The hacktivist group Anonymous has become a household name. Their actions in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks and their subsequent declaration of war against ISIS after the Paris attacks have cemented their name as a vigilante group who cause mayhem on the terrorist group's strong online presence.
Anonymous targeted dozens of ISIS-connected websites and Twitter accounts. However, they have been facing backlash for supposedly erroneous attacks that resulted in innocent people's accounts getting put down. Amidst all this, a smaller, more professional group had come out of the woodwork and they have a different tactic to Anonymous, BBC reported.
The Ghost Security Group is made up of members who used to be part of Anonymous. Apparently, they had become fed up with the unsophisticated attacks that the group had been undertaking. "They [Anonymous] don't have any counterterrorism experience whatsoever," said DigiShadow, Ghost Security Group's executive director. "We felt that not enough was being done and the Charlie Hebdo attack made it clear that ISIS was not confined to the Middle East."
What the Ghost Security Group is doing is closer to spying than hacking. They would monitor accounts and join militant message boards to infiltrate the systems. They would gather information and send them to law enforcement for action.
The group has also allegedly saved dozens of lives in Tunisia and thwarted an imminent attack. They were able to do so by monitoring a little-known Twitter account with very few followers. In here, an announcement pointing to an attack was made. The followers, though few in number, were prominent members of the terrorist group.
Ghost Security Group approached Michael S. Smith via Twitter. Smith works for defense consulting firm Kronos Advisory and is a counterterrorism adviser to members of Congress. Ghost Security Group was able to funnel their information to people who "have the mandates ... to find, finish and fix the enemy,” through Smith, CNN Money reported.
DigiShadow has also said that “We have structure and leadership. We also have a lot of counterterrorism experience. We have translators, linguists, research analysts on hand to analyze all the data that we receive.”
