Hacker who allegedly passed U.S. military data to ISIS arrested in Malaysia

Authorities have arrested a Malaysia-based hacker who they accuse of stealing personal information of U.S. military members and giving it to ISIS.

Ardit Ferizi, a Kosovo citizen, was detained in Malaysia on a provisional U.S. arrest warrant alleging he provided material support to ISIS and committed computer hacking and identity theft, the U.S. Justice Department said.

According to a criminal complaint, Ferizi hacked into the computer system of a company in the United States and stole personally identifiable information of more than 1,000 U.S. service members and federal employees. Then, he allegedly gave that information to several ISIS figures, including a prominent propagandist for the group, the complaint says.

U.S. Assistant Attorney General John Carlin called the case against Ferizi -- which combines cybercrime and terror charges as U.S. authorities aim to step up their crackdown on ISIS -- "a first of its kind."

"This arrest demonstrates our resolve to confront and disrupt ISIL's efforts to target Americans, in whatever form and wherever they occur," Carlin said in a statement.

 

Ties to prominent propagandist

 

The military members' data, including home addresses and photos, was scraped from publicly available websites and passed on to Junaid Hussein, a British hacker who was active on social media recruiting Westerners to join ISIS, authorities said.

The U.S. military announced in August that it had killed Hussein in an airstrike in Syria.

He was a leading member of ISIS' so-called CyberCaliphate, which has carried out mostly nuisance hacks on military and other government websites in the United States, France and other countries.

 

Malaysia to extradite suspect

 

Malaysia's state-run Bernama news agency reported that the 20-year-old alleged hacker had entered the country in August to pursue computer science and computer forensics studies.

His arrest was a result of close cooperation between Malaysian authorities and the FBI, Malaysian Police Inspector-General Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar said, according to Bernama.

Malaysian authorities agreed to extradite Ferizi to the United States, where he is expected to face U.S. cybercrime charges.

News Courtesy: www.cnn.com