An Islamic State-linked media outlet says a Canadian man was behind the terror group's highest-profile cyber attacks,
including the embarrassing takeover of the Twitter account of the U.S. military's Central Command.
The Canadian fighter, who is
said to have been killed by a drone strike in Syria, also
allegedly penetrated bank computers and used the "spoils" to fund their fighting and hacked the U.S. Department of Defense, airports, international media organizations and the accounts of "hundreds" of U.S. soldiers.
Terrorism experts say the Arabic-language notice likely reveals a previously unknown Canadian convert who left Toronto to join the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in its ongoing war.
The Toronto-born man "managed to bring blessed victories for the Caliphate state by carrying out electronic attacks that have made the enemies taste defeat and failure," according the notice, as translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).
The "martyrdom" notice published by Al-Muhajireen Foundation, an outlet with known links to ISIL, identifies the Canadian jihadi hacker only by a nickname: Abu Osama Al-Kanadi.
Although an ISIL fighter from Calgary named Farah Mohamed Shirdon previously used that nickname, the biographical details in this announcement do not match those of Shirdon and so likely refer to a different Canadian fighter.
Comment: As
Moon of Alabama points out, the "United Cyber Caliphate" was responsible for a series of hacks in 2015-2017, and at the time, many experts attributed them
to Russia. Some even claimed the Cyber Caliphate didn't exist.
But then the 'Russia scare' nonsense took over. Suddenly each and every assumed computer attack, including those by the Cyber Caliphate, were attributed to Russia:
Russian hackers linked to the Kremlin could be behind one of the biggest attacks to date on televised communications, which knocked French station TV5Monde off air in April, sources familiar with France's inquiry said.
...
Hackers claiming to be supporters of Islamic State caused the public station's 11 channels to temporarily go off air and posted material on its social media feeds to protest against French military action in Iraq.
...
U.S. cybersecurity company FireEye, which has been assisting French authorities in some cases, said on Wednesday that it believed the attack came from a Russian group it suspects works with the Russian executive branch.
...
Information about the TV5 attack was published on a website branded as part of the "Cyber Caliphate," a reference to the Islamic State.
But the site was hosted on the same block of Internet Protocol addresses and used the same domain name server as the group called APT28 by FireEye and Pawn Storm by Trend Micro, another large security company.
Similar claims were made over other attacks that ISIS claimed for itself. "The Russians did it!" screamed various snake-oil selling cyber security companies.
Soon it was said that the Cyber Caliphate did not exist at all:
[T]he Cyber Caliphate is a Russian intelligence operation working through what spies term a cut-out.
U.S. secret agencies, including the National Security Agency, which controls American cyber-espionage and works closely with CYBERCOM, came to similar conclusions "APT 28 is Russian intelligence, it's that simple," explained an NSA expert to me recently.
...
In other words, the Cyber Caliphate is a Russian false-flag operation.
... The message is clear: Russia is bad. Every hack ever done is by Russia. Russia is the enemy. Don't you ever forget that.
Comment: Is this a liberal German establishment putting the worst possible face on whatever it is they actually uncovered... or is this as nuts as it sounds?
We can't help but wonder if and/or how this is connected to the discovery last year that German soldiers are embedded as 'refugees' throughout Germany with a view to carrying out terror attacks to be blamed on Muslims...
See also: