed trip wires; by switching to encouraging would-be recruits to remain at home, in the United States or Europe.

'Someone can do it in their pajamas in their basement,' then FBI director James Comey told Congress in the fall of 2014. 

'These are the homegrown violent extremists that we worry about, who can get all the poison they need and the training they need to kill Americans, and in a way that is very hard for us to spot'. 

Former FBI director James Comey warned of the threat posed by Islamist cyber terrorists
John P Marlin writes extensively about Islamist cyber terrorism

Former FBI director James Comey (left) warned of the threat posed by Islamist cyber terrorists which is examined in detail by John P Marlin (right)

Hussain is now the subject of a new book by John P Carlin, a former Assistant Attorney General for the US Department of Justice

Hussain is now the subject of a new book by John P Carlin, a former Assistant Attorney General for the US Department of Justice

Working among a dozen cyber jihad recruiters, Hussain and his fellow terrorists declared themselves the head of the CyberCaliphate in mid-2014 and defacing websites and seizing control of home pages and social media accounts.

He played a constant cat-and-mouse game with Twitter, which suspended or deleted his accounts only to have him pop up with a new one.

He promised online that the ISIS flag would fly over the White House and called for the murder of Israelis.

In February 2015, ISIS hackers accessed accounts belonging to Newsweek, among other sites.

He tweeted out threats against First Lady Michelle Obama. They were trying hard to enable and inspire attacks far from the Middle East, posting in March 2015 a 'kill list' of 100 airmen from two US Air Force bases.

Hussain tweeted out threats against Former First Lady Michelle Obama and other figures 

Hussain tweeted out threats against Former First Lady Michelle Obama and other figures 

In April 2015, Hussain helped encourage a 30-year-old from Arizona, Elton Simpson, to embark on a homegrown jihad.

On August 11, 2015, Hussain posted a series of tweets that, at first, seemed just his normal bellicose rhetoric. 

He announced: 'Soldiers … will strike at your necks in your own lands!', Then he followed up with a surprise: 'NEW: U.S. Military AND Government HACKED by the Islamic State Hacking Division!'.

He linked to a 30 page document that made instantly clear this was something different.

Hussain’s document began with a warning designed to chill: ‘We are in your emails and computer systems, watching and recording your every move, we have your names and addresses.

'We are in your emails and social media accounts, we are extracting confidential data and passing on your personal information to the soldiers of the [caliphate], who soon with the permission of Allah will strike at your necks in your own lands'. 

U.S. military forces operating far overhead fired a single Hellfire missile at his vehicle on August 24 2014. The blast killed Hussain instantly. 

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British Jihadist orchestrated cyber attacks on US Government for 'revenge' on Western Society

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