A group associated with the Anonymous hacktivist movement launched what they claimed was a "total war" against the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or Daesh), encouraging people to join in an effort allegedly targeting social media accounts associated with the terror organization in response to the attacks in Paris a week ago. Multiple "ops" have been launched in an attempt to crowdsource efforts to disrupt ISIS social media and even hack its members. But there has also been a rash of accusations between those associated with different operations, and it's not clear that any of them are achieving anything other than drawing attention to Anonymous again.

Seriously, after #OpISIS there have been too many fame whores. It's not about the follows or RTs. It's about the truth. Have some integrity. — Anonymous (@GroupAnon) November 22, 2015

In a video release, self-proclaimed members of #OpParis announced that they had taken down 20,000 Twitter accounts associated with ISIS. Individuals associated with the operation also claim to have alerted law enforcement to planned ISIS attacks in the US and Paris.

However, many of the accounts targeted by an automated Twitter reporting script that the group has distributed via links from its chat channel have nothing to do with the Islamic State. And the FBI has discounted that information, releasing a statement that "we do not have specific or credible information of an attack at this time." The US attack claimed to have been uncovered by Anonymous members was allegedly targeting a WWE wrestling event in Atlanta tonight.

Nearly all of the accounts in the current list being distributed by the operation via Pastebin to a Twitter reporting script being used by some Anonymous members have already been suspended. Another list of about 4,000 accounts posted by Anonymous members and reviewed by Ars includes Twitter accounts that have posted messages sympathetic to ISIS, but in the majority they are not specifically ISIS. Some are actually those of Palestinians, and others appear to be accounts "trolling" ISIS. Others appear to be merely accounts in Arabic.

In a blog post, the hacktivist th3j35t3r (who has a long history of conflict with Anonymous) claimed that Anonymous was duping media outlets with the #OpParis campaign and called the operation a "comedy of errors" (among other things). He posted a communication he claimed to have received from the owner of the Twitter account connected with #OpParis (though the post appears to have been deleted from @OpParisOfficial's timeline) admitting that the identity of the targeted accounts wasn't entirely nailed down:

According to a report by the Daily Dot, Twitter is ignoring additional lists of accounts being submitted by Anonymous members because a review of them has shown them to be "wildly inaccurate." Twitter and other social networking sites, including Telegram, have been working to remove any public accounts related to ISIS. Twitter uses staffers who speak Arabic to review accounts in question.

Meanwhile, some of the people coming to the IRC chat channel associated with the operation don't seem to really understand what's going on. One person logging into the channel asked, "Who's ISIS?" The people managing the channel also demanded that others only speak English in the chat and not "clutter up the channel with only mandarin or Spanish or something."

In the meantime, ISIS supporters aren't sitting by idly. A new Telegram group is being used to spread information on how to secure accounts and devices against the usual brands of Anonymous attacks.