Pierluigi Paganini June 30, 2014

Anonymous has announced the campaign dubbed Operation NO2ISIS against some states it accuses of supporting the Islamic terror group ISIS.

The group of hacktivists Anonymous has announced a new campaign dubbed Operation NO2ISIS against some nations it accuses of funding or arming the radical Islamic terror group ISIS.

In particular Anonymous will target three states suspected of offering support to the Islamic State of Syria and al-Sham (ISIS). This time Anonymous has invited all its members to raze the digital assets of its enemies.

Saudi Arabia will be one of the targets, it is suspected of supporting ISIS and terror groups, despite the Government has denied any involvement in the activities of the ISIS.

The ISIS is an unrecognized state and jihadist active militant group operating in Iraq and Syria which claims this territories. The ISIS also claims over other states in the areas including Jordan, Israel, Palestinian territories, Lebanon.

“The group in its original form was composed of and supported by a variety of insurgent groups, including its predecessor organizations, the Mujahideen Shura Council, the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) and Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), the insurgent groups Jaysh al-Fatiheen, Jund al-Sahaba, Katbiyan Ansar Al-Tawhid wal Sunnah and Jeish al-Taiifa al-Mansoura, and a number of Iraqi tribes that profess Sunni Islam.” states Wikipedia.

Saudi Arabia isn’t the unique possible target of the cyber attacks, Kuwait and other nations in the Middle East are thought to have funded ISIS in the past.

“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.” “We are unable to target ISIS because they predominately fight on the ground. But we can go after the people or states who fund them.” reported a member of Anonymous to Forbes journalist Jasper Hamill.

The ISIS group is also very active in the cyberspace, despite it hasn’t yet demonstrated capabilities like the Syrian Electronic Army, it conducts an effective propaganda campaign through the principal social media.

Last week the Twitter account @theanonmessage was hijacked by ISIS members to spread atrocious images of violence, Anonymous were disconcerted by the attack on its profile.

“To be honest, we were taken off guard,” “We didn’t expect a bunch of ragtags to any damage. The ISIS hacking techniques were very similar to hacks done by the Syrian Electronic Army, so that’s pretty interesting.” said the hacktivist to Forbes. 

Many cyber experts underestimate the numerous announcement made by Anonymous, they consider the them a method to gain notoriety:

“Public announcements by these groups are often used as a means to gain notoriety or media attention and can be of highly volatile credibility.  These attacks are typically low scale consisting of DDoS activity against publicly accessible webservers, website defacement efforts, or data exploitation.  Symantec does take these threats seriously and has detection in place.” is the opinion expressed by researchers at Symantec.