One hacker fights the Islamic State with porn

LOS ANGELES, June 17 (UPI) -- A hacker said he has hacked at least 250 social media accounts of Islamic State members over the last month and swapped their content with porn and gay pride content.

The hacker, who goes by the name WauchulaGhost, is waging his own war against the Islamic State by erasing reference to jihad with images that say "I [heart] porn," and "I'm gay and I'm proud and images of nude women.

"There was a few of us that discovered a vulnerability," he told CNNMoney. "We thought, 'Hey let's go start taking their accounts and humiliating them.'"

Since Sunday's deadly attack in Orlando, WauchulaGhost has changed his strategy from merely posting images to shock and offend Islamic State members to replacing their flags with rainbow flags and gay couples embracing.

"You had all those innocent lives lost," he said. "I just felt there's something I could do against the Islamic State to defend those people."

When he was 16, he bought his first computer, and took it apart, when it wouldn't run after that, he took it to a local big-box store. The tech guru there taught the teen who would eventually take the name "Wauchula Ghost" how to hack. He's now a member of the hacker's group Anonymous.

Since 2015, Twitter has -- in moves lawmakers have fervently supported -- shut down more than 125,000 accounts for posting threats or promotion of terrorist acts. WauchulaGhost has been assembling a public list called, "Jacked accounts," pointing out the extremist content to Twitter, which has in turn suspended the accounts. The list was empty by Sunday afternoon.

He says he will continue hacking Islamic State accounts as a kind of Twitter crime fighter, humiliating and offending and exposing religious extremists outside the law.

"I think we're there to serve a purpose, at least I know I am," he said. "My goal waking up in the morning [is to] see messages from Daesh (the Arabic name for the Islamic State), telling me they're going to kill me or cut my head off. The madder they get, the happier I get."