Isis’ Latest Caribbean Attack

The Isis support message posted to the JIS site. (Jamaica Observer image)

News Americas, KINGSTON, Jamaica, Weds. June 24, 2015: A second Caribbean nation has come under attack from supporters of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) or Isis as it’s more popularly known.

Jamaica’s Houses of Parliament, the Jamaica Information Service and the Jamaica National Commission for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) were among six sites in Jamaica hacked by Isis supporters Monday night.

The Culture, Health, Arts, Sports and Education (CHASE) Fund, and GC Foster College as well as the Social Development Commission (SDC) were also hacked.

Visitors were greeted with an Isis propaganda message left by hackers who claimed themselves as “Team System Dz,” according to the Jamaica Observer.

Jamaica is the second Caribbean nation to suffer an attack from Isis hackers in weeks. Last month, ISIL’s supporters hacked the official website of St. Vincent and Grenadines and changed the front page into a picture of a man firing a machine gun from the back of a pick-up truck.

Below the photo was a message in which the hackers accused the United States and NATO forces of being involved in “organized butchery” of the human race.

“They overthrow governments of sovereign nations and they undermine, threaten, refuse to recognize and seek to destroy democratically elected governments like they are in Syria, Iraq, Gaza, Palestine,” the message stated. “They support dictators as long as they are fulfilling US, EU & NATO interest in the region like they did in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. You speak of freedom of speech and freedom of expression but you remain silent in the face of a people desire to seek freedom to exist – unless those people are Israeli Zionists! Hypocrisy of this magnitude will bring the chickens home to roost and not peace and security as is your mantra!”  In that case, the hackers called themselves “Moroccan Wolf — Islamic State.”

The Jamaica Information Service (JIS) site was, however, back up and running yesterday.

A statement yesterday said the cyber security teams from the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) and the Technology Ministry were assisting the JIS web team into the hack attack but preliminary findings reveal that the “hactivists” did not access to sensitive information but was constrained to “surface defacement.”

The attacks come months after Marine Gen. John F. Kelly, chief of the US Southern Command said 100 would-be militants have already left s Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Suriname and Venezuela to fight with Islamic State extremists in Syria – and could potentially get across the US border when they return home.

In remarks made in March before the Senate Armed Services Committee in advance of the committee’s review of the Defense Authorization request for fiscal year 2016, Kelly described the effects that a return of sequestration would have on his command.

“In Latin American, in Southern Command [sequestration] will be, simply put, a catastrophe. It will essentially put me out of business,” Kelly told the panel.