"We are going to launch the biggest ever operation against you - expect very many cyber-attacks.

"War is declared. Prepare yourselves."

http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2015/11/16/anonymous-declares-war-on-isis-vows-cyberattacks.html

A lot of people will probably dismiss this, but if they are able to conduct a lot of cyber attacks they may be able to disrupt recruitment.

funny comment on FB

"This is probably the closest ISIS will get to 72 virgins"

I once heard a comedian say that he went to high school with 400 virgins and it didn't do him any good.

Didn't anon already declare war on them? 

I sort of recall that too...

Anyway:
http://news.softpedia.com/news/one-day-later-anonymous-already-takes-down-3-824-pro-isis-twitter-accounts-496258.shtml

Apparently they declared it after Charlie Hebdo.  Did some damage at the time, but not sure it was sustained.  @opparisofficial now claiming to have shut down > 5,000 twitter accounts linked to or in support of ISIS.

What does "take down" mean? I.e hacked into and took control or had them banned by Twitter?

And what effect is that likely to have? How much does ISIS really need Twitter and Facebook?

>And what effect is that likely to have?

Yeah, I don't know but I've read that social is used a lot for recruitment.

I'd suppose it has a net positive effect, apart from the man-hours they'll have to reinvest into building up those channels of communication, they'll also have to recommunicate to one another their new accounts, so another opportunity to listen in.

I'm just thinking it's probably easier to scale up new accounts than to take them down, but I could be wrong.

Ultimately, as with many such things, the motivated and persistent party wins.

Lets transpose this to SEO - bear with me a minute...

Anonymous could take out Moz, WMW and every online outlet that Barry Schwartz contributes to, and of course every public SEOs Twitter profile.

There's enough real world connections left that the whole thing could be reestablished in a heart beat, not to mention, and more significantly, the vast swathes of people busy focusing on the task at hand (be that un-Penguining themselves, or planning the Caliphate) who wouldn't even notice that some social accounts and other media outlets weren't there any more.

Put it this way.  How long would it take you to notice that Rand Fishkin hadn't tweeted anything for a while?

Maybe there is a bigger game being played than this.

>How long would it take you to notice that Rand Fishkin hadn't tweeted anything for a while?

Eternity and beyond.

Quote from: nffc on November 19, 2015, 03:25:57 PM
>How long would it take you to notice that Rand Fishkin hadn't tweeted anything for a while?

Eternity and beyond.

Actually, it might take me a few weeks to notice that Twitter was down. I suspect chatter here and around the intertubes would get it to me, but I wouldn't notice.

More generally, though, that was essentially the question I was asking and I think you're right - ISIS can reconstitute quickly. I think a concerted effort by multiple government agencies could take down the communications network as they fairly effectively with Bin Laden. But ultimately, that was because the feedback loop was pretty frightful

1. Make call to monitored phone on the terror list
2. Stay on phone a bit too long
3. Hellfire rains from sky leaving devastation and deaths of suspected and known innocents

As opposed to
1. Make Facebook post that recruits for ISIS
2. Lose Facebook account.

Again, thinking of SEO - how many people here have burned a domain and been up and running with the same spamming techniques later that day?

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/11/hacker-collective-anonymous-claims-isis-has-plans-for-more-attacks-on-sunday/