Came across this interesting blog post by Anthony Freed, where he interviews – The Jester – a self-proclaimed anti-jihadi hacker:
Q: Who are you targeting with your DoS attacks and why?
“Targets are rife, but I vet every single one. I am tipped off via various channels. But I verify all targets. What constitutes a target?
I ‘target’ known sites that recruit and co-ordinate attacks. They can’t use cell phones anymore – they use the web – it’s the anonymous playground.
You can have sleeper cell operative who is watching a jihad forum for a certain phrase. That phrase activates him to do whatever his task is.”
Q: Why take them up and down, why not just knock them out?
“These ops are time sensitive. My task is to make their chosen communication method unreliable.
By taking them down at random intervals, for random intervals, they can’t rely on them -they become unreliable and useless.Because they never know when or where I strike from, and because it’s random, the intel agencies can still gather their (questionable) intel.”
Q: Critics say you do more harm than good – your reply?
“Some critics have said that I will only drive them underground, Well is that not the best thing to do for recruiters?
If you take the position that online jihadi propaganda, proselytization, and interaction is increasingly important in jihadi recruitment, then why is it bad to drive them back into the shadows online? That’s a key principle of COIN.
Underground they can’t reach the masses; therefore they are less effective at recruiting. An underground recruiter is less dangerous than an overground one.”
Q: You are all over Twitter – what about an Islamic group’s right to free speech?
“Well the internet is all about freedom of speech, which is a concept I support.
Freedom of speech is one thing, but when bad dudes use our internet, on servers hosted in our country, or continent – because they have no infrastructure of their own to do it – that’s a different matter
As for their freedom of speech, if that’s all they want, then please speak freely
Just make sure there is no recruiting or co-ordination going on. Now do you see my point?”
Q: Where do you see yourself from an ethical perspective?
“This the first time I have really quantified my reasoning – to anyone.
My plan is to disrupt, not destroy – to make their methods unreliable, make them not trust the only medium left to them.
I do wrestle with whether what I am doing is right, but figure if I can make their communications unreliable for them, all the better.”
Q: Tell us about your first target – how did you decide?
A: The first target was selected after I read an article that talked about how the jihadists are using the web more and more for recruiting and coordinating homegrown terror cells. I decided to develop a method of hitting them down, not permanently, but enough to make things unreliable. It’s the unreliability and disruption that hits the co-ordination hardest.
Q: Did you plan on doing more, or did the attacks just evolve one by one?
A: I didn’t really plan on doing more. But I tweeted it and then received, well, requests, people asking me to hit specific al-Qaeda and jihadi sites, so I would take a look, and if the site displayed signs of recruitment or co-ordination (freedom of speech is obviously another matter) I played a hit on it. It has grown from there, and allowed me to refine the method to make it more effective.
Q: Do you plan on recruiting more hackers to your cause?
Well I did have ideas about an anonymous network of volunteers, nobody knowing the identity of any other member, but that would mean I have to release this technology and method to unknowns. How can I be sure I am not giving handing the bad guys a big gun to shoot us with? I am only hitting jihadi stuff, imagine if the tools were used against say eight of the world’s major financial institutions, a single person on a single machine could easily takedown eight sites simultaneously. So I have no plans to involve others at this time.
Q: How long will you go on?
As long as my nerves will hold out. It’s a serious situation I find myself in, the bad guys want to slice my head off on YouTube with a rusty blade, and the good guys want to lock me up in an orange jumpsuit… along with the bad guys.
Q: Do you have anything big planned soon?
I am currently working on cleaning things up, the method I am using involves much shell-hopping, and so I am creating a shiny new GUI version. Here’s an exclusive, the final software solution will be known as Project ‘XerXeS’ as in the guy that took on the Spartans. I will be sending you a video of it in action once it’s finished. It’s functional right now (obviously) but looks a bit shabby.
Q: Do you have a message for your admirers?
Thanks for all the support by way of comments and messages. Don’t try this at home kids! (lol).
Q: How about a message for your detractors?
They are entitled to their opinion, they have the freedom to voice it, and they have that freedom because people fought and continue to fight for it – both abroad and at home. And they should make no mistake, the war on terror is right on our doorsteps from the homegrown threats, and these threats are perpetuated via online channels.
Q: What’s your biggest accomplishment in your opinion?
I suppose it’s always nice when an ISP hosting one of these jihadi sites takes it down, due to pressure from its own customers. This is what I do – create pressure. You can ask an ISP nicely to perform a takedown, but mostly they don’t, that’s where I seem to fit in.
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