Malaysia arrests man for hacking U.S. security data for targets for Islamic State

[IceWizard]

Fri Oct 16, 2015 | 1:41 AM EDT

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) -
Malaysia has arrested a man on charges of hacking into the personal information of more than a thousand U.S. security officials and handing the database to the Islamic State militant group in Syria so it could target the individuals.

The 20-year-old from Kosovo, who entered
Malaysia in August 2014 to study computer
science and forensics at a private institute in
the capital, Kuala Lumpur, will be extradited to
the United States, police said in a statement on Thursday night.

"Early investigation found the suspect communicated with one of the right hand man (leader) of IS terrorist group in Syria to hack a few servers containing information and details of U.S security personnel and team,"
Malaysian police said. "The details were then transferred to the operation unit of the IS group for further action."

The U.S. Justice Department said the man, Ardit Ferizi, a citizen of Kosovo and a known hacker, had been charged with hacking the personal information of 1,351 U.S. military personnel and federal employees and supporting Islamic State.

Ferizi, believed to be the leader of a Kosovar
internet hacking group called Kosova Hacker’s
Security (KHS), hacked the computer system of a U.S. company and stole the personal
identification information (PII) of thousands of
individuals, the department said in a statement on its website on Thursday.

Between June and August 2015 Ferizi allegedly
provided the PII to an Islamic State member,
who in turn posted a tweet titled "NEW: U.S.
Military AND Government HACKED by the
Islamic State Hacking Division!” which
contained a hyperlink to a 30-page document.

The document said in part: “we are in your
emails and computer systems, watching and
recording your every move, we have your
names and addresses."

It said that information would be passed on to Islamic State fighters "who soon with the permission of Allah will strike at your necks in your own lands!"

The U.S. Justice Department statement said:
"This posting was intended to provide ISIL
(Islamic State) supporters in the United States
and elsewhere with the PII belonging to the
listed government employees for the purpose of encouraging terrorist attacks against those individuals."

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Although Muslim-majority Malaysia has not
seen any significant militant attacks, it has
arrested more than 100 citizens this year on
suspicion of links to Islamic State.

Authorities are cracking down on people with
Islamic State links and have so far identified
several Malaysians who have gone to Syria
and Iraq to join the group.

In August, police arrested 10 Malaysians
suspected of links to Islamic State, among them six members of Malaysia's security forces.

(This version of the story fixes a typo in the
paragraph three.)


(Reporting by Yantoultra Ngui, Writing by
Praveen Menon; Editing by Michael Perry)