Hacker Allegedly Handed U.S. Service Member Data to ISIS

ISIS urged supporters online to attack the named troops and other government employees. 

According to a complaint filed in the Eastern District of Virginia, Ardit Ferizi, a citizen of Kosovo, in June hacked into a server used by an unnamed U.S. online retail company.

Later in the summer, he sent the details of about 1,351 military and other government personnel to the Islamic State, “knowing that ISIL would use the [data] against the U.S. personnel, including to target the U.S. personnel for attacks and violence,” said the complaint, signed by FBI Special Agent Kevin M. Gallagher.

Ferizi allegedly passed the data to Islamic State member Junaid Hussain, a British citizen who in August posted links on Twitter to the names, e-mail addresses, passwords, locations and phone numbers of 1,351 U.S. military and other government personnel. 

He included a warning that Islamic State “soldiers…will strike at your necks in your own lands!”

Later in August, Hussain was killed in a drone strike.

Ferizi, whose Twitter account was @Th3Dir3ctorY, is the leader of a group of ethnic Albanian hackers from Kosovo who call themselves Kosova Hacker’s Security (KHS).

The hacker of the online retailer, in August, had created a user account with the initials KHS, the complaint said.

After a security official at the retailer deleted some of the hacker’s files from the company’s server, the company received a threatening message from someone calling himself “Albanian Hacker.”