War on terrorism and ISIS: Here’re all the digital weapons that can use Anonymous

Anonymous has declared war ISIS, but what can really make a collective of hackers to track down one of the dark threats of the Western world in recent years? The weapons available are many, that’s what.

The collective Anonymous has declared war on the Islamic state. A war of intelligence, subtle and invisible, in an attempt to flush out one of the most dangerous enemies of the Western world. That triggered the reaction of the international team of hackers was the attack in Paris last November 13, in which Anonymous has responded with a video on YouTube where the speaker French promised ” huge number of cyber-attacks “.

But what is the word ” cyber-attack ” ? And what it really can do Anonymous to counter international terrorism? How can a force that is activated only on the web represent a threat to an organization which proved to be very strong in the field? And what have been in past operations undertaken by the group of hackers (or other online activists) against various abuses or activities of the web?

Here is a list of possible answers.

Retrieval and dissemination of private information of the Islamic State. Perhaps the criminal act that has a greater impact in the ranks of terrorists. Obtaining (with various methods) access to private networks ISIS Anonymous could get battle plans, names of the principals or the high office of the organization or other crucial information for military action. It is a scenario that probably many governments have already begun to implement, however, a collective of hackers can apply methods, particularly the most extreme (and illegal), that governments cannot (or should not) do.

Doxing members to reveal personal and private information of the individual member. Another among the most popular methods of attack used by hackers is the collective doxing, or the release of personal and private information to specific members, often private citizens. In the case of ISIS, this tactic could make vulnerable individuals sensitive targets of the organization, and is one of the tactics that the collective of hackers specialize more. Information obtained with these strategies are often distributed anonymously on public channels, as Pastebin or 4chan.

DDoS attacks by loading the server with a large volume of requests. We already know that Anonymous has used this method successfully to disable the networks or websites of various organizations such as Scientology or the municipal network of the city of Ferguson in the light of the violent acts of the local authorities. The DDoS (distributed denial of service) is a way used to overload a computer system with many more queries than those who can actually handle, thus causing serious malfunction or the ” fall ” of the service itself. Hackers often use large networks of virtual machines you need this information, pointing to the shutdown of the target machine.

Hack accounts on social, recovery of credentials to access Facebook or Twitter. It is a weapon that is not lacking among the threats of a collective of hackers. Recovering the access credentials of the various social media, through social engineering (eg contacting the assistance trying to be the real owner of the same) or other methods, Anonymous may access an enormous amount of information on the individual and the organization. The ISIS is characterized by extensive use of social media as the basis for recruitment, so it is likely that Anonymous is active in this respect to retrieve information from various members.

Google Bombing, to compromise the Google ranking of terms and websites related to the ISIS. If used on a large scale this technology could make it much less effective for the recruitment process online by the organization. Google searches are dependent in part on the search terms that lead to a certain page if you alter the metadata and values ​​to search for a page in order to divert traffic of some key resources for this Google may start position always higher up the page on the search key. If Anonymous is able to create the phenomenon for the query ” ISIS recruiting ” of a large number of sites, for example, it will make life more difficult for the organization. To better understand what the Google Bombing report a case particularly emblematic: until very recently, if you wanted, ” How high is a dwarf? “, Google responded 1.65m bringing the height of Silvio Berlusconi.

Flood of phone spam. A technique that is very 90s is among those that Anonymous can use to counter the Islamic State. Recently, it was discovered that the ISIS uses a telephone service assistance whose staff consists of senior members specialize in encrypted communications. Through the abuse of telephone lines connected to the organization, you can take out the service, dramatically decreasing the ability to operate and to plan further attacks.