Anonymous Claims It Averted an Islamic State Terror Attack in Italy

Anonymous, a regular font of bold proclamations, tweeted on Monday that the hacker collective had foiled an alleged Islamic State plot to attack Italy.

Anonymous’ tweet follows a video the group posted in November, in which a hooded figure wearing the group’s de rigueur Guy Fawkes mask announced a war against the Islamic State. Since then, much of Anonymous’ activity has been geared toward disrupting the Islamic State’s online recruitment and digital activities. The group claims to have hacked and deactivated thousands of Islamic State Twitter accounts since its self-stylized war began.

While it’s likely that Anonymous has infiltrated the organization’s social media accounts, which form the basis of its complex recruitment-engine, its claim of actually thwarting a physical terror attack is worth scrutinizing. Anonymous has been quick to sound alarms in the aftermath of the Paris attacks, and has even called upon regular internet users to troll the terrorists, as if matters of international security could be treated like a giant Reddit thread. Nonetheless, the group claims that we’ll soon have more context and background information on what, if anything, occurred in Italy:

The original video Anonymous produced — the one that declared a formal war against the Islamic State — managed to agitate the terror group’s leadership the moment it hit the web: The Islamic State called Anonymous “idiots” in response, and advised its supporters to adopt a certain five-step protocol to ward off the threat of hacks. Apparently it’s not that easy, though.

Anonymous noted on December 18 that it’s making the terrorists sweat a little bit.