Junaid Hussain | |
|---|---|
| Born | c. 1994 |
| Died | 25 August 2015 (aged 21) |
| Cause of death | Drone strike |
| Other names | Abu Hussain al-Britani |
| Citizenship | United Kingdom Pakistani |
| Occupation | Hacker |
| Spouse | Sally-Anne Jones (?-2015) |
| Children | 1 |
Junaid Hussain (c. 1994 – 25 August 2015) was a Britishblack hat hacker and propagandist under thenom de guerre ofAbu Hussain al-Britani who supported theIslamic State (IS).[1] Hussain, who was raised inBirmingham in a family originally fromPakistan, was jailed in 2012 for hackingTony Blair's accounts andposting his personal information online.[2][3][4][5][6][7][8] Hussain left the UK around 2013 for Syria.
Hussain was killed in 2015 viaairstrike.
Hussain was known asTriCk from the disbanded hacking groupTeaMp0isoN.[2][9] He was a key figure in a group of Islamist computer hackers who call themselves theCyber Caliphate. The Islamist hackers were involved in defacing French websites during the2015 Île-de-France attacks and the Twitter feeds of theU.S. Central Command,Newsweek and theInternational Business Times.[1] The group is believed to have been behind the use of aspearphishing attack that exposed identities of rebel media groups.[clarification needed][10]
In March 2015, Hussain released a list of U.S. military personnel requesting that IS followers execute people on the list. While Hussain claimed to have breachedUS Department of Defense servers, the FBI assessed that the list was cobbled together from news articles, social media posts, and public records.[11]
Hussain was in online contact with one of the gunmen behind theCurtis Culwell Center attack of May 2015. Before the incident, an attacker posted online statements onTwitter, in which he requested others to follow Hussain's account. After the shooting occurred, Hussain wrote: "Allahu Akbar!!!! 2 of our brothers just opened fire."[11][original research?]
An attempted lethaldrone strike on Hussain, around ten days before his death, instead killed three civilians and injured five.[12]
The Sunday Times reported that US officials intended to assassinate Hussain, listing him as the third highest IS target on the Pentagon's "kill list", behindAbu Bakr al-Baghdadi andMohammed Emwazi, due to his role in inspiring internationallone wolf terrorism.[13][14][15]
US government sources reported Hussain, along with two of his bodyguards, was killed in a drone strike on a car in aRaqqa petrol station on 24 August 2015.[a] Hussain, 21 at the time of his reported death, was married toSally Jones, 45, a fellow Briton who had joined IS. She denied his death through IS-linked Twitter accounts.[16][17]
Hussain and his wife regularly used their young son as ahuman shield to prevent drone attacks. On the occasion when he was killed, he had ventured out without the child.[18] It was reported that Hussain's location was discovered after he clicked on a compromised Internet link sent by an undercover agent on theSurespot messaging app. Jones later confirmed that Hussain had been killed.[19]