Malaysian authorities arrested a man for allegedly hacking U.S. military member information and giving it to Islamic State, which posted it online and urged members to attack the victims.
The Department of Justice announced charges against Kosovo citizen Ardit Ferizi Thursday. He was arrested last month. The charges are the first to include both terrorism and hacking, according to Assistant Attorney General John P. Carlin.
Ferizi is believed to be the leader of ethnic Albanian hackers from Kosovo who call themselves Kosova Hacker’s Security (KHS). He is charged with computer hacking and identity theft and faces up to 35 years in prison.
The complaint says Ferizi hacked into the server of an online retail company and obtained more than 100,000 people’s personal information and sent the data of 1,351 military and government staff to ISIS. Junaid Hussain, a now-deceased British citizen, posted a tweet in August with a hyperlink to a 30-page document. The file contains a message to attack the involved people and provides their email addresses, Twitter accounts and passwords.
“We are in your emails and computer systems, watching and recording your every move, we have your names and addresses, we are in your emails and social media accounts, we are extracting confidential data and passing on your personal information to the soldiers of the khilafah, who soon with the permission of Allah will strike at your necks in your own lands!” an extract of the document reads.
Hussain is a high-value target and is suspected of attempting to hack social media accounts of the military’s Central Command. He died in a drone strike in Syria in August.
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