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Junaid Hussain (c. 1994 – 25 August 2015) was a British black hat hacker and propagandist under the nom de guerre of Abu Hussain al-Britani who supported the Islamic State (IS). Hussain, who was raised in Birmingham in a family originally from Pakistan, was jailed in 2012 for hacking Tony Blair's accounts and posting his personal information online. Hussain left the UK around 2013 for Syria.

Hussain was killed in 2015 via airstrike.

Hacking and propagandizing

Hussain was known as TriCk from the disbanded hacking group TeaMp0isoN. He was a key figure in a group of Islamist computer hackers who call themselves the Cyber Caliphate. The Islamist hackers were involved in defacing French websites during the 2015 Île-de-France attacks and the Twitter feeds of the U.S. Central Command, Newsweek and the International Business Times. The group is believed to have been behind the use of a spearphishing attack that exposed identities of rebel media groups.

In March 2015, Hussain released a list of U.S. military personnel requesting that IS followers execute people on the list. While Hussain claimed to have breached US Department of Defense servers, the FBI assessed that the list was cobbled together from news articles, social media posts, and public records.

Hussain was in online contact with one of the gunmen behind the Curtis Culwell Center attack of May 2015. Before the incident, an attacker posted online statements on Twitter, in which he requested others to follow Hussain's account. After the shooting occurred, Hussain wrote: "Allahu Akbar!!!! 2 of our brothers just opened fire."

Attempts on life and death

An attempted lethal drone strike on Hussain, around ten days before his death, instead killed three civilians and injured five.

The Sunday Times reported that US officials intended to assassinate Hussain, listing him as the third highest IS target on the Pentagon's "kill list", behind Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and Mohammed Emwazi, due to his role in inspiring international lone wolf terrorism.

US government sources reported Hussain, along with two of his bodyguards, was killed in a drone strike on a car in a Raqqa petrol station on 24 August 2015. Hussain, 21 at the time of his reported death, was married to Sally Jones, 45, a fellow Briton who had joined IS. She denied his death through IS-linked Twitter accounts.

Hussain and his wife regularly used their young son as a human shield to prevent drone attacks. On the occasion when he was killed, he had ventured out without the child. It was reported that Hussain's location was discovered after he clicked on a compromised Internet link sent by an undercover agent on the Surespot messaging app. Jones later confirmed that Hussain had been killed.

Notes

1. Because of the international dateline, the date in Iraq time is different from the date in U.S. time. The Pentagon's report noted the drone strike occurred on 24 August while The New York Times reported the strike occurred on 25 August.

References

1. ^ Russell Myers (13 January 2015). "British hacker suspected of cyber attack on US Central Command Twitter account". mirror.
2. ^ RFSID. "Cyber Caliphate: ISIS Plays Offense on the Web". Recorded Future.
3. "DailyTech - Anonymous vs. the ISIS Cyber Caliphate -- War in the Middle East Goes Digital". dailytech.com. Archived from the original on 7 July 2017. Retrieved 14 May 2015.
4. Thomas Halleck (14 January 2015). "Junaid Hussain: CyberCaliphate Leader And ISIS Member Was Behind CENTCOM Hack, Report Says". International Business Times.
5. Emma Graham-Harrison (12 April 2015). "Could Isis's 'cyber caliphate' unleash a deadly attack on key targets?". The Guardian.
6. Jamie Dettmer (24 March 2015). "Digital jihad: ISIS, Al Qaeda seek a cyber caliphate to launch attacks on US". Fox News.
7. "ISIS is ramping up efforts to mount a massive cyber attack". Security Affairs. 14 September 2014.
8. Sam Biddle. "Investigators Think This UK ISIS Defector Is Behind the CENTCOM Hack". Weird Internet. Gawker Media. Archived from the original on 4 February 2016.
9. Tim Lister (7 May 2015). "Cheerleaders and freelancers: new actors in terrorism - CNN.com". CNN.
10. CBSNews. "ISIS hacker behind U.S. military "hit list" believed killed in Syria". News Agency.
11. ^ Holly Yan (5 May 2015). "Who are the gunmen behind the Texas shooting?". CNN.
12. Ackerman, Spencer; Ross, Alice (29 January 2016). "Airstrike targeting British hacker working for Isis killed three civilians instead, US admits". The Guardian. Guardian News & Media Limited. Retrieved 29 January 2016.
13. Gadher, Dipesh (2 August 2015). "British hacker is No 3 on Pentagon 'kill list'". The Sunday Times. Times Newspapers Limited. Archived from the original on 21 September 2015. Retrieved 1 September 2015.
14. "Junaid Hussain: How a Boy From Birmingham Became ISIS's Leading Hacker". Newsweek. 27 August 2015. Retrieved 1 September 2015.
15. Safi, Michael (12 August 2015). "Isis 'hacking division' releases details of 1,400 Americans and urges attacks". The Guardian. Guardian News & Media Limited. Retrieved 1 September 2015.
16. Meredith, Charlotte (28 August 2015). "The Islamic State's Top Hacker Was Killed in a US Drone Strike". Vice. Retrieved 29 August 2015.
17. "Sally Jones". Counter Extremism Project. Retrieved 27 June 2019.
18. Cockburn, Harry (12 October 2017). "Sally Jones: Who was the 'White Widow'? What we know about the Isis member reportedly killed in a US drone strike". The Independent. Retrieved 22 July 2018.
19. Cartledge, James (16 September 2015). "Isis terrorist Junaid Hussain killed in drone attack after boffins 'crack group's code'". Birmingham Live. Reach plc. Retrieved 27 June 2019.

External links

• Counter Extremism Project profile

• 1994 births
• 2015 deaths
• Assassinated Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant members
• Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant members from the United Kingdom
• Deaths by American airstrikes during the Syrian civil war
• British cybercriminals
• British people of Pakistani descent
• Criminals from the West Midlands (county)
• Deaths by American drone strikes in Syria