14 DAY TRIAL // Ardit Ferizi, aka Th3Dir3ctorY, 20, a citizen of Kosovo, will spend 20 years in a US prison for providing material support to ISIS hackers by handing over data for 1,351 US government employees.
Ferizi obtained the data by hacking into a US retail company on June 13, 2015. The hacker then filtered the stolen information, put aside records related to government officials, which he later handed over to Junaid Hussain, the then leader of the Islamic State Hacking Division (ISHD).
Ferizi provided data for one of the ISIS kill lists
Hussain then uploaded this information online, asking fellow ISIS members to seek out these individuals and execute lone wolf attacks. Some of Hussain's statements included:
“ We are in your emails and computer systems, watching and recording your every move, we have your names and addresses, we are in your emails and social media accounts, we are extracting confidential data and passing on your personal information to the soldiers of the khilafah, who soon with the permission of Allah will strike at your necks in your own lands! ”
Because of this leak, the US Army targeted and killed Hussain in a drone strike in Syria in August 2015.The US also tracked down Ferizi and issued an arrest warrant in his name. He was arrested on October 6, 2015, at the international airport in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, while trying to catch a flight back to Kosovo. Ferizi was in Kuala Lumpur studying computer science.
Ferizi was very well known in hacker circles
Before helping ISIS, Ferizi had a prodigious hacking career as the leader of Kosova Hacker's Security (KHS) hacking crew.
As a member of KHS, Ferizi's previous targets included government websites belonging to the Presidency of Macedonia, the Greek Decentralized Administration of Macedonia and Thrace (DAMT), and the Greek Ministry of Education, Lifelong Learning and Religion. Besides defacements, KHS also stole data from IBM and Greek mobile telecoms firm OTE.
The hacker pleaded guilty to all charges on June 15, 2016. He faced a sentence of up to 35 years in prison, which was reduced to a maximum of 25 years after agreeing to plead guilty.