US Central Command Twitter feed 'hacked by IS group'
The hackers, calling themselves the CyberCaliphate, began tweeting on the @CENTCOM feed at about 5.30pm GMT. The account was shut down around half an hour later.
“American soldiers, we are coming, watch your back. ISIS,” the first Tweet read, using an alternative name for the IS Jihadist organisation.
“In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful, the CyberCaliphate continues its CyberJihad,” said another.
The hackers then began posting images purporting to show confidential files that contained the names, addresses and other personal details about US military staff.
They also posted what appeared to be possible scenarios for US military action in China and North Korea.
They included maps of positions of missile facilities in North Korea as well as military divisions in China.
US Central Command confirmed the accounts had been hacked, the AFP news agency reported.
A Pentagon official told Reuters that Centcom was taking “appropriate measures to address the matter”.
The official said that while the hacking was an embarrassment, it did not appear to pose a security threat.
The US and its allies have been targeting the IS group in air strikes in recent months in an attempt to stop the militants’ advance through large swaths of Iraq and Syria.
It is not the first time the IS Group is alleged to have been involved in cyber warfare.
According to the Canada-based cyber research centre Citizen Lab, the group is thought to be behind an attack on the computers of members of an anti-IS activist group in Syria last month.
The attack on US Central Command comes after members of the hacker group Anonymous vowed to take down websites affiliated with "al Qaeda, the Islamic State and other terrorists” as revenge for last week’s attack on satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo’s offices in Paris.
On Saturday they claimed responsibility for taking down ansar-alhaqq.net, a French jihadist site.
France24
