Plan B Forum

This hacker is fighting ISIS by spamming its Twitter accounts with porn

It started years ago, when at age 16 he bought his first computer, took it home and disassembled it. When he put the machine back together and it refused to run, a local big-box store tech guru taught the teen who would eventually take the alias "Wauchula Ghost" how to hack.

Now he’s exercising those demons on the Islamic State.

For the past two months, and with increased fervor after an ISIS supporter attacked an Orlando gay night club over the weekend, Wauchula Ghost, a member of the hacking clan "Anonymous," has compromised hundreds Twitter accounts of Islamic State supporters and flooded them with pornography.

“Daesh doesn’t like porn,” Ghost said in a phone interview, referring to the Islamic State in its Arabic transliteration. He declined to give his real name. “They don’t like women in general. We just started using it to poke fun at them and diminish their presence online.”

ISIS has used the Internet to spread its message and find recruits. FBI Director James Comey said Monday he was “highly confident” shooter Omar Mateen, 29, was radicalized “at least in some part through the Internet.”

Instead of messages supporting the self-described caliphate or encouraging violence, some 160 accounts hacked by the Ghost have tweeted photos of nude women. Some users’ avatars now read “I [heart] porn.”

The content is a jab at the group’s interpretation of Muslim religious customs that require piety and chastity. By tweeting sexual content rather than traditional battle cries against the West, the Ghost said he wants to undermine the voices of ISIS recruiters and chase them off popular social networks.

(the rest of us got the sarcasm).