Malaysian police have arrested a computer hacker accused of giving personal details of American soldiers and civil servants to Islamic State with the intention of making terrorist attacks on US soil.
Ardit Ferizi, 20, from Kosovo, who is known by the hacking name “Th3Dir3ctorY”, has been charged in the US with hacking, identity theft, and providing material support to Isis. He is accused of stealing the personal details, including email addresses and passwords, of 1,351 service members and federal employees.
According to US authorities, Mr Ferizi is the the leader of a Kosovar internet hacking group called Kosova Hacker’s Security. He was arrested on September 20, after beginning studies last year at a Malaysian university.
Over the summer, according to US investigators, he passed on hacked data to an Isis member named Junaid Hussain, 21, a convicted British computer hacker turned jihadist fighter in Syria, who posted it online.
An accompanying message warned: “we are in your emails and computer systems, watching and recording your every move, we have your names and addresses, we are in your emails and social media accounts, we are extracting confidential data and passing on your personal information to the soldiers of the khilafah [caliphate], who soon with the permission of Allah will strike at your necks in your own lands!”
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“This case is a first of its kind,” said John Carlin, the US assistant attorney-general. “Ardit Ferizi is a terrorist hacker who provided material support to Isis by stealing the personally identifiable information of US service members and federal employees and providing it to Isis for use against those employees.”
Junaid Hussain, who was killed in August, was married to Sally Jones, 45, a British Muslim convert mother of two from Kent who calls herself Sakinah Hussain and uses the pseudonym Umm Hussain al-Britani.