Threat Management, Threat Management

ISIS Cyber Caliphate shifts tactics after Obama speech

Apparently, ISIS is tuned into U.S. cyber policy discussions, and prepared to adapt its methods.

After President Obama's televised speech in which he said he would encourage tech firms and law enforcement agencies “to make it harder for terrorists to use technology to escape from justice,” the organization's hacking group Cyber Caliphate issued new guidelines to its members, according to Vocativ.

The group used Telegram, the semi-encrypted messaging app, to warn its followers, “As we saw at the news Obama asked the help of the social media to help them fighting the Islamic State on the network.”

The hacking group issued suggestions to its followers that included: not opening any links unless the links are from trusted sources, not using Twitter's direct messages, and not opening social media “without using VPN or Tor to change IP.”

The hacking group, which was led by U.K.-born Junaid Hussain until he was killed in a drone air strike in Syria, warned supporters that Twitter had “planted virus (stet) in the kill list after taken over the Cyber Caliphate account yesterday.”

The ISIS kill list is a list of employees of military, law enforcement and government agencies that the group scraped from government websites.

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