Middle East terrorist organization Islamic State (ISIS) has called on its followers to take the fight to 100 members of the United States military residing in the US. A group calling itself the "Islamic State Hacking Division" has posted names, addresses, and photographs of soldiers, sailors, and airmen online, asking its "brothers residing in America" to murder them, according to Reuters.
Although the posting purports to come from the "Hacking Division," US Department of Defense officials say that none of their systems appear to have been breached by the group. Instead, the personal data was almost certainly culled from publicly available sources, a DoD official told The New York Times on the condition of anonymity.
Those appearing on the list include crew members from the 2nd Bomb Wing at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana and the 5th Bomb Wing at Minot AFB in North Dakota, even though they have played no part in the US air campaign against ISIS. Other military members doxed have either been identified in media reports on the campaign or were cited by name in official DoD reports, officials told the Times.
"And now we have made it easy for you by giving you addresses, all you need to do is take the final step, so what are you waiting for?" said the Hacking Division's posting.
ISIS has been extremely active online since its inception. It has posted gruesome videos showing the execution of hostages on video-sharing sites, and it has used Twitter, Facebook, and other social media outlets to call on would-be terrorists from Western countries to travel to the Middle East and take up arms.
As for those military personnel who were doxed by the group, DoD officials said they should be careful. "We always encourage our personnel to exercise appropriate OPSEC (operations security) and force protection procedures," an official told Reuters.
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