"Anonymous" exposed 20,000 IS accounts and Bitcoin accounts were permanently locked

[Abstract] Six days after announcing its participation in the war on terror through an online video, on November 22, the internationally renowned hacker group Anonymous announced that it had taken over more than 20,000 Twitter accounts associated with ISIS and made them public.

A hacker group said that IS has control over a Bitcoin wallet (account) containing about $3 million worth of Bitcoin.

The Paris terrorist attacks have once again made Bitcoin, one of the money laundering tools used by extremist organizations, a target of public criticism.

According to German magazine Der Spiegel, the Group of Seven (G7) plans to strengthen supervision of digital currencies such as Bitcoin, suspecting that “Iran

Islamic State (IS) is using Bitcoin to secretly transfer funds . Der Spiegel magazine said that during the G20 summit in Turkey, G7 finance ministers, shocked by last week's Paris terrorist attacks, discussed the regulation of financial technology companies at an informal meeting on Monday.

After the Paris terrorist attacks, the European Commission also publicly stated that it was evaluating whether digital currencies such as Bitcoin would be used for terrorism and money laundering.

Further evidence of Bitcoin becoming a money laundering tool for terrorist organizations is that an anonymous hacker group called GhostSec said on November 16 that its members had found evidence of Bitcoin financing in the IS network. The statement said that IS had a Bitcoin wallet (account) containing approximately $3 million worth of Bitcoin.

Europol also mentioned the topic of Bitcoin being used for criminal activities in its 2015 Internet Organized Crime Threat Assessment Report released in September. The Europol report stated, "According to data, 40% of online payments by criminals are completed using Bitcoin."

And the rumors that ISIS uses Bitcoin for financing are nothing new.

As a terrorist organization, ISIS's main income comes from oil, smuggling and other businesses. However, with the intensification of sanctions from various countries, it has become more difficult to raise funds through these traditional channels. Therefore, the organization has also begun to seek funds from individuals, and Bitcoin, which facilitates cross-border transactions, is obviously one of the best choices.

In 2013, IS bloggers called on supporters to donate using the Bitcoin system, and researchers from Singapore's intelligence agency found a website in the US network that appeared to be an IS fundraising site in the US, which received smaller amounts of Bitcoin.

  However, the discovery of the above-mentioned hacking operation is the first time that the outside world has found direct evidence that IS directly uses Bitcoin transactions.

  Six days after announcing its participation in the war on terror through an online video, on November 22, the internationally renowned hacker group Anonymous announced that it had taken over more than 20,000 Twitter accounts associated with ISIS and made them public.

In the public video, they wore V-shaped masks and said they would launch the "largest cyber attack in history" against ISIS, and promised to hunt down the terrorist organization in every corner of the world. In January, after the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris, Anonymous had declared war on ISIS. This "war" between the two can be called the most intense cyber war in the 21st century.

Being good at using network tools was once the secret to the success of ISIS's propaganda and organization. In the Paris terrorist attacks, the suspects were likely to have communicated with ISIS through encrypted communications. These tools make it extremely difficult to prevent terrorist attacks. In this context, the "declaration of war" by hacker organizations that are above legal provisions at this time is "very gratifying". However, in this multi-faceted information war involving hackers, governments, terrorist organizations, and Internet operators, the boundary between network freedom and anti-terrorism is attracting people's attention.

One of the reasons why Anonymous' declaration of war caused such a big response is that ISIS is indeed good at using the Internet, and virtual space has become an inevitable battlefield. ISIS members not only spread or release information through tools such as email, social media, data storage websites, and YouTube videos, they even have their own hacker team. A few months ago, they also carried out an attack in which their hacker group Cyber ​​Caliphate hacked into thousands of Twitter accounts, including those of CIA and FBI officials.

According to the book "Jesus and the Jihadis: Confronting the Rage of ISIS", the ISIS terrorist organization releases about 90,000 messages every day. They are skilled in using social media such as Twitter to spread messages and recruit members, and then switch to encrypted social communication software such as SnapChat and WhatsApp for communication, and store data through sharing websites such as Google Drive... They even have their own app "Mujahideen Secrets 2".

Because of the existence of such an enemy that is proficient in information technology, hacker groups such as "Anonymous" seem to have become a civilian "Justice League" once they join the battle, and have been welcomed by countless netizens and even official cyber-terrorism experts. "Anonymous" is the largest hacker group in the world. They are not only proficient in cyber attacks, but more importantly, due to the secrecy of this organization, they can operate outside the legal provisions. "This means that they can create indirect damage on the Internet without regard for the consequences." An Internet expert commented.

"Anonymous" is the world's largest political hacker group with a history of 12 years. It originated from the American picture discussion board 4chan, and then the participants formed some political consensus, with the core viewpoint of calling for "internet freedom". Gradually, these "Anonymous" organized themselves to form an offline force, using "Anonymous" as a title, and spontaneously formed a loose hacker organization. Nowadays, "Anonymous" organizations in major regions have established pages on social networking sites such as Facebook to announce the purpose of each action and the appeal of their activities. Unlike what most people imagine, this group has no fixed members except for a few core members - just as its name means, any anonymous hacker can actually claim to be a member of "Anonymous".

"Anonymous" is the enemy of terrorists, but that doesn't mean they are friends of the government. Because of this, there has been no end to the criticism surrounding them . People who love them regard them as messengers of justice, and people who hate them are also "gnashing their teeth" and think that they are always causing trouble. Government departments in countries such as North Korea, Canada, Australia, Turkey and Tunisia have been attacked by them. Even the website of the US CIA has been paralyzed for several hours due to their attacks. In addition, a branch of this organization, "Anonymous Analysis ", has shorted Chinese companies many times in the past few years. For example, in July 2012, they issued a questioning report against Qihoo 360, believing that it had a problem of traffic fraud, causing Qihoo's stock price to plummet 7.46%.