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March 29th, 2024

War on Jihad

Hacker admits he gave military members' data to the Islamic State

Rachel Weiner & Ellen Nakashima

By Rachel Weiner & Ellen Nakashima The Washington Post

Published June 16, 2016

A hacker arrested in Malaysia last year pleaded guilty Wednesday to stealing the personal data of U.S. service members and passing it to the Islamic State terrorist group.

Ardit Ferizi, a 21-year-old citizen of Kosovo who was living in Kuala Lumpur, used the Twitter handle "Th3Dir3ctorY" as part of a collective of hackers from his home country.

Last June, he hacked into a server used by a U.S. online retail company and obtained data of about 100,000 people. Later in the summer, he sent the names, email addresses, passwords and locations of about 1,351 federal employees and military members to the Islamic State.

Asked by U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema on Tuesday why he would ally himself with a violent terrorist organization, Ferizi offered little explanation.

"I don't know myself why I did this," he said in stilted English. "I still ask myself why I committed this crime."

Ferizi said he found his way into the retail company's server simply while "surfing the Internet." He specified that in his view he did not hack the server, he "got access."

He passed on the personal military information he uncovered to Junaid Hussain, a British citizen and member of Islamic State. Last August, Hussain posted links on Twitter to their names, e-mail addresses, passwords, locations and phone numbers with a warning that Islamic State "soldiers . . . will strike at your necks in your own lands!"

Later that month, Hussain, who went by the nom de guerre Abu Hussain al-Britani, was killed in a drone strike in Syria.

According to court documents, Ferizi had expressed support for the Islamic State on Twitter and was in communication online with representatives of the terrorist group in the months before his crime.

Ferizi's case is a milestone, the first brought against a defendant for terrorism and hacking. It represents a troubling convergence of what senior U.S. officials say are the two most serious threats to national security - terrorism and cyberattacks.

"Cyber terrorism has become an increasingly prevalent and serious threat here in America," U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Dana J. Boente said in a statement.

The case is also unusual because U.S. officials brought Ferizi from Malaysia to Virginia for prosecution. Ferizi was detained last year on a U.S. provisional arrest warrant and was extradited to the United States in January.

Ferizi faces up to 25 years in prison and a $500,000 fine, after which he would be deported and not allowed to return.

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