Clarksville cyber security professional says hackers could cripple ISIS

CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. – The loosely-knit group of computer hackers known as Anonymous have threatened to hack ISIS in response to the attacks last week in Paris.

While the response from ISIS has been to call Anonymous ‘idiots,’ a local cyber security expert thinks the hackers could cause real problems for the terrorists.

Alex Berta, a recognized authority and former ‘blackhat’ hacker, told ClarksvilleNow that the Anonymous hackers are going beyond “getting the names of the people running these accounts (Facebook and Twitter).”

“Addresses, real telephone numbers. Very in depth into their personal lives. They’re putting it together in a document dump,” Berta said.

Berta has 16 years of experience in the field and is the current director of a Nashville cyber security company. He has studied Anonymous and believes it is an umbrella for various hacking collectives, which he says have been successful in past vigilante justice endeavors.

“Their capabilities are very, very real,” he said. “They can do some damage if they want to.”

He cited a hack of Tunisia’s former government during civil war, as well as the hack of high school football players accused of raping a teenage girl in Ohio.

As far as ISIS is concerned, Berta said the group spreads a large amount of propaganda online to entice and recruit new members. He believes Anonymous will hack the accounts ISIS uses to communicate with potential recruits, including those in the U.S.

“They communicate with people in various chat rooms, message boards, things like that. They make ISIS seem like a great thing to join,” he said.

Berta said he thinks information gathered by Anonymous can be useful for the U.S. government, who made have to go through “a lot of red tape” to obtain information that Anonymous can access without limitations.

“Anonymous can just do it. Let them do the work, then the government collects it, they verify it, and can make arrests if needed.”

The hacking group has dismantled at least 149 of ISIS’s affiliated websites, flagged approximately 101,000 Twitter accounts and nearly 6,000 propaganda videos, according to data from Foreign Policy magazine.

“If you look at the numbers of people that have left the U.S. to go fight with ISIS, we’re in the thousands there. A lot of that has been done over the internet using messaging and propaganda,” Berta said. “War now is fought on both fronts. It’s fought on the ground and it’s also fought online.”