14 DAY TRIAL // People investigating the hijacking of the Twitter and YouTube accounts of the US Central Command (CENTCOM) believe that TRiCk, the former leader of the hacker group TeaMp0isoN, is also leading CyberCaliphate, the group claiming the attack.
On Monday, the hackers took control of the social media accounts of CENTCOM, a unit that oversees different military operations across the globe, including those in the Middle East.
CyberCaliphate used the social media accounts to spread pro-ISIS propaganda. They also tweeted links to documents that appeared to be confidential. Officials issued a statement saying that none of the information distributed by the hackers was secret in nature.
Although the perpetrators could not maintain this privilege for too long, the PR damage caused to CENTCOM was quite significant.
TRiCk believed to have formed CyberCaliphate group
Junaid Hussain, 20, used to live in Birmingham, UK, and is believed to have formed the hacker group that carried out the attack, according to information received by Reuters from US and European government sources close to the investigation.
He is one and the same person who served six months in jail in 2012 for stealing the address book of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair by hacking into the email account of the aide responsible for handling it.
TRiCk, the former leader of TeaMp0isoN, was 18 at the time, and in an interview with Softpedia, he said he had been a true hacktivist since the age of 15, when he became political and started to fight for the rights of people in Kashmir, Palestine, and Syria.
The news agency reports that the connection between Hussain and CyberCaliphate was revealed by an analyst with Flashpoint Global Partners, a private company specialized in finding government agencies online postings from extremists.
The hacker may be in Syria at the moment
It appears that Hussain was actively involved in recruiting hackers on behalf of the Islamic State terrorist organization.
His whereabouts are unknown at the moment, but news outlets reported in June 2014 that he had fled to Syria a year back, when he was on bail for violent disorder. He had just finished his six-month jail time sentence.
Investigators of the social media accounts hijacking are currently looking into the possibility that the attack was carried out from Syria. At the moment, it is unknown if TRiCk himself was involved in the incident or it is was perpetrated only by the hackers he assembled.
