The hacking group Anonymous on Sunday declared “total war” against the Islamic State, the terror organization that claimed responsibility for the attacks on Friday that killed 132 Parisians.
Make no mistake: #Anonymous is at war with #Daesh. We won't stop opposing #IslamicState. We're also better hackers. #OpISIS
— Anonymous (@GroupAnon) November 15, 2015
Anonymous also posted a video, confirming the message was in response to the events in Paris.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAUZnDIWu2I]
According to the same Twitter account, the group began taking down websites associated with ISIS this morning.
Join 10k+ tech and VC leaders for growth and connections at Disrupt 2025
Netflix, Box, a16z, ElevenLabs, Wayve, Hugging Face, Elad Gil, Vinod Khosla — just some of the 250+ heavy hitters leading 200+ sessions designed to deliver the insights that fuel startup growth and sharpen your edge. Don’t miss the 20th anniversary of TechCrunch, and a chance to learn from the top voices in tech. Grab your ticket before doors open to save up to $444.
Join 10k+ tech and VC leaders for growth and connections at Disrupt 2025
Netflix, Box, a16z, ElevenLabs, Wayve, Hugging Face, Elad Gil, Vinod Khosla — just some of the 250+ heavy hitters leading 200+ sessions designed to deliver the insights that fuel startup growth and sharpen your edge. Don’t miss a chance to learn from the top voices in tech. Grab your ticket before doors open to save up to $444.
Anonymous also retweeted a link to the following message from the hacktivist group Binary Sec:
“We as a collective will bring an end to your reign of terror. We will no longer turn a blind eye to your cruel and inhumane acts of terrorism towards all other religions that are not Islam. We’ve watched you behead innocent people, kidnap and murder children, and then launch terrorist attacks in France. This will NOT BE TOLERATED ANY LONGER. We here at BinarySec live for the sole purpose of bringing down All ISIS Propaganda ONE website and/or person at a time. ISIS… Your Jihad is coming to an abrupt end . We here at BinarySec will be one of the driving forces to your end and that’s a promise. ISIS… The War Is On.”
This is not the first time that Anonymous has taken on ISIS. Foreign Policy Magazine reports that the conflict between hackers that identify with Anonymous and ISIS has waged online for more than a year. A tipping point that forced many hackers to join the cause were the attacks on the Charlie Hebdo newspaper and kosher market in Paris earlier this year.
According to the FP report from last week, hackers have taken 149 Islamic State-linked websites offline and flagged roughly 101,000 Twitter accounts and 5,900 propaganda videos.
The remaining question is whether or not these hackers aiming to achieve social good are helping or harming state-driven attempts to take out the terror group. Technology companies have said in the past that government intelligence agencies ask them not to take down ISIS-related content because, when using the legal avenues at hand, they are able to more effectively track these groups.
