Group Linked to Anonymous Takes Down ISIS Website, Replaces it With Message to ‘Calm Down’

A group affiliated with the Anonymous hacker collective took down an alleged ISIS website and replaced it with advertisements and a message to calm down.

A supporter of the group Anonymous in front of the White House in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 5, 2013. Mladen Antonov/AFP/Getty Images

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Ghost Sec is a splinter group that is reportedly affiliated with Anonymous. However, some reports have said the group isn’t affiliated.

On Nov. 23, members of Ghost Sec warned against reporting all tweets in Arabic, as some Anonymous members have been doing.

Some experts have mixed opinions over what Anonymous has recently done against ISIS.

“This is likely to implicate people who follow ISIS but don’t support it,” Lawrence Husick, co-chairman of the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Center for the Study of Terrorism, told the New York Times. “They follow it for research and intelligence purposes. So it’s painting with too broad a brush.”

“This is likely to implicate people who follow ISIS but don’t support it,” Husick said. “They follow it for research and intelligence purposes. So it’s painting with too broad a brush.”

He added Anonymous sometimes publishes incorrect information or targets the wrong people.

“I’m never in favor of cybervigiliantism,” he noted, “even when it serves what I think is a just purpose.”