The British Hacker Who Became the Islamic State's Chief Terror Cybercoach: A Profile of Junaid Hussain.

AuthorHamid, Nafees

Junaid Hussain became the Islamic State's chief English-language cyber influencer during his short tenure with the group. In addition to directly plotting attacks with recruits, he inspired others, disseminated sensitive information, and captured the attention of the media. He became the face of a new cyber-savvy version of jihadism. His behavior was so threatening to coalition nations that he became the first hacker in history to be killed by a drone strike.

This profile is the culmination of interviews conducted by the author and his research team with Junaid Hussain's friends, ex-hacking associates, family friends, an ex-prison inmate, his former lawyer, senior U.S. and U.K. security officials, people he spoke to online while he was in Syria, access to transcripts of those private conversations, U.S. and U.K. court documents, and news reports. (a)

A Politicized Kid from a Leafy Suburb

Junaid Hussain (born circa 1994) was a second-generation British national whose family hailed from the Pakistani side of Kashmir. When he was growing up, his family lived in the Small Heath district of Birmingham, an area heavily populated by South Asians with the second-highest crime rate in Birmingham. (1) Before he became radicalized, Hussain's family moved out of that area and into Kings Heath, an area often touted as a highly desirable place to live in the United Kingdom. (2) It was while living in this leafy neighborhood that Hussain's worldview changed. (b)

His father was a respectable member of the British Pakistani community. He ran private hire cabs in the Birmingham area when Hussain was growing up. The senior Hussain was considered an "honorable," "hardworking," and "well-spoken" man by family friends interviewed by the author. (3) Junaid Hussain, in contrast, seemed to be a person of few words.

Junaid Hussain's friends, including individuals who interacted with him in Syria, paint a picture of a reserved yet passionate young man. According to a family friend who knew Hussain from a young age, "Hussain wasn't somebody you had a lot of interaction with... he wasn't that kind of an outgoing person as such, he was of limited words... always seemed withdrawn like, you know, when somebody has a lot on their mind and... they're really into deep thought... he wasn't one to hold conversations for long periods of time on any particular topic so it was very sort of piecemeal and short, unless he was talking about technology and then he'd have more of an attention span." (4)

This sentiment was echoed by a friend who primarily got to know Hussain in the months before he left for Syria. "When you just tried to have small talk with him, or try to get to know him, he would shut down sort of. But when it came to topics he was passionate about, he really came to life." (5)

His personality did not seem to alter much when he went to Syria. Dilly Hussain (no relation to Junaid Hussain) is a U.K.-based journalist and activist, and one of the few people who interviewed Hussain via Skype video when he was in Syria. (6) When asked to describe Hussain, he said, "I could describe him in three words: he was polite, he was very smart, and he was passionate... He wasn't a chatterbox though. When it came to politics, he would be very talkative, very outgoing, very defensive. But areas pertaining to his past... I'd get one-word answers or a handful of words." (7)

A Hacker Known as TriCk

Even before he reached his teenage years, he became involved in online hacking. Hussain felt more comfortable interacting with the world from behind a computer screen rather than face to face. According to a friend who knew Hussain from when he was 15 years old to the time he left for Syria, "You couldn't really see too much of his emotions, unless he was online... He was quiet in real life. He was louder online. I'd say he was more himself online than in real life." When his hacktivist friends who never met him in real life but chatted with him on a daily or weekly basis were asked to describe his personality, they all described him very differently than those who knew him offline. "One-hundred percent outgoing, extroverted, funny, witty. But most of all, extremely caring and compassionate," one such hacktivist said. (8)

Hussain's foray into the hacking world stemmed from a need for retribution. In February 2012, around two years before he arrived in Syria, Hussain gave a revealing interview to the website Softpedia. He described how at the age of 11 someone hacked into his account for a game he was playing online. "I wanted revenge, so I started Googling around on how to hack." Hussain was unable to get his revenge, but it did set him down a path of skill-building. "I joined a few online hacking forums, read tutorials, started with basic social engineering and worked my way up... I lurked forums, met people, asked questions, from then I moved onto hacking websites, servers, etc." (9)

As his hacking skills developed, so too did his taste for political activism. "When I was 15, I became political. It started from watching videos of children getting killed in countries like Kashmir & Palestine. I wanted to know why this was happening and who was doing it, there was loads of questions in my head," Hussain told Softpedia. (10) Hussain's passion for politics would take him out of his house and onto the streets. As early as 2009, he was protesting in the streets for the plight of the Muslim people. "It was mostly against EDL stuff," said Hussain's friend, referring the British right-wing group, the English Defense League. (11)

While Hussain was clearly passionate about the suffering of the Muslim people, he was not particularly passionate about Islam. "I wouldn't say he was particularly a very religious young man. Nothing ever showed to me that he was, you know, praying five times a day or a devotee as such. He probably went to the mosque a few times on different occasions," said a family friend who knew him since childhood. "No, just a bitterness towards the suffering in Kashmir, Palestine, Iraq--those sort of places." (12)

However, his time alone on his computer would send him down a rabbit hole of conspiracy theories. As he told Softpedia, "I browsed the net, read books, watched documentaries, etc. I was getting more and more into politics, I started researching deeper into stuff like the Free Masons, Illuminati, The Committee of 300, etc. It made me angry, it changed the way I lived my life and the way I saw the world. I then started using hacking as my form of medium by defacing sites to raise awareness of issues around the world and to 'bully' corrupt organizations and embarrass them via leaks etc., which is how I got into hacktivism." (13)

Hussain was not alone in his 'hacktivism.' He got a group of hacktivists together, many who shared similar political leanings though not necessarily the same ethnicity. "I was in a couple of hacking groups & underground forums which were slowly becoming dead and inactive so I created my own site pOison.org (was 15 at the time), and TeaMpOisoN was formed from there." (14)

TeaMpOisoN was a band of eight hacktivists made up of teenagers and young adults mostly from the United Kingdom. (15) Hussain's hacktivist pseudonym was TriCk, (16) and the other members went by the pseudonyms of iN&SaNe, MLT, Phantom-, CORPS3, forsaken, aXioM and apOcalypse. (17) In the early days of TeaMpOisoN, members collaborated with various other groups such as the ZCompany Hacking Crew. Both groups identified as pro-Palestinian and pro-Kashmiri, and they collaborated on hacks against those they perceived as the enemies of Muslims. For example, in December 2010, posts began to appear on Facebook groups that were deemed Zionist, right-wing, or anti-Islamic, which said "On the evening of the 31st of December 2010 (New Years Eve), TeaMPOisoN and ZCompany Hacking Crew will clean up Facebook." (18) And indeed, on New Year's Eve, hundreds of Facebook group pages run by organizations like the English Defense League (EDL) went blank. Hussain and members of ZHC took credit for the hack, which was followed shortly thereafter by hacks against Mark Zuckerberg's (19) and then French President Nicolas Sarkozy's (20) Facebook pages. It is unclear if Hussain or TeaMpOisoN was involved in these latter hacks.

Cyber attacking local right-wing groups remained a focus of Hussain's through the beginning of 2011. In February 2011, EDL's website was apparently hacked by Junaid Hussain, as evidenced by a message and pictures of Palestinian protestors and Israeli tanks. The message's headline stated "Hacked By TriCk aka Saywhat? - TeaMpOisoN." The message stated:

"I am an extremist, I try extremely hard to hack websites to raise awareness of issues, I'm a terrorist, I terrorize websites & servers, But the EDL are extremists too, they try extremely hard to kick Muslims out of the UK, and they are terrorists, they terrorise local Muslim communities & businesses - Myself & the EDL are both extremists & terrorists, but why do they want to kick me out? Because I follow a certain religion? I was born in UK, my skin colour may not be the same as yours but my passport colour is..." (21) Hussain then claimed to have personal information of EDL leaders and supporters and threatened to release the information, which he eventually did. (22)

By mid-2011, Hussain started to up the ante of his hacking exploits. In June of that year, TeaMpOisoN posted former British Prime Minister Tony Blair's address book online. (23) The hack was accomplished by accessing a Blair advisor's personal email account and then copying the contacts. (24)

In the months that followed, TeaMpOison would claim multiple hacks, including on Blackberry for cooperating with authorities during rioting in several cities in England in the summer of 2011; (25) defacing Croatia's NATO website; (26) breaching a (potentially outdated) United Nations Development Programme server; (27) making questionable claims...

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