The so-called “CyberCaliphate” purported hacking group that reportedly attacked a Twitter account belonging to the Pentagon on Monday was founded by a Briton who was once jailed for hacking the personal address book of former British prime minister Tony Blair, according to government sources and private sector security experts.
US and European government sources said that investigators strongly believe that Junaid Hussain, 20, was the leader of the CyberCaliphate group, though they do not know if he was personally involved in hacking the Twitter and YouTube accounts of the US Central Command, which oversees US military operations in the Middle East.
Hussain could not be reached for comment.
Photo: EPA
In 2012, Hussain was jailed for six months after being convicted of stealing Blair’s address book from an e-mail account maintained by one of Blair’s advisers.
Hussain pleaded guilty to putting details of the address book online and making hoax calls to a counterterrorism hotline.
Hussain, who lived in Birmingham, England, moved to Syria sometime in the past two years, British media outlets reported.
US and European investigators said they are investigating whether Monday’s attack on the US Central Command’s Twitter and YouTube accounts was launched from Syria, though they have not finished examining the technical evidence. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity.
Pentagon spokesman US Army Colonel Steve Warren has called the cyberattack “inconvenient,” but said that no sensitive or classified information was compromised by the hackers, who claimed to be sympathetic toward the Islamic State militant group being targeted in US-led bombing raids.
Investigators believe that Hussain was the main individual behind a Twitter account that operated under the pseudonym Abu Hussain al Britani, the sources said.
That account was linked to the CyberCaliphate group after it last week claimed responsibility for hacking the Albuquerque Journal in New Mexico and WBOC, a Delaware television station. Neither the Albuquerque Journal nor WBOC responded to requests for comment.
The Abu Hussain al Britani account was suspended as of Tuesday. One of the government sources said it was possible that people other than Hussain used that account.
Alex Kassirer, an analyst with Flashpoint Global Partners, said Hussain led efforts by the group formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant to recruit “hackers for a CyberCaliphate.”
Flashpoint Global Partners is a private company that monitors extremist Internet postings for government agencies and private clients.
She said the CyberCaliphate first surfaced when it published a “recruitment announcement” on Sept. 11 last year.
According to Kassirer, Hussain’s British wife said on her Twitter account last week that her husband had been killed in a drone attack. US and European security officials said there was no confirmation that Hussain was dead.
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