An overseas hacker from the group Kosovo Hacker's Security was handed a 20-year term Friday. This is the nation's first prosecution of a hacker trying to carry out an act of terrorism.

Kosovo citizen Ardit Ferizi, a 20-year-old with the online handle Th3Dir3ctorY, was arrested in Malaysia in 2015. In a Virginia federal court earlier this year, he pleaded guilty to stealing data on US military personnel by hacking undisclosed US corporate computers and then providing that data to the Islamic State (ISIS) terror group.

"This case represents the first time we have seen the very real and dangerous national security cyber threat that results from the combination of terrorism and hacking," said US Assistant Attorney General John Carlin. "This was a wake-up call not only to those of us in law enforcement but also to those in private industry."

The defendant admitted (PDF) to forwarding the data to Junaid Hussain, an Islamic State hacker killed in August by a military airstrike. Days before his death, Hussain tweeted, "NEW: U.S. Military AND Government HACKED by the Islamic State Hacking Division!" The tweet contained a hyperlink that included the "names, e-mail addresses, e-mail passwords, locations, and phone numbers for approximately 1,351 US military and other government personnel (PDF)," the government said.

According to federal prosecutors, that linked document also said, in part, that "we are in your emails and computer systems, watching and recording your every move, we have your names and addresses, we are in your emails and social media accounts, we are extracting confidential data and passing on your personal information to the soldiers of the khilafah, who soon with the permission of Allah will strike at your necks in your own lands!'"

Nobody on the list was believed to have been attacked because of the hack.