Hacktivist group Anonymous is said to be planning a series of cyber attacks against countries it accuses of arming and abetting the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) militant jihadist group.
According to Forbes, the Anonymous campaign will be called Operation NO2ISIS. The hackers will attempt to subdue three countries they suspect have been financing and arming ISIS. A source told Forbes that they plan a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack aimed at rendering government websites inoperable. The source said Anonymous had plans to “unleash” its “entire legion” upon the three targeted states.
The Sunni Muslim Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is said to be one of the targets of the upcoming cyber attack. Saudi Arabia has often been accused of financing not just ISIS but also other radical jihadi such as Al Qaeda and the Al Nusra Front in Syria.
Anonymous placed some of the blame for ISIS’s success on Al Jazeera, telling the network in a YouTube video posted in late June, “You have tarnished your reputation by spewing your lies and your treasonous support to ISIS. You will not escape us.”
The Anonymous source said they planned on going after the Saudis, Turkey, Qatar, and any other countries they suspect have been moving ISIS into an advantageous position. According to the source:
We plan on sending a straightforward message to Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and all other countries that evidently supply ISIS for their own gain. In the next few days we will begin defacing the government websites of these countries so that they understand this message clearly.
The source said they did not plan on going directly after ISIS because the jihadi group was focused on fighting in the physical sphere. “We are unable to target ISIS because they predominantly fight on the ground. But we can go after the people or states who fund them,” said the source.