The Proud Kafir: Islamic State Urging Attacks on US Military at Home Publishes Personal Information

Sunday, 22 March 2015

Islamic State Urging Attacks on US Military at Home Publishes Personal Information

The Islamic State released a link with the names and addresses of 100 US military personnel living in the United States. Most of those listed are US Air Force or Navy personnel of various ranks and duty positions. We had shown in some previous articles where the Islamic State had been using social media to target intelligence officials in Jordan and Saudi Arabia starting in July 2014. We also had released articles showing how the Islamic State has been trying to urge its followers in the US to attack service members in their homes. The site lists each person with their picture posted to the left, the name at the top right with the address and branch of service listed directly below the name. There are 8 boxes per page each containing the personal information of each individual. In some of the boxes it contains the actual duty position of the individual such as the commanding officer of the George HW Bush Aircraft Carrier. Most of the individuals appear to be aviators or have something to do with US air power through service in the Air Force or Navy.

The majority of the listed individuals are males, but there are also several females listed. Oddly the females are blurred out but all of their personal information including home addresses are listed. Most of the service members are in uniform the “list” and at least one is standing in an office picture with President Obama. Some of the images are clearly off of social media due to the attire the individuals are wearing, but some may be in official photographs from military archives.

The Islamic State has been pushing its followers in the US to attack service members or veterans in their homes since at least September 2014. They have used social media to identify them with pictures posted on sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, or other such sites. The Islamic State has only been able to get a few followers to conduct attacks and those have been individuals that self actualized into radicalism such as the individual that beheaded a woman in Oklahoma. His actions were spurred more quickly due to being fired, but may have participated in a more casualty producing event if he had radicalized longer. There are currently investigations in every state as Alaska has just recently opened its first case into Islamic State related radicalized individuals of interest. Several individuals were recently arrested after declaring they would conduct attacks on US soil, one of which stated he would shoot President Obama in the head. Highly unlikely the individual would have been able to pull off such an attack, but it shows that there are an increasing number of individuals becoming involved with the Islamic State.

While the numbers remain low indicators continue to show that the Islamic State’s social media outreach continues to target American citizens for radicalization. Al Hayat Media Center and Al Furqan Media Foundation continue saturating North America with social media campaigns directed at US citizens. In addition the individual jihadist also target their home countries and the US has at a minimum 100 US citizens that have been involved in the conflict and that number may be as high as 500. The Islamic State continues to attempt to build infrastructure in the US to facilitate attacks. As it continues to build its credibility and overshadow Al Qaeda it is likely to gain control of existing infrastructure that Al Qaeda had already in place in the US. Islamic State has already been successful in taking control of entire armed groups in Libya and Tunisia for example along with their facilitators that had once been loyal to Al Qaeda.

Below is the header information that the Islamic State’s “Hacking Division” leads the document off with addressing followers.

Source: The Islamic State

Here is a block of the document that shows how it lists the personnel and their personal data. We blurred out the faces and personal addresses, but left the unit information. US military personnel need to take precautions just to stay on the safe side.