Malaysia has arrested a man on charges of hacking into the personal information of more than a thousand US security officials and handing the database to the Islamic State (IS, ISIL) militant group in Syria so it could target the individuals.
The 20-year-old from Kosovo, who entered Malaysia in August last year to study computer science and forensics at a private institute in the capital, Kuala Lumpur, is to be extradited to the US, police said in a statement on Thursday night.
“Early investigation found the suspect communicated with one of the right-hand man of IS terrorist group in Syria to hack a few servers containing information and details of US security personnel and team,” Malaysian police said.
“The details were then transferred to the operation unit of the IS group for further action,” they said.
The US Department of Justice said the man, Ardit Ferizi, a citizen of Kosovo and a known hacker, had been charged with hacking the personal information of 1,351 US military personnel and federal employees, as well as supporting Islamic State.
Ferizi, believed to be the leader of a Kosovar Internet hacking group called Kosova Hacker’s Security, hacked the computer system of a US company and stole the personal identification information (PII) of thousands of individuals, the department said in a statement on its Web site.
Between June and August, Ferizi allegedly provided information to an Islamic State member, who in turn posted a tweet titled “NEW: U.S. Military AND Government HACKED by the Islamic State Hacking Division!” which contained a hyperlink to a 30-page document.
The document said in part: “We are in your e-mails and computer systems, watching and recording your every move, we have your names and addresses.”
It said that information would be passed on to Islamic State fighters “who soon with the permission of Allah will strike at your necks in your own lands.”
The department statement said: “This posting was intended to provide ISIL supporters in the United States and elsewhere with the PII belonging to the listed government employees for the purpose of encouraging terrorist attacks against those individuals.”
Although Muslim-majority Malaysia has not seen any significant militant attacks, it has arrested more than 100 citizens this year on suspicion of links to the Islamic State group.
Authorities are cracking down on people with Islamic State links and have so far identified several Malaysians who have gone to Syria and Iraq to join the group.
In August, police arrested 10 Malaysians suspected of links to Islamic State, among them six members of Malaysia’s security forces.
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
Thailand has netted more than 1.3 million kilograms of highly destructive blackchin tilapia fish, the government said yesterday, as it battles to stamp out the invasive species. Shoals of blackchin tilapia, which can produce up to 500 young at a time, have been found in 19 provinces, damaging ecosystems in rivers, swamps and canals by preying on small fish, shrimp and snail larvae. As well as the ecological impact, the government is worried about the effect on the kingdom’s crucial fish-farming industry. Fishing authorities caught 1,332,000kg of blackchin tilapia from February to Wednesday last week, said Nattacha Boonchaiinsawat, vice president of a parliamentary
DEFIANT: Ukraine and the EU voiced concern that ICC member Mongolia might not execute an international warrant for Putin’s arrest over war crimes in Ukraine Russian President Vladimir Putin was yesterday visiting Mongolia with no sign that the host country would bow to calls to arrest him on an international warrant for alleged war crimes stemming from the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The trip is Putin’s first to a member country of the International Criminal Court (ICC) since it issued the warrant about 18 months ago. Ahead of his visit, Ukraine called on Mongolia to hand Putin over to the court in The Hague, and the EU expressed concern that Mongolia might not execute the warrant. A spokesperson for Putin last week said that the Kremlin
RSS