ISIS-Affiliated Group Hacks Md. TV Station’s Website, Twitter

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, is not solely interested in taking over the world. It now wants to take over the world wide web.

The Islamic fundamentalist group ISIS is known for its savvy use of social media, and beginning last week it went one step further by hacking social media pages and websites. The Maryland TV station WBOC was one of their targets. On the morning of Jan. 6th, WBOC, which is based in Salisbury, MD, found its webpage and Twitter account hacked. A group known as the “CyberCaliphate” took over the pages and posted pro-ISIS propaganda. The propaganda included praising comments such as “I love you ISIS” and “There is no law but Sharia!”

The website was eventually reverted back to normal that evening, but the station’s Twitter account remained in CyberCaliphate’s control for a while longer, before being eventually restored.

The incident with WBOC occurred a week before CyberCaliphate’s hacking of one of the United States’s military Twitter feeds. The Twitter page of the U.S. Central Command (commonly known as CENTCOM) was also commandeered on January 12th and received considerably more attention than WBOC’s hack. According to the Washington Post, the Twitter feed was filled with pro-ISIS propaganda, some of which was identical to the posts from WBOC’s pages. In addition to the comment “I love you ISIS,” the hackers included more menacing comments such as “ISIS is already here, we are in your PCs, in each military base” and “AMERICAN SOLDIERS, WE ARE COMING, WATCH YOUR BACK. ISIS.”

CENTCOM’s YouTube page was also hacked by CyberCaliphate, who posted pro-ISIS propaganda videos. CENTCOM’s Facebook page, meanwhile, was reportedly unharmed.

Though it is not clear whether CyberCaliphate is directly linked to ISIS or is just a sympathetic organization (or even, quite possibly, a giant hoax), what is clear, according to officials, is the need for the U.S. government to dramatically revamp its cyber security.

“This is serious,” said Bill Richardson, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

“Even though the hacking didn’t go into national security, didn’t go into security breaches, classified information, the fact that it’s happening so extensively and vastly means that we have to get a cybersecurity policy in place,” Richardson said.

Over 100 billion global search engine inquiries are conducted each month. With cyber-risks so prevalent and beyond the control of something as powerful as the U.S. military, cyber-security experts, press members, and government officials alike are taking more precautions with their cyber information, which, as the statistic shows, can easily be disseminated to millions of people with the click of a mouse.