Click to Skip Ad
Closing in...

Anonymous wants you to help take down ISIS – here’s how

Published Nov 18th, 2015 10:08AM EST
Anonymous Vs. ISIS Hacking Guide

If you buy through a BGR link, we may earn an affiliate commission, helping support our expert product labs.

We already know that Anonymous is hard at work trying to cripple Islamic State’s online operations — and now it wants your help. Per The International Business Times, Anonymous has posted three guides for amateur hackers on an IRC channel it uses that give instructions for how to identify ISIS-affiliated Twitter accounts and websites, as well as how to hack ISIS websites.

MUST SEE: Pyro mini is a new $150 gadget that lets you shoot fireballs from your hands like a superhero

“Instead of sitting idle in the channel or lurking around and doing nothing, you can benefit greatly from the different tools and guides that have been provided to you,” one Anonymous member explains. “Your contribution means a lot and we encourage you to partake in all of the Op’s activities if you can, the more the merrier.”

The hope is that by crowdsourcing some simple-but-time-consuming operations, Anonymous will be able to more quickly identify and attack ISIS-related websites and accounts all across the web.

Here, for example, are Anonymous’s instructions for finding and reporting ISIS websites:

Instructions for finding ISIS-related websites

1. Get Python at https://www.python.org/downloads/ unless you already have it (Mac does)

2. Open Terminal (or Command Prompt for Windows) and type (without quotes) “python”

3. Now, this step requires a little explanation. Let’s set this out neatly, shall we…

  • Copy the contents of the following link to your clipboardhttps://ghostbin.com/paste/oo4tb
  • The contents of that link are some search terms that relate to ISIS and their content, allowing you to narrow down the results to specific ones
  • Paste the strings into the Terminal and press Enter

4. Choose a couple of strings (3 recommended) from the list of strings. For this example we will use strings 3+38+46

5. Once chosen, continue in terminal (without quotes) “print(str3+str38+str42)” and copy the results

6. Paste the results in https://www.google.iq and analyze the new results To translate pages, it is recommended to use Google Chrome, which has integrated translation

7. Submit any valid ones to one of the channel operators and we will deal with the info accordingly

Social media operations in particular are a hugely important recruiting tool for ISIS, which is why Anonymous has worked to successfully get thousands of ISIS-affiliated Twitter accounts banned so far.

To learn more about Anonymous’s guides for amateur hackers, check out IBT’s full report here.

Brad Reed
Brad Reed Staff Writer

Brad Reed has written about technology for over eight years at BGR.com and Network World. Prior to that, he wrote freelance stories for political publications such as AlterNet and the American Prospect. He has a Master's Degree in Business and Economics Journalism from Boston University.