One of the Only Publicly Known Anonymous Hacker Tells How Anonymous Fights ISIS

Only very few members of the hacktivist collective Anonymous have been publicly identified. One such person is Gregg Housh, who recently sat down for an interview with The Washington Post and talked about what Anonymous is and how it operates.

Anonymous was formed about 11 years ago with the idea of bringing together the like-minded hackers. In response to the recent Paris attacks by ISIS, Anonymous launched its biggest ever cyberattack on ISIS‘ online propaganda. This loosely-bounded collective of hackers has tasted success in unmasking online activities of the terrorists, along with facing heat over some misleading reports to Twitter.

If you know the history of Anonymous, you must be aware of the fact that only a few members of this collective have been publicly identified.

Gregg Housh is one of the only publicly known and most prominent members of Anonymous. However, these days he is semi-retired from hacking. Talking to The Washington Post, he told more about what Anonymous is and how it operates.

Also read: Anonymous Publishes Three Guides To Teach You “How To Hack” And Fight ISIS

Housh said that everyone loves to call it “hacking”, but Anonymous also does tons of “research, identifying and monitoring everything out there that ISIS might use to communicate and recruit, and trying to get those channels shut down, be it Twitter accounts, Facebook pages, telegram channels”.

According to Housh, the activities of Anonymous has resulted in some decent effect and ISIS is finding it hard to talk in public.

Replying to a question – If you report ISIS accounts, and social media companies shut them down, won’t they just open others? – Housh said that it’s very hard to get followers on Twitter and influencing people once again is difficult.

Read his entire interview on The Washington Post.