M of A - No. The Islamic State Did Not Hack CENTCOM - Updated - Cui Bono?

January 12, 2015

No. The Islamic State Did Not Hack CENTCOM - Updated - Cui Bono?

Updated below

BBC: US Centcom Twitter account 'hacked by Islamic State'

US Central Command's Twitter and YouTube accounts have been hacked by a group claiming to back Islamic State.

One message said: "American soldiers, we are coming, watch your back."

It was signed by Isis, another name for the Islamic State. Some internal military documents also appeared on the Centcom Twitter feed.

US Centcom said it was taking "appropriate measures". The Twitter account was later taken down so no tweets could be viewed.

The hack happened as President Barack Obama was preparing a major speech on cybersecurity.

Several Centcom Twitter accounts and its Youtube channels were compromised and the "hackers" posted some military papers which are unclassified and available on the internet. The accounts are now suspended.

These "hackers" called themselves Cyber Caliphate, are already known and have a Twitter account @cybercaliphate but they used the acronym ISIS in a pastebin post on the Centcom "hack" to attach themselves to the Islamic State:

Pentagon networks hacked

AMERICAN SOLDIERS,WE ARE COMING, WATCH YOUR BACK. ISIS. #CyberCaliphate

In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful, the CyberCaliphate under the auspices of ISIS continues its CyberJihad. While the US and its satellites kill our brothers in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan we broke into your networks and personal devices and know everything about you.You'll see no mercy infidels. ISIS is already here, we are in your PCs, in each military base. With Allah's permission we are in CENTCOM now.. ...

The Islamic State and its real followers never use the acronym ISIS for Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. In their mind the Islamic State is not confined to the borders of Iraq and Syria. It is universal and has no geographical limits. Any real follower of the Islamic State will know this.

The "hackers" also posted some photo depicting a view down the neckline of a voluptuous woman. Islamic State followers would not do such - at least not in any public representation. For them it is a sin to even view such a pic.

My conclusion is that these were some cyberpunks. Some media guy at Centcom was owned and revealed his password after some social fishing through an email. Or his iPhone was stolen and cracked. Or something similar. Some "hacker" had fun with that. A rather common and irrelevant incident. A fitting XKCD comic strip is here.

Or this "incident" was some military Information Operation to further Obama's attempts to introduce more extensive internet spying which he is likely to push for in next week's State of the Union speech.

It would fit to the false claim by the Obama administration that the Sony hack, likely done by former Sony employees, was somehow related to North Korea.

UPDATE (Jan 13 2:00am): See how well the "hack" works as an argument for Obama's new law which will indemnify private companies which hand over YOUR private data to the government.

A screenshot from the current Washington Post homepage:

Terror! Terror!! Terror!!! We have been hacked!!! Give us your data!

From that first piece:

President Obama plans to announce legislation Tuesday that would shield companies from lawsuits for sharing computer threat data with the government in an effort to prevent cyber­attacks....The provision’s goal is to “enshrine in law liability protection for the private sector for them to share specific information — cyberthreat indicators — with the government,” the official said.

If this law passes, which currently looks likely, all data stored or passing through a private company will be available for the government to copy, to store forever and to sift through however it likes. This even when you never intended to make such data public.

Meanwhile the British government wants to legally ban all private and public encryption it can nor readily break:

Mr. Cameron, who has started to campaign ahead of a national election in Britain in May, said his government, if elected, would ban encrypted online communication tools that could potentially be used by terrorists if the country’s intelligence agencies were not given increased access. The reforms are part of new legislation that would force telecom operators and Internet services providers to store more data on people’s online activities, including social network messages.

Both proposals, Obama's and Cameron's, would be catastrophic for Internet freedom.

Posted by b on January 12, 2015 at 02:11 PM | Permalink

Maybe it was fake-anonymous. Ever since the US govt. broke all of its own most (formerly) sacred laws in pursuing and persecuting the real anonymous, an "anarchist hacker" media entity with an oddly pro-imperialist agenda calling itself "anonymous" has emerged in their stead

Posted by: 1968ES330 | Jan 12, 2015 2:44:33 PM | 1

@1

Anonymous is all of a sudden at war with ISIS, too. That struck me as very odd.

Posted by: yellowsnapdragon | Jan 12, 2015 4:30:24 PM | 2

Good observations b. Too bad the msm is incapable of making them, or that your readership isn't bigger..

Posted by: ..james | Jan 12, 2015 5:24:34 PM | 4

Yatsenyuk Rewrites History: ‘USSR Invaded Germany’ (Jan. 9, 2015):

Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk has amazed the world with his knowledge of history: in his interview with the German TV channel ARD, the politician said that "all of us still clearly remember the Soviet invasion into Ukraine and Germany," referring to the Second World War.

MOSCOW, January 9 (Sputnik) – Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk has demonstrated his knowledge of history to the world.

On Thursday, while on an official visit to Berlin, the bespectacled young politician was interviewed live by the German TV channel ARD, where he claimed that the USSR had kicked off the Second World War by invading Germany.

"All of us still clearly remember the Soviet invasion of Ukraine and Germany," he said. "We need to avoid it."

"Nobody has the right to rewrite the results of the Second World War," he added. "Russia's President Putin is trying to do exactly this."

Posted by: lysias | Jan 12, 2015 5:26:30 PM | 5

Obama Proposes New Laws After Central Command Hacked

"Major companies get hacked. America's personal information, including financial information, gets stolen. And the problem is growing and it costs us billions of dollars."

1. the NSA and The Company are the number 1 and number 2 thieves of 'America's personal information, including financial information'.2. it costs us ourselves, our lives, our independence which mere dollars cannot buy3. laws are there for the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate to break

If his lips are moving he's lying. Pay attention to what he does, pay no attention to what he says.

Posted by: jfl | Jan 12, 2015 7:25:36 PM | 7

Like with Ghouta, MH17, Sony hack: if and when Obama says it's true, then it must be so. The media will worry about how to sell it so people swallow it and repeat it until it becomes a universal "fact".

Posted by: farflungstar | Jan 12, 2015 7:36:20 PM | 8

Interesting observation....It is truly amazing what critical thinking and logic can do. The brainwashed morons that watch the MSM are deprived of these two principles. Like the DPRK "hack" this will probably be bludgeoned into people's brain until it is accepted as fact.

Posted by: Anonb | Jan 12, 2015 10:12:24 PM | 9

@2

There seems to be a new manufactured "war" everyday. It seems to become a tagline in the MSM. If somebody disagrees with you or vice versa it is called a "War on...." In fact, go on google and type in "War on" and the results that show up are quite amusing. It just goes to show that our media is on a never ending War binge.

Posted by: Anonb | Jan 12, 2015 10:17:53 PM | 10

The encryption thing is low down. It seems like they simply don't want to pay the electricity bill to force open some iphones.

Posted by: Crest | Jan 13, 2015 2:46:29 AM | 12

@8: All three US guests are 100% top quality in this Cross Talk.A recommend, imo.

---Media failuresTraditionally, the role of media has been to inform society and keep an eye on the powers that be. Today media follows a very different model - for the most part the mainstream merely echoes the opinions of the elite. Is it any wonder audiences are looking for alternative media sources?

Link to Cross Talk---

Posted by: x | Jan 13, 2015 3:24:12 AM | 13

There was a report on RT News last week about Obama's Acronym Agencies recruiting (and forgiving) hackers to help with the USG's ($50 Billion) cyber-security/ cyber-war programs. The report finished with an endorsement by Julian Assange, who was quick to point out that hackers can help Humanity much more effectively if they're INSIDE US spy agencies than OUTSIDE them.

Will the dumbass Yankees EVER stop believing ALL of their own neocon bullshit?

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Jan 13, 2015 8:34:00 AM | 15

Yep, once again great timing. The bad guys show up with their act and within minutes the so-called free govt. bad guys show to resect the citizens of their nation. I know I'm shocked at this;)

Posted by: jo6pac | Jan 13, 2015 12:28:34 PM | 16

This is the classic mafia shakedown ... you wouldn't want someone to hack your customer database, would you?

You'd be sued! Bankrupted!

You need a little protection ... fork over the data and we'll 'protect' from the 'bad guys' ... and hold you blameless in the event that you have something interesting enough on someone for the 'bad guys' to spill.

The USG is the mafia. The biggest crime family on the block. And the figurative godfather has a Nobel Peace Prize. From the Pope.

Posted by: jfl | Jan 13, 2015 1:12:03 PM | 18

I thank this blog for bringing to my attention another step of the US Gov to get our private data from companies we use on the internet.

The US Gov uses every incident that can be labelled terrorism to expand the US Surveillance Deep State which rules behind the facade of democratic institutions.

Another is the NSA will be hooking into the databases of pictures taken by police that carry cameras. The US elites take our concern for police abuse of its power to expand the US Deep State use facial recognition technology to further track where we are or were.

Posted by: Arius | Jan 13, 2015 1:32:41 PM | 19

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2015/01/no-the-islamic-state-did-not-hack-centcom-.html