Anonymous from all over the world will hunt you down, a masked man warned ISIS.
By Sreejith Vallikunnu
Responding to the threat by hacker-activist collective named ‘Anonymous’ that declared a “total war†against the Islamic state in the wake of Friday Paris attacks, an ISIS-affiliated account has reportedly sent a message to its followers on the messaging app Telegram.
The message mentioned the threat by the hacker group and said: “The #Anonymous hackers threatened in new video release that they will carry out a major hack operation on the Islamic State (idiots)”, reported Times of India.
The message also gave “instructions” on how to avoid potential hacks – “Don’t open any links unless sure of the source. Change Internet Protocol addresses “constantly.” And “do not talk to people [you] don’t know on Telegram” or through Twitter direct messaging, the report said.
The response came after the video by Anonymous threatened to target cyber networks and social media activities of the ISIS. The video posted on November 14 showed a man wearing the group’s signature Guy Fawkes mask who said that Anonymous intended to hunt the militant group down.
“Expect us and you should know that we will find you and we will not let you go,†said the translated transcript of the video which is in French.
“Anonymous from all over the world will hunt you down. We will launch a biggest operation ever against you. Expect massive cyber-attacks. War is declared. Get prepared,†it added.
In a latest video, the masked spokesperson said in French that “the French people are stronger than you and will come out of this atrocity even stronger.†Meanwhile, this video was not posted on the group’s official channel.
This is not the first call to action against ISIS made by the group of hacker-activist collective. After the Charlie Hebdo attacks, they attacked websites of the extremists and took down thousands of ISIS twitter accounts.
According to media reports, hackers have taken 149 Islamic State-linked websites offline and flagged roughly 101,000 Twitter accounts and 5,900 propaganda videos.