Hacker linked with ISIS ‘kill list’ pleads guilty

A Kosovo man has pleaded guilty to stealing the personal information of over 1,000 U.S. servicemen and federal employees and sending it to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) “with the understanding that they would incite terrorist attacks against those individuals,” the Justice Department said Wednesday.

{mosads}The 20-year-old man, Ardit Ferizi, last summer hacked the servers of a U.S. company that held personally identifiable information on tens of thousands of customers, according to the DOJ. He then passed that information along to ISIS’s former lead hacker, Junaid Hussain.

In August, an ISIS hacking group tweeted a “kill list” of 1,300 U.S. military and government personnel, using the data stolen by Ferizi.

Ferizi admitted that he provided the data to Hussain with the understanding that ISIS would use it to “hit them hard.”

“We are in your emails and computer systems, watching and recording your every move, we have your names and addresses, we are in your emails and social media accounts, we are extracting confidential data and passing on your personal information to the soldiers of the khilafah, who soon with the permission of Allah will strike at your necks in your own lands!” the so-called Islamic State Hacking Division wrote in the document containing the list.

Hussain was killed in a drone strike shortly thereafter.

While much of the information Ferizi provided — home addresses, phone numbers, emails Facebook chats, credit card numbers, even photos — was outdated or incorrect, some of it was validated by media outlets.

Malaysian authorities arrested Ferizi in October on Justice Department charges of providing material support to ISIS. He was extradited to the U.S. in January.

Assistant Attorney General John P. Carlin called the case “the first of its kind, representing the nexus of the terror and cyber threats.”

Ferizi’s arrest and Hussain’s death are part of an increased Pentagon focus on ISIS’s more technologically savvy members. The group’s hackers have drawn attention over the last year by defacing media outlets’ websites and taking over high-profile Twitter accounts.

In December, a U.S. drone strike also took out a lesser-known ISIS hacker, Siful Haque Sujan.

Ferizi’s sentencing is set for Sept. 16.