14 DAY TRIAL // Anonymous member WauchulaGhost has been spending a large part of the past weeks taking over Twitter accounts for ISIS supporters and defacing them with adult-themed images.
The hacker has been hijacking accounts for the most active ISIS supporters, the ones involved in online recruitment, and has been plastering their profiles with naked women and peaceful messages.
"The Porn operation is not something new," WauchulaGhost told Softpedia. "It’s been around for a while. There are a few things that the Islamic State fear. One is women and the second is Porn."
"Over the last year the use of porn against the Islamic State has been minimal. Recently other groups have started targeting ISIS using PornBots," WauchulaGhost said.
Smut may be as dangerous to ISIS as bullets
ISIS extremists pride themselves on following the strict rules of the jihadist ideology, where pornography has no place. ISIS members who give in to pornography are considered weak and unworthy, and may face punishment from their fellow members.
The hacker is part of a rising train of thought that's formed on Twitter in the past months, in which Anonymous members have come to the conclusion that they can do more damage to the reputation of ISIS members by flooding their accounts with so-called pornbots and by posting adult material on their timeline.
Pornbots are nothing more than fake accounts with an adult theme, which the hackers are instructing with automated scripts to follow only ISIS militants. There are ISIS profiles for which a vast majority of their followers is made up of Anonymous-powered pornbots.
"We felt that along with jacking accounts we could help by using the porn on the accounts we take and also by creating more 'PornBots' to target Daesh accounts. The main goal is to flood Daesh accounts with Porn images. Nothing x rated, just simple sexy photos," WauchulaGhost explained.
Anonymous uses porn and hijacked accounts to derail ISIS propaganda
"I said a long time ago that Daesh use Social Media as a mega horn to spread their propaganda and fear. It has always been our goal to take that mega horn away from them."
WauchulaGhost told Softpedia that he and some of his friends have been attacking and hijacking accounts for quite some time now. He estimates to have defaced hundreds of ISIS Twitter profiles.
The hacker has created a Twitter list where he keeps track of all the hacked profiles. At the time of writing, there are 161 accounts listed, but WauchulaGhost told us that many ISIS supporters had their accounts suspended after posting beheading videos or after other users reported them.
"There are a few reasons for jacking their accounts," WauchulaGhost also added. "One is exposing their information (IP, phone records) to the public. Second is defacing the account. Adding our own images and basically showing them 'We are in control.' Third reason is we use some of the jacked accounts to actually communicate and monitor other accounts from the inside as there are a lot of protected accounts that the public can’t see."
"By taking accounts we are now able to monitor these protected accounts," the hacker told Softpedia. "The last benefit of taking these accounts is we are creating confusion and distrust. Daesh are getting unsure of which accounts are good and which are not. They never know which account the Ghost [referring to himself] will be hiding in."
Hackers don't think they're interfering with official investigations
Anonymous has vowed revenge on ISIS after the terror attacks in Paris last November. Since then, the group has been busy trolling ISIS members and reporting hundreds of thousands of ISIS profiles to Twitter.
Some criticized their move since US intelligence agencies said they were using the Twitter accounts to monitor ISIS movements.
"We have also been told we are interfering with federal investigations by talking these accounts," said WauchulaGhost, being well aware of the issue.
"Maybe, maybe not. I see it this way, Daesh are going to create new accounts whether we take them or they are suspended. We are simply helping by exposing locations etc."
"Once Daesh create a new account, now we know where they are. No need for months of monitoring and wasting taxpayer’s money."
Recent string of mega breaches has nothing to do with the hacked accounts
The hacker started hijacking accounts about the same time when the recent wave of mega breaches popped up online. Even Mark Zuckerberg had his Twitter account hacked after a team of Saudi hackers found his password in the LinkedIn data dump. Softpedia asked WauchulaGhost if he used passwords leaked from those data dumps to hack the accounts.
"I have been asked many times 'How are you gaining access to these accounts?' I will only say this. Everything has a vulnerability. Twitter has a few. We use those vulnerabilities to our advantage. It’s what we do."
Note: WauchulaGhost's statements have been edited to correct typos.
UPDATE [June 13, 2014]: On Sunday, June 12, the hacker tweeted that Twitter had suspended all of the hijacked accounts. Nevertheless, this didn't stop him from taking over new accounts.
