Anonymous VS ISIS

The Rumble in the Digital Jungle

By Nathan Watts

If you live in America, then you have probably heard about ISIS, the Jihadi Salafist terrorist group from the Middle East, and their recent attacks on Paris and Beirut. Since the attacks, the U.S. has increased military action against ISIS, but can you really expect to defeat an enemy who is seeking death with death? Though retaliation is in high demand, every ISIS member killed is replaced by another seeking revenge. Despite popular opinion, ISIS is not as much of a physical threat as we think they are. Compared to America, ISIS’ firepower is akin to a troglodyte shaking a stick. They are much more dangerous online, where every individual is on equal ground. People all over the world, including the U.S. and Britain, are drawn to ISIS’ cause through their strong internet presence. People, especially young adults and teenagers, have been known to leave their country to go and join ISIS because their message reached them through the internet. A simple Google search of “teen joins ISIS” comes up with several pages of news stories about young adults swayed to their side.

Now, if you’re a child of the internet like myself, you probably know about Anonymous, the activist/ hacktivist network of loosely associated entities famous for their string of DDoS (Distributed Denial-Of-Service) attacks on corporate, government, and religious websites. Well, since the attacks, Anonymous has decided to aid America in the war on ISIS by taking on the responsibility of the online war. Anonymous, the spiders of the world wide web, have deactivated over 20,000 ISIS linked Twitter accounts and have flagged several YouTube videos, blog posts, and websites linked to ISIS.

As expected, ISIS hackers have tried to retaliate, but Anonymous spokesperson Alex Poucher isn’t phased. In an interview with rt.com, he said

Our capability to take down ISIS is a direct result of our collective’s sophisticated hackers, data miners, and spies that we have all around the world. We have people very, very close to ISIS on the ground, which makes gathering intel about ISIS and related activities very easy for us,

Since the attacks from Anonymous, ISIS has since responded in a video calling Anonymous “idiots”, but yet their Twitter accounts continue to be taken down, along with hundreds of sympathetic websites. In their early days, Anonymous was known mostly for trolling the internet, playing digital pranks on government websites and the like. Traces of that history can still be seen in their actions against ISIS. In one case, the ISIS sympathetic page which had been put up to recruit more jihadists for the ISIS cause was stripped down by Anonymous associated group Ghost Sec and replaced with ads for Viagra and Prozac.

Thanks to the actions of Anonymous, ISIS’ internet presence has been utterly crippled. Since their early days, Anonymous has grown from a group of loosely associated internet pranksters to the vigilantes of the internet. This is only one of the amazing things that these people, most of whom barely know each other or have never met at all, have done to help right wrongs through the internet. If you liked this, then I highly recommend doing a quick Google search of Anonymous’ causes in the past.