Anonymous has vowed to take down Islamic State: Here is how it plans to do it

HACKING group Anonymous has vowed to bring down the Islamic State, and it’s just launched its first major attack.

A protester wearing a mask of the anonymous movement takes part in confrontations between Palestinian demonstrators and Israeli security forces at the entrance of the Palestinian town of al-Bireh, on the outskirts of Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, on November 11, 2015. The trademark mask is a stylised depiction of Guy Fawkes, the best-known member of the Gunpowder Plot, an attempt to blow up the House of Lords in London in 1605. AFP PHOTO / ABBAS MOMANI

THE notorious hacker group Anonymous claims to have taken out thousands of Twitter accounts linked to the Islamic State in the first skirmish of its new cyber “war”.

“We report that more than 5,500 Twitter accounts of #ISIS are now #down!” the group said in a tweet.

Anonymous said it posted the accounts to an online forum, labelling them #daeshbags in a reference to Daesh, an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State.

In addition to being responsible for the closure of Twitter accounts, the activist group has reportedly begun leaking personal information of suspected extremists.

The Independent is reporting to have seen at least one post containing the physical address and other personal details of an alleged Isis recruiter in Europe.

Earlier this week, French hackers from the group released a video on YouTube declaring war on the Islamic State in the wake of the Paris attacks.

The video declared there would be a global alliance of Anonymous activists working to avenge the death of the 129 innocent victims killed in the act of terrorism.

The activist group claimed it would be the biggest operation undertaken by Anonymous and it warned Islamic State to expect “many cyber-attacks”.

As the group doesn’t have to act within the constraints of the law, there are many possible ways this could happen.

While the video doesn’t explicitly state what methods will be used by Anonymous, examining previous cyber-attacks from the activist group may hint at what Islamic State can expect moving forward.

TAKING OVER SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS

What better way to cease negative propaganda spreading than by taking over social media accounts belonging to the organisation you are trying to stop.

This was the exact method used by Anonymous when it was attempting to take down the Ku Klux Klan.

The activist group took control of prolific KKK accounts @KuKluxKlanUSA and @YourKKKCentral, before using them to troll members of the organisation.

Although the accounts have since been deactivated, when the posts first appeared they were retweeted hundreds of times, which helped reinforce the groups message.

“@JohnTiessen: #operationKKK #Lulz @KuKluxKlanUSA #OpKKK #HoodsOff pic.twitter.com/Q481mfvRnJ”

— :deactivated (@KuKluxKlanUSA) November 22, 2014

REMOVING SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS

Islamic State has the most active social presence of any terror group with accounts pushing propaganda on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram.

Since the terrorist attack against the Paris offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, Anonymous has been working hard to shut down these accounts.

In February this year, Anonymous released a video claiming to be responsible for shutting down 1000 accounts used by Islamic State members.

“We will hunt you, take down your sites, accounts, emails, and expose you. From now on, there [will be] no safe place for you online — you will be treated like a virus, and we are the cure. We own the internet now,” Anonymous stated in the video.

DOXING

The internet-based practice known as doxing is used to research and then publicly publish personal information of targets.

Anonymous is no stranger to using this method of hacktivism, having recently delivered on its threat of doxing members of the Ku Klux Klan.

In early November, a Twitter account believed to be controlled by the activist group was used to promote the link to a website which contained the name and affiliation of hundreds of alleged members of the KKK.

“Part of the reason we have taken the hoods off of these individuals is not because of their identities, but because of what their hoods symbolise to us in our broader society,” Anonymous wrote on the website containing the information.

OFFICIAL #OpKKK #HoodsOff 2015 Data Release. https://t.co/EQODjs7wpA With Love, Anonymous

— Operation KKK (@Operation_KKK) November 5, 2015

DDOS ATTACKS

A distributed denial-of-service (DoS) attack aims to make a network resource or computer system unavailable by flooding it with more requests for information that it can handle.

The method was used by Anonymous in 2008 against the Church of Scientology’s official website.

Security strategist at intrusion prevention systems provider Top Layer Networks Ken Pappas said the attacks disabled the website of the controversial church for a number of days.

He believed the attack was likely achieved with the use of botnets — a number of internet computers set up to forward transmissions to other computers on the internet.

“There are circles out there where you could take ownership of the bot machines that are already owned and launch a simultaneous attack against [something] like the church from 50,000 PCs, all at the same time,” he told SC Magazine at the time of the attack.

GOOGLE BOMB

A Google bomb or Googlewashing refers to the practice of biasing a search result on Google by increasing a Web page’s PageRank algorithm.

Essentially, the search result shown in Google will be manipulated to show whatever page the hacker wishes to be seen.

Anonymous used this technique previously while it was engaged in a battle with the Church of Scientology.

The activist group manipulated Google results to show the church of Scientology’s website when internet users searched “dangerous cult”.