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​Hacker gives pro-ISIS Twitter users a pro-gay look

Rainbow flags replaced ISIS flags on the social network in the wake of the Orlando shooting.

Stephen Shankland Former Principal Writer
Stephen Shankland worked at CNET from 1998 to 2024 and wrote about processors, digital photography, AI, quantum computing, computer science, materials science, supercomputers, drones, browsers, 3D printing, USB, and new computing technology in general. He has a soft spot in his heart for standards groups and I/O interfaces. His first big scoop was about radioactive cat poop.
Expertise Processors, semiconductors, web browsers, quantum computing, supercomputers, AI, 3D printing, drones, computer science, physics, programming, materials science, USB, UWB, Android, digital photography, science. Credentials
  • Shankland covered the tech industry for more than 25 years and was a science writer for five years before that. He has deep expertise in microprocessors, digital photography, computer hardware and software, internet standards, web technology, and more.
Stephen Shankland
Twitter accounts associated with ISIS got gay pride graphics.​

Twitter accounts associated with ISIS got gay pride graphics.

Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET

A hacker associated with the Anonymous activist group has given several Twitter accounts a pro-gay look after a Sunday attack that killed 49 people in a gay bar in Orlando.

"You had all those innocent lives lost. I just felt there's something I could do against the Islamic State to defend those people," a hacker calling himself WauchulaGhost said in an interview with CNNMoney. He and other Anonymous members found a vulnerability that let them take over the accounts, he said, letting him replace ISIS flags with gay-pride rainbow flags and posting Orlando memorial imagery.

ISIS uses social media to spread its messages, but Twitter is trying to stop the practice on its service. In February Twitter said it suspended 125,000 ISIS-related accounts. Some but not all of the accounts WauchulaGhost showed as hacked have been suspended.