Islamic State Twitter accounts are once again under attack, following the horrific Orlando terrorist attack last weekend.
More than 250 Twitter accounts allegedly associated with ISIS, or ISIL, have been hacked by a team of hackers led by a person who goes by the handle “WauchulaGhost.” While many of those accounts had been hacked before the Orlando nightclub shooting, they’ve now been thrust into the spotlight after WauchulaGhost replaced their jihad-related content with pro-lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) content.
Indeed, several of the accounts now display the LGBT community’s signature rainbow flag as their cover image and include several tweets in support of the 49 people killed in a gay nightclub last week.
“You had all those innocent lives lost,” the hacker known as WauchulaGhost told CNNMoney in an interview published on Thursday. “I just felt there’s something I could do against the Islamic State to defend those people.”
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As the number of ISIS attacks grows, activist hackers, or hacktivists, have increasingly targeted the militant group. Over the last several months, in fact, Anonymous, a hacking collective, has been credited with hacking thousands of ISIS-related accounts or those who owned by alleged ISIS sympathizers. Ghost Security Group, another collective, has also taken it upon itself to hack ISIS and other militant groups across social media, e-mail, and other services.
Meanwhile, social media companies, including Twitter (TWTR) and Facebook (FB), have been doing their part in the fight against ISIS. Twitter, alone, says that it has removed more than 125,000 ISIS-related accounts since the middle of last year, and will continue to do so in the coming months and years.
Initially, WauchulaGhost hacked the ISIS accounts to poke fun at the militants and their followers, and replaced their accounts with depictions of pornography. Following the Orlando attack, however, he, along with a few others, decided to support the LGBT community through their hacktivism.
For more on the Orlando terrorist attack, watch:
Whether attempts at removing ISIS accounts or, in WauchulaGhost’s own words, “humiliating” ISIS sympathizers, is actually working is unknown. In the past, ISIS has called those launching a cyberwar on the group “idiots,” and the attacks have continued. Ultimately, the goal for both hackers and government agencies infiltrating ISIS is to disrupt their communication online and hinder their ability to communicate their message.
Looking ahead, WauchulaGhost told CNNMoney that he plans to hold on to the hacked Twitter accounts and continue to post gay-pride messages. He’ll also refrain from posting pornography, which he says, some of his supporters didn’t think was appropriate. After his pro-LGBT tweets, he promises to move on to something else on the accounts he controls.
Twitter, which has suspended all but three of the accounts he hacked, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
