Members of the Anonymous hacker collective have been waging a long campaign against sympathizers of Islamic State on Twitter, but now there’s a new effort to shame and humiliate them with porn.
One Anonymous member, WauchulaGhost, has spent the past few weeks hijacking Twitter accounts of loyalists to Islamic State (aka, ISIS or Daesh), defacing their profiles with porn images and exposing their IP addresses.
In the wake of the horrific mass shooting at a nightclub in Orlando, Florida, carried out by a loyalist of Islamic State, WauchulaGhost has been targeting the Twitter accounts of Islamic State sympathizers tweeting about the Orlando massacre.
If anyone is making a list of #Daesh accs that are tweeting the Orlando attack please send to me. I'm going after those accounts.
— WauchulaGhost
(@WauchulaGhost) June 12, 2016
WauchulaGhost claims to have hijacked “hundreds” of Twitter profiles, littering them with graphic messages and pornographic images.
The Anonymous member told Softpedia that the porn operation targeting Islamic State accounts is intended to strike fear into Islamic State members, and show them “we are in control.”
Hijacking the accounts also allows Anonymous to communicate with and monitor other accounts, WauchulaGhost told Softpedia:
There are a few reasons for jacking their accounts. One is exposing their information (IP, phone records) to the public. Second is defacing the account. Adding our own images and basically showing them “We are in control.” Third reason is we use some of the jacked accounts to actually communicate and monitor other accounts from the inside as there are a lot of protected accounts that the public can’t see.
WauchulaGhost wouldn’t say how the accounts were hijacked, only that “everything has a vulnerability.”
On Sunday, 12 June, WauchulaGhost said that Twitter had suspended all the hijacked accounts.
In the past year, Anonymous members have made claims of shutting down thousands of Islamic State affiliated accounts under the banner of operations such as #OpISIS, #OpParis and #OpCharlieHebdo.
In response to criticism that Anonymous’s hacking attacks are potentially interfering with the work of law enforcement or intelligence agencies, WauchulaGhost said “we are simply helping by exposing locations etc.”
Image of Anonymous mask courtesy of NeydtStock / Shutterstock.com.