A group called ‘cyber caliphates’ setup by British ISIS
fighter Junaid Hussain hacked about 54,000 Twitter accounts and posted personal
details of heads of America ’s
security agencies on November 01.
The personal details posted online included passwords and
phone numbers of CIA, FBI and NSA heads.
The attack was initiated in retaliation for the drone attack
that killed Hussain in August.
Hussain led IS's computer hacking division and was killed by
a US drone in a joint
operation with the UK .
His widow, mother-of-two Sally Jones who is popularly known as 'Mrs Terror' is
on a Government list of the most dangerous British recruiters for IS.
Since their leader’s death, Cyber Caliphate, which briefly
took control of a Pentagon-owned Twitter account in January, has kept a low
online profile.
Experts described it as a worrying escalation of the global
cyber war.
The group also tweeted that they had details of members of
the Saudi royal family, although this could not be verified.
Having spent several months apparently harvesting sensitive
data, the details of the hot shots of security agencies were posted at 9 pm (GMT
1530 hours) on Sunday and till 11 pm (GMT 1730 hours) when Twitter was contacted
by a security agency, it had suspended Cyber Caliphate’s account.
Among those affected are mostly believed to have Saudi Arabia
orgins but some are feared to be British nationals as well.
It was not immediately clear how the hacked accounts were
used. Victims were also unaware they had been hacked.
The incident came after the Government announced that the
internet activity of everyone in Britain will have to be stored for
a year under new surveillance laws.
Cyber Caliphate is a
group of hackers which is directly linked to ISIS .
In May, the hackers linked to the group who were involved in
hijacking of social media accounts belonging to the US CENTCOM published a
video threatening crippling cyber attacks against Europe, United States , Europe and Australia . The
terrorists claimed to have the necessary cyber capabilities to spy on Western
communications.