US Military Unsure if Staff Info Posted Online Result of Leak or ISIL Hack

MOSCOW (Sputnik), Alexander Mosesov — It is yet to be found out whether the release of personal data belonging to US military personnel on social media is an outcome of a leak or a cyberattack carried out by the ISIL-linked hackers, Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Jeffrey Pool told Sputnik on Wednesday.

Recent US media reports revealed that the so-called ISIL Hacking Division used the Twitter account affiliated with infamous ISIL fighter Abu Hussain al-Britani to publish what they claimed to be names, emails, passwords, and phone numbers of individuals from the Air Force, the Marines, NASA and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

On Tuesday, the US Department of Defense stated it could not confirm the credibility of the information posted online.

"We are still looking into the incident but cannot confirm if the information posted was a resulted of a leak or hack," Pool said.

In January, the Twitter and YouTube accounts of the US military command were hacked by ISIL sympathizers calling themselves CyberCaliphate.

ISIL is a fundamentalist extremist group, primarily operating in Iraq and Syria, notorious for their multiple atrocities.