another story
Military wives thought they got death threats from ISIS. They were actually from Russian hackers.
When Army wife Angela Ricketts received a death threat in February 2015, it looked like it was from the Islamic State.
It turned out to be a Facebook message from Russian hackers.
The Associated Press found evidence that the threats five military wives received from "CyberCaliphate" weren't from jihadists at all. They likely came from the same Russian hackers who interfered in the 2016 presidential election.
Back in 2015, news outlets covered CyberCaliphate as if it were run by ISIS sympathizers. Ricketts, who wrote a memoir about being an infantry wife, was quoted in a CNN piece about it. And up until AP contacted her and many of the other women, they were still convinced the messages came from ISIS.
A digital hit list provided by cyber security company Secureworks shows a different story. A Russian hacker was trying to break into the wives' email accounts around the same time they got the threats, which points to a connection, AP reports.
The same group appears to be responsible for leaking the emails of Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta. Read more at The Associated Press.