Pierluigi Paganini
November 24, 2015
When dealing with ISIS and cyber capabilities, the first name that experts cite is Junaid Hussain, the hacker that was killed in a targeted US drone strike in August this year.Now new details on Junaid Hussain and his death are circulating online.
The hacker Shm00p (@5hm00p), the same that hacked the Anonymous pseudo-official Twitter accounts @Anon_Central and @YourAnonNews, is claiming to have provided useful information to the FBI allowing to track Hussain.
In 2012, Hussain was sentenced to six months in prison in Britain for this crime. The jihadist was also cited by two gunmen responsible of the terrorist attack in Garland, Texas. The two men invited via Twitter to follow Hussain. In 2013, Hussain left the United Kingdom and joined ISIS.
On September 11 214, Fox News reported that leaders of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and Al Qaeda were stepping up efforts to seek a digital caliphate, speculating that one of the jihadist leaders, Hussain Al Britani, also known as Junaid Hussein, had allegedly hacked the Gmail account of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
“Jihadists in the Middle East are ramping up efforts to mount a massive cyber attack on the U.S., with leaders from both Islamic State and Al Qaeda – including a hacker who once broke into former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Gmail account – recruiting web savvy radicals, FoxNews.com has learned.”
According to Shm00p, he has served as an FBI informant to help the US intelligence under threat, and he is quite sure (“99.9% sure”) that the information he provided led to the extrajudicial killing of Hussain.
Shm00p, who lives in Las Vegas, is one of the members of the hacking group named Rustle League. On Sunday, he posted the following message:
“What the fuck have I done,” Shm00p tweeted.
A few hours later he sent a number of tweets at the FBI Twitter account.
“I lost a lot of good friendship and my fucking honor,” I am so embarrassed to show my face in public now because of this,”
Shm00p and Hussain were affiliated with another notorious hacktivist group called Team Poison.
Jaime Cochran, a former member of Rustle League, told Motherboard that 5hm00p reached out to her after his Twitter confession to apologize, and confirmed his collaboration with the FBI.
5hm00p said told her that law enforcement forced him to provide information on two hackers who knew Hussain since their affiliation with the Team Poison.
“It seems believable to me. I dunno why someone would make this up,” Cochran told Motherboard in an encrypted chat.
It seems that in 2014, Hussain contacted Shm00p via the encrypted chat service Jabber, but Shm00p located the jihadist location and then passed it the FBI agents.
“I fucking helped you MURDER him [Junaid]. Do you know how I feel now when I sleep at night?”Shm00p tweeted. “Regardless that he was a terrorist and an animal I sure as fuck felt betrayed.”
Why did Shm00p pass information to the FBI?
The hacker explained that the FBI has forced him to disclose the Hussain’s location. Based on the tweets sent by Shm00p, the authorities forced him to provide support threatening his family.
The agents had him attempt to catch two of his friends while they were partying at the DefCon 2015 conference.
The FBI hasn’t commented the Shm00p’s declarations.
A source informed of the events told Motherboard that Shm00p did indeed help the US federal.
(Security Affairs – Junaid Hussain, Hacking)
