Anonymous is at it again. The only group at the moment who seems to have the guts to stand up to ISIS’s Cyber Caliphate, Anonymous has defaced an ISIS site with an add for Viagra and enhanced calm.
Anonymous cell Ghost Sec added messages to the Islamic State website suggesting that there was “too much ISIS” and to “Please gaze upon this lovely ad so we can upgrade our infrastructure to give you ISIS content you all so desperately crave.” Then visitors were instructed to purchase Prozac and Viagra.
This is the latest skirmish in a digital war between the hacktivist group Anonymous and ISIS during #OpISIS – which has been covered quite extensively by Breitbart Tech’s own Allum Bokhari.
Website defacements are mostly a psychological weapon — it’s a way to remind your opponent that they’re not good enough to maintain control of their own websites — but in the case of sites recruiting and spreading ISIS propaganda, there’s likely real tactical value in taking these sites down beyond just damaging morale.
ISIS has gotten an unwarranted reputation in the media as being far more tech savvy than they actually are, using basic editing software and unambitious, low skill attacks to convince the media they’re some sort of superhackers when they’re just social engineers and “skiddies.” These sorts of defacements are a gut check to the myth of the Cyber Caliphate – and on the Internet your reputation is everything.
While it’s possible ISIS could move to the dark web to avoid further embarrassment at the hands of Anonymous, such a move is not ideal when one is both trying to get a message out and looking to meet people to recruit — to make their cyber space plans work they can go no deeper than the technical expertise of the people they’re trying to preach to, entice, or recruit. Going deeper into the web would significantly cut down where and whom they could recruit — and likely expose them to yet more hackers with actual technical skill. The further away from the “vanilla” Internet ISIS goes, the less people its message will reach.
If ISIS wants to use the Internet to recruit, they’ll always have to do it in uncomfortable proximity to Anonymous. While the brand may not be what it used to be post FBI informants and raids, Anons are proving their superiority over the Cyber Caliphate every time they embarrass ISIS on the Internet.
Follow Will Ross on Twitter @SawmillLoris.
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