Phineas Fisher donates 25 Bitcoin to Syria's Rojava region

May 19, 2016 11:15 GMT  ·  By

Phineas Fisher, also known as Hack Back, the hacker who breached Hacking Team last summer, revealed on Reddit yesterday that he hacked a bank and donated the money to the Rojava autonomous Syrian province, made up mainly of Syrian and Turkish citizens of Kurdish descent.

The hacker declined to name the bank he hacked but revealed that all the money he stole was donated to a CoopFunding campaign set up by Rojava locals seeking funds for a project that collects animal and human waste and transforms it to natural fertilizer.

Rojava, a region made up of three cantons in Northern Syria, is situated between ISIS territories and the Turkish border. The residents, tired of the on-going religion-fueled war in Syria, created an autonomous state where freedom of religion and sex equality is the norm.

Phineas Fisher proves again he's more hacktivist than hacker

The region is in dire need of help, with ISIS blocking off their access to trade in the south, and with Turkey enforcing another blockade in the north. Turkey fears that the Kurdish region in northern Syria might spark a revolt of its Kurdish minority, who might take a bite out of Turkey's territories to form their own state.

Rojava became famous in the international press after the New York Times and Al Jazeera featured editorials that portrayed a virtual utopia right in ISIS' backyard, where Muslims live with Christians, and where women have nothing to fear and even fight along men against ISIS.

Phineas Fisher took up the region's cause as his own, and on May 5, he announced he donated 25 Bitcoin to the area's fertilizer infrastructure campaign. At today's price, that's about $11,300.

On Reddit, he even urged other hackers and hacktivists to help the cause, either by robbing banks or even setting up ATM skimming campaigns and then donating the money. For more skilled hackers, he recommended Kaspersky's report on Carbanak, the cybercriminal group that robbed more than $1 billion from 100 banks across 30 countries in 2013 and 2014.