A Silicon Valley start-up has come under attack for helping protect Islamic State propaganda websites
A TECH company from Silicon Valley has come under scrutiny from Anonymous for supposedly protecting the Islamic State from cyber attacks.
A STARTUP from Silicon Valley has been caught in the middle of the cyberwar between Anonymous and Islamic State, with the hacking collective accusing it of helping keep terrorist websites online.
The company, known as CloudFlare, is a content-distribution network which prevents small to medium-sized websites from crashing by absorbing internet traffic when their servers become inundated.
As the start-up has no strict guideline in terms of the clientele it allows to use its service, a number of IS related websites have enlisted its help to prevent Anonymous from taking them offline.
According to Epoch Times, anti-terrorist hacker group Ghost Security has uncovered close to 40 pro-Islamic State websites using the content delivery network.
A breakdown of these sites showed 34 were operated to spread Islamic State propaganda, two offered technical services and four acted as terrorist forums.
As one of the primary methods used by Anonymous is distributed denial-of-service (DDos) attacks, the hacking collective has taken shots at the company for safeguarding these websites.
Once again, @CloudFlare have been found to be providing services to pro-#IslamicState websites. Shameful. #OpISIS #Daesh #Anonymous
— Anonymous (@GroupAnon) November 16, 2015@CloudFlare Stop Protecting #ISIS Websites We Are #Anonymous We Are Legion We Do Not Forgive We Do Not Forget Expect Us!
— X Sec (@offical_Xsec) November 15, 2015Anonymous demands @CloudFlare to remove their protection for pro #ISIS websites. If you do not, we will do it for you. #OpParis #OpDaesh
— Anonymous (@TheAnonMovement) November 19, 2015Following the allegations, CloudFlare co-founder and chief executive Matthew Prince hit back accusing Anonymous of hypocrisy and saying any content found on the network was not an endorsement.
“I did see a Twitter handle said that they were mad at us,” he told The Register.
“I’d suggest this was armchair analysis by kids — it’s hard to take seriously.
“Anonymous uses us for some of its sites, despite pressure from some quarters for us to take Anonymous sites offline.”
Mr Prince added he would be happy to take down websites if law enforcement handed him proper legal documentation, but he said more often than not investigators want him to keep sites up so they can gain intel.
“Even if we were hosting sites for ISIS, it wouldn’t be of any use to us,” he said.
“I should imagine those kinds of people pay with stolen credit cards and so that’s a negative for us.”
