Thousands of angry young men are fighting a very modern war against Daesh without even leaving their bedrooms, according to the Mirror. They have banded together under the name Varuna Group.
The Anonymous-inspired "virtual international brigade" agreed to tell their story in a bid to inspire others to join the battle against an enemy which expertly uses the internet to spread propaganda and win over new recruits.
"We know how effective Daesh is at using online media to recruit people," one member of the group said.
"It sickened me to see all the violent images and videos they put online and most especially how young people were somehow perversely attracted to them.
"When you see the violence that these Daesh members put out into the world, you really want to take them on."
The hackers were inspired to take action against online Daesh supporters after Anonymous' declaration of "war" following the terror attacks on Paris.
Although they have never actually met in real life, the group became friends after getting involved in last years' campaign to "troll" Daesh, which was part of the wider Anonymous "OPISIS" campaign.
As they began to understand the extent and power of the Daesh propaganda machine, the group decided to take further action.
Now they have built up a vast database of intelligence which shows how Daesh supporters use the internet to spread their message of jihad - and how hacktivists are trying to stop them.
They have reported huge numbers of Twitter accounts, resulting in their closure, and keep a watchful eye on the social network to help stop extremists from maintaining an online presence.
Their work reveals:
- Daesh have developed sophisticated tools to help them dodge social media bans and continue spreading their message of hate.
- Extremists hide videos depicting acts of violence inside cartoons, in the hope of exposing youngsters to their propaganda.
- Hacktivists are bombarded with death threats and face a heavy psychological toll as they come face-to-face with the videos created by their enemies.
- The online Encyclopedia of Terror by Daesh has been massively expanded and now contains recipes for creating the poison ricin, building 'sticky bombs' and kidnapping innocent people.
Video nasties
The Anonymous-linked hackers revealed a disturbing video which was "hidden" inside a cartoon, so that it could be posted on YouTube without being automatically censored.
One video started with a Christmas scene, before abruptly cutting to horrific imagery of a man being burned to death inside a metal cage.
"There is a fraternity and sisterhood that gets formed from seeing so much violence and constantly being attacked online," a hacker told us.
"We have seen people getting stoned to death or beheaded.
"It's cruel stuff that haunts us when we turn off the virtual world and get back into real life."
Anonymous and its offshoots want to make sure this sort of content is wiped off the internet permanently by identifying the individuals who publish it and then reporting them to Twitter.
"We report not only Daesh accounts but also tweets that show beheadings of people in detail - not only as pictures but also as cruel and bloody videos," a hacker said.
The Daesh digital 'secret weapon'
The wider Anonymous OPISIS campaign has seen tens of thousands of extremist Twitter accounts shut down, prompting Islamic hackers to come up with their own ways of dodging social media bans.
We have learned that one Libyan computer expert has devised a program which will automatically change a person's Twitter's username every 15 minutes.
But the new digital tool could allow them to automatically dodge ban attempts, without having to go through the process of starting up a new account.
The Varuna Group showed us how one prominent female extremist online propagandist was banned from Twitter, but kept popping up again with a slightly different username to begin spreading the same message.
Her account relaunched today using a picture of a soldier grabbing a young Yazidi girl as its banner image, and was quickly followed by more than 1,000 people before Twitter suspended it.
Even though this female extremist's account is up for hours at a time, it is used to spread horrifying videos, make threats and share links to the so-called Encyclopedia of Terror.
"We found manuals explaining how to make ricin or assassinate, kidnap, or perform lone wolf attacks in the West," one of the Varuna hacktivists told us, before sending links to the terrifying content.
"We found operational security files, showing how to keep your privacy online, and how to make sticky bombs [which can be attached to vehicles or other targets].
"The whole thing is perverted."
Twitter wars
If you know where to look, it is easy to find everything from bomb-making recipes to extremist propaganda on Twitter, because it is next to impossible for the social network to monitor every tweet.
Cyber-extremists have built up a huge amount of information which is invaluable to militants and sleeper cells on a number of websites, as well as a vast library of execution videos.
Links to this content are then openly shared on the social network, which often relies on individuals to report dangerous content because of the sheer volume of messages posted every single day.
Hackers think it should do more to tackle the problem.
"American companies are letting sworn enemies of everything we stand for as a nation and a culture spew their culture of hate using their technology," one hacktivist said.
"Why on earth is a company like Twitter not doing anything about this?"
He called on Twitter to install image recognition software to quickly identify extremist iconography and employ a full time team to monitor content to make sure Daesh was not able to publish its dangerous propaganda.
Shell shock
"We are volunteers doing it in our free time because we care," the hackers added.
"And that’s what it’s all about – doing whatever we can.
"We are only little drops into the huge ocean. But maybe our little drops make the difference. We want to encourage everyone to join in the hunt for Daesh."
But part of the work of tackling Daesh online involves trawling through their propaganda material, which features beheadings and videos of victims being burned alive, blown up or thrown from tall buildings.
"I cannot tell you how shocked I am to see what goes on here," the hacktivist continued.
"The violence is extreme and young kids see it too.
"I have nightmares after watching it all."
By Jasper Hamill
Editor's note: This article has been edited from the source material.
