A hacktivist from Anonymous group, whose virtual names is WauchulaGhost, has hacked some 160 Twitter accounts belonging to ISIS members in a very creative but offensive way. He has replaced hate and terror content with sexually explicit images of gay porn, rainbow flags and pro-LGTB messages as an attempt to troll the extremists and expose their information after an ISIS supporter carried out the most lethal mass shooting the United States has ever seen.
The Orlando attack targeted an Orlando gay nightclub over the weekend. Gunman Omar Mateen pledged allegiance to the Islamic State before killing 49 people and leaving many other injured. The terror group’s official news agency then claimed responsibility for the shooting and extremists took on Twitter to praise the attacker’s efforts by using a photo of Mateen on their profile pictures.
ISIS has taken advantage of the digital tools to spread its message and recruit people from all over the world. President Obama said earlier this week that Mateen was apparently motivated by jihadist propaganda online and FBI Director James Comey declared Monday he was “highly confident” that the 29-year-old shooter was radicalized on the Internet.
Offensive content for a good cause
All those accounts belonging to ISIS members have tweeted images of nude women, too, and some avatars read “I [heart] porn.” WauchulaGhost has hacked more than 250 Twitter accounts over the past months by replacing the content with pornography.
“Daesh doesn’t like porn,” the Ghost told the Washington Post. “They don’t like women in general. We just started using it to poke fun at them and diminish their presence online.”
After the Orlando shooting, he is focusing on gay pride messages mainly because he has received feedback from people who support his cause but not the porn, which can also be offensive to others who do not share the jihadist ideology.
“There was a few of us… that discovered a vulnerability,” the Ghost told CNNMoney. “We thought, ‘Hey let’s go start taking their accounts … and humiliating them.'”
The Ghost’s team knows Muslim religious customs require chastity and piety, which is why they believe spreading sexual content instead of traditional insults against the West could help undermine the voices of extremist recruiters and kick them out of popular social media platforms.
When asked about his motivation to fight ISIS on the Internet, the hacktivist told CNNMoney that seeing all those innocent people killed made him realized there was something he could do to defend them and their community.
Not only does WauchulaGhost replace the hateful content with gay pride images and messages, he also sends direct messages to the users’ followers to confuse them. He starts talking to them for some minutes and tries to have a normal conversation with him sometimes in English and others in Arabic with the help of the contacts he has all over the world who translate for him. He then lets them know he is not the ISIS supporter they thought he was.
Hacker by night
WauchulaGhost said he did not mind operating illegally for a cause he believes is worthy. He would not reveal his real name or location in order to protect himself. A normal day for him goes by as he spends eight hours working in an office and another eight in the evening taking down the accounts he detects are related to ISIS, as reported by CNNMoney.
He considers himself as an “average Joe” hacker but claims he can breach an account within a minute as soon as he gets access to the information he needs to do so. The Ghost entered the hacking world at age 16 when he became very curious about computers.
Before starting operating alone, the man was part of a hacktivist group called Ghost Security Group. This collective is made up of computer specialists and former counterintelligence officials who join forces to act based on their social activism agenda. WauchulaGhost said he separated from the group in November.
A Twitter spokesperson told CNNMoney that the company firmly rejects the use of its service to spread violent messages and has brought down more than 125,000 ISIS-related accounts over the past year. The spokesperson remarked that Twitter rules clearly state that any violent behavior is not permitted on the social network.
But the Ghost says Twitter is not taking enough action to shut down terror-related accounts. He pointed out that hundreds of “hunters” out there are scouring the platform for ISIS-related profiles and that those people are mostly Anonymous members and ordinary citizens who are tasked with documenting ISIS accounts.
Still, he admitted that the company is now suspending accounts more quickly to prevent extremists from having enough time to get as many followers. By the time of the interview with CNNMoney, all but three accounts that he had hacked were suspended.
As many other Anonymous members, he has received death threats and beheading images from jihadists, but that does not stop him from fighting terrorism from his area of influence.
“Sometimes you have to stand up for what you believe in,” he told CNNMoney. “If you want change, you have to make that change, even if it means doing something illegal.”
Source: CNN Money