Hacker who allegedly passed U.S. military data to ISIS arrested in Malaysia

While scrolling through CNN's website, I ran into this article about Ardit Freizi. I am fascinated with online hacking, because I think the United States does not realize yet how potentially dangerous this can become in the future. Ardit Freizi is being detained in Malaysia on a US arrest warrant. He is being accused of hacking into a United States company and stealing the identities of more than 1,000 U.S. service members and federal employees. Not only did Freizi steal this information, he gave it to ISIS. This is not only a cyber attack, but also an attack of terrorism. I think this is the direction terrorists groups are moving in. They are more proficient on the web than I think we give them credit for. Freizi gave this information to several ISIS members. One of them was Junaid Hussein. Ironically, Junaid Hussein was a British hacker who actively tried to recruit Westerners on social media and over the web to join ISIS. It is scary to see how much ISIS is truly growing. The United States did state that they killed Hussein in an airstrike in August in Syria. It is remarkable to see how they can convince regular people to join them. I live in Bolingbrook, and there was a story about a year ago, about someone from Bolingbrook being arrested for trying to join ISIS. I believe he was arrested at the airport about to board a flight. This young man who I do not know was a year younger than me. I write about this example, because that could have easily been me attempting to get onto a plane to join ISIS. Another thing that really scared me in the article was that ISIS has a division called Cyber Caliphate. Cyber Caliphate launches hacks onto military and government websites of numerous countries, including France and the United States. ISIS has a division in their group just solely for the basis of cyber attacks. Cyber attacks add a whole other issue into how to stop ISIS. One thing that I did not like about the article at all was that they mentioned that Freizi might have mental health issues. While I do think this is important to note to a certain extent, I think CNN tried to suggest that his potential mental health issues lead him to do this. I hate when I see the news always portraying people with mental health issues as more prone to violence, or they write the story in a way that the mental health issue caused this. There are so many people with mental health issues that would never even think about joining ISIS. Another thing that did not surprise me was that the family of Ardit Freizi was shocked to have found out he is being accused of these charges. The family stated that they loved what the United States did in Kosovo. Ardit Freizi is a Kosovo student. This just goes to show that we need to stop thinking that only one type of people are capable of joining ISIS. Sometimes people do things that you would never expect them to do. If the courts recognize that Freizi is mentally ill, then they will release him to his family so they can take care of him. I hope this is the result, because I think this guy just needs to be with his family. If it turns out to be true of the allegations against him, I think he needs to be extradited to the United States and put in prison for numerous years, but nothing over 10 years. In conclusion, the issues of online hacking into our military and government database do not appear to be going away any time shortly.

Milto Deli

Link:

http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/15/politics/malaysian-hacker-isis-military-data/index.html