Drone strike kills British ISIS hacker, top social media recruiter

Junaid Hussain, a 21-year-old British citizen, was one of Islamic State's secret weapons, a convicted hacker who fled to Syria in 2013 while awaiting trial in England, then took a leading role in ISIS's efforts to recruit members online, hack into U.S. military sites, and beef up the group's cybersecurity. He was killed Tuesday in a drone strike on his car outside Raqqa, Syria, U.S. officials told The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.

British and U.S. officials decided a few months ago that Hussain and other British nationals who had prominent roles in ISIS should be captured or killed. Using the online nom de guerre Abu Hussain al-Britaini, Hussein was linked to a thwarted plot to bomb a parade in London, encouraging the two gunmen who died shooting up a cartoon-drawing contest outside Dallas, and efforts to hack into military sites and the social media accounts of U.S. service members, publishing their personal information online to target them for attacks.

Hussein is also believed to have convinced ISIS leaders to stop communicating through non-secure networks, making it harder for Western intelligence to track and monitor them. He "was an irritant that had developed a worrying edge," Raffaello Pantucci of London's Royal United Services Institute told The New York Times. "Undoubtedly his online skills will be missed by the group... but it is unlikely to dramatically change the pattern of dangerous plots emanating from the group."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

ISIS hasn't confirmed Hussein's death, but condolences started showing up Thursday on Twitter from ISIS supporters. Hussein was married to Sally Jones, 45, a former punk rocker whom he met online.