For the first time, U.S. charges suspect with hacking and terrorism

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published 16 October 2015

The U.S. Justice Department announced Thursday it has charged a Kosovo citizen with terrorism and hacking, in a case that Assistant Attorney General John Carlin said is the first of its kind.

Ardit Ferizi was detained in Malaysia last month on a U.S. provisional arrest warrant, Malaysian media reports, and is accused of stealing personal information of U.S. service members and giving it to Islamic State member Junaid Hussain. In August, Hussain, a British citizen, posted a link on Twitter to the names, email addresses, locations, and phone numbers of 1,351 members of the U.S. military and government, adding in a caption that ISIS "soldiers...will strike at your necks in your own lands!" In September, Hussain, who went by the nom de guerre Abu Hussain al-Britani, was killed in a drone strike in Syria.

In a complaint filed in the Eastern District of Virginia, FBI Special Agent Kevin Gallagher wrote that in June, Ferizi hacked a server used by a U.S. online company, whose name was not released. He was able to access the data of 100,000 people, and sent details about 1,351 of them "knowing that [ISIS] would use the [data] against the U.S. personnel, including to target the U.S. personnel for attacks and violence." Gallagher said that Ferizi is the leader of a group of ethnic Albanian hackers working out of Kosovo that call themselves Kosova Hacker's Security, The Washington Post reports. The group claims to have hacked more than 20,000 websites, with most belonging to the Serbian government.