DON’T DELETE YOUR FILES
SHRED THEM INSTEAD (because hackers always look in your Recycle Bin)
Prison sentence for ‘cufflink terrorist’ -
An Isis-inspired terrorist who stored extremist content on USB cufflinks has been jailed for eight years.
Samata Ullah, 34, of Cardiff, admitted to being a member of so-called Islamic State, as well as taking part in terrorist training, preparing terrorist acts and possessing articles for terrorist purposes.
When police raided his home in September last year they seized 150 digital devices, including laptops and phones, and 30 pairs of metal cufflinks (similar to those pictured) containing tiny USB sticks. In total the devices held more than 8TB of data.
One USB contained a ‘wish list’ to boost the ISIS cause. This included chemical weapons, viruses, cyber warfare and translating a US manual on rocket engines into Arabic. It also had back issues of ISIS’S propaganda magazine.
Ullah, a British citizen of Bangladeshi origin, was a key member of the ‘Cyber Caliphate Army’, a gang of Islamist computer experts specialising in hacking.
During his trial at the Old Bailey prosecutors said that his computing abilities made him “a new and dangerous breed of terrorist”. Brian Altman QC said Ullah “deployed his not inconsiderable, self-taught computer skills to further the cause of terrorism and in particular Islamic State”.
Commander Dean Haydon, head of the Metropolitan Police’s counter-terrorism unit, said that Ullah created a “one-stop shop” for terrorists from his bedroom, offering advice on how to stay one step ahead of counterterrorism agencies, including videos on how to encrypt data and stay anonymous online. He also advised others to use USB sticks to keep information secret.
Haydon added that terrorists from around the world were accessing and using information provided by Ullah.
Police traced Ullah following the FBI’S arrest of Mohammed Abdi Ali in Kenya, who is suspected of planning an anthrax attack. Ullah was one of Ali’s contacts in the messaging app Telegram.