Digital jihad: ISIS, Al Qaeda seek a cyber caliphate to launch attacks on US
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Jihadists in the Middle East are ramping up efforts to mount a massive cyber attack on the U.S., with leaders from both Islamic State and Al Qaeda – including a hacker who once broke into former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Gmail account – recruiting web savvy radicals, FoxNews.com has learned.
Islamic militants brag online that it is only a matter of time before they manage to pull off a highly disruptive attack on America’s infrastructure or financial system. In addition, Islamic State, the terror group that claims to have established a caliphate across Syria and Iraq, boast openly of plans to establish a “cyber caliphate,” protected by jihadist developed encryption software from behind which they hope to mount catastrophic hacking and virus attacks on America and the West.
“The jihadists are investing a lot in encryption technologies and they have developed their own software to protect their communications and when western agencies work out how to crack them they adapt quickly,” said Steve Stalinsky, executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute, a Washington-DC-based non-profit that tracks jihadist Internet activity. “They are forward-thinking and are experimenting with hacking. In the future, the jihadist cyber army’s activities will become a daily reality.”
The terror groups are trying to add to their numbers to boost their capabilities, using social media to reach a larger pool of potential recruits and calling on militant-minded specialists to join them. The targets are the websites of U.S. government agencies, banks, energy companies and transport systems.
“The jihadists are investing a lot in encryption technologies and they have developed their own software to protect their communications and when western agencies work out how to crack them they adapt quickly.”
Islamic State’s efforts are spearheaded by a British hacker known as Abu Hussain Al Britani, whose real name is Junaid Hussein. He fled his hometown of Birmingham for Syria a year ago to join the group and U.S. intelligence sources say he is one of several key recruiters. Al Britani once led a group of teenage British hackers called Team Poison, and now actively calls for computer-literate jihadists to come to Syria and Iraq.
“We’re in a pre-9/11 moment with cyber,” John Carlin, assistant attorney in charge of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, warned at a July conference in Aspen. “It’s clear that the terrorists want to use cyber-enabled means to cause the maximum amount of destruction as they can to our infrastructure.”
The jihadist cyber warfare effort has been in the works for years. Some 12 months before the May, 2011 raid on his Pakistani compound, Usama bin Laden cited in a letter to followers the importance of electronic jihad.
