Scores of bright young computer experts are feared to have been recruited by Islamic State terrorists to plunder millions from UK banks and businesses.
The jihadist group spreading death and mayhem across Iraq and Syria is already the world’s richest rebel organisation with more than £1.5billion at its disposal.
Now British hacker Junaid Hussain, 20, jailed in 2012 for stealing personal information from Tony Blair and posting it online, is thought to be masterminding a plan to bring in countless millions more.
Hussain, from Birmingham, travelled to Syria last year while supposedly under police supervision and is believed to be teaching other hackers how to crack the code used to safeguard passwords and sensitive information.
This will allow the fanatics, who have forced thousands of Christians and other minority faiths to flee Iraq, to plunder accounts and buy more arms.
A source said: “This is a new dawn of warfare. This is not a sporadic operation.
“The hackers are targeting the accounts of the rich and famous, VIP clients of banks and big businesses.
“This is an international fraud on an unprecedented scale and the result could be a bottomless pit of money to fund their campaign of terror.”
Wearing a scarf to conceal his identity and using the alias Abu Hussain al-Britani, Hussain has posted photos of himself brandishing a rifle.
Earlier this year he tweeted a reference to the black flag associated with Islamic State, saying: “One day the flag of tawheed will fly over Downing Street and the White House.”
He also goaded peaceful young British Muslims who abhor terrorism by tweeting: “You can sit at home playing Call of Duty or you can come here and respond to the real call of duty... the choice is yours.”
The Islamic State – so barbaric it has been denounced by al-Qaeda – is beheading and crucifying its enemies as it carves out a so-called Muslim caliphate in northern Iraq and Syria.
Tens of thousands are escaping in the direction of Turkey and Syria and up to 40,000 refugees have been trapped on the Sinjar mountains as the West debates what to do next.
Experts say the terror group has moved from crude operations such as looting the central bank in Mosul – which brought them the equivalent of £300million – to being able to raid untold riches from the super rich.
Adrian Culley, a former senior detective with the Met Police Computer Crime Unit who now advises banks, told the Daily Mirror that in the last three months a number of financial institutions have been hacked by people with IP addresses in Syria and Iraq.
He said that despite banks working overtime to avert the danger, this now posed a “significant threat” to wealthy individuals.
Mr Culley went on: “We strongly suspect that this is the work of Islamic State or other groups operating out of the region.”
He said that in the last fortnight servers have been attacked in Cyprus in a “cyber attack linked to Islamic State”.
And he added: “They don’t need hundreds of hackers to carry out these attacks. The terrorists are part of the Google generation and have grown up with these kind of cyber skills. Just one hacker can steal a lot of money.”
One Islamic State fighter last week boasted of being on the front line with a man who hacked into the account of multi-millionaire American rapper P-Diddy.
Using the Twitter handle Abu Dujana @abudujanark he wrote: “With a brother that hacked P Diddy’s credit card and brought everyone pizzas.”
Prof Anthony Glees, of the University of Buckingham’s Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies, said British jihadists were using computer skills picked up at UK universities.
He added: “We know Islamic State are using more and more sophisticated methods to fund their terrorism.
“It is highly plausible, bordering on certain, that small groups of hackers in Syria and Iraq are now putting their IT skills to use to target banks and other financial institutions.”
Terror experts say that within the last few months Islamic State commanders have established a sophisticated financial wing.
Bright youngsters are being urged to join the “holy war” by committing financial fraud on a massive scale to further the bloody cause.
A spokesman for the Cabinet Office said: “We know that there are several established, capable states seeking to exploit computers and communications networks to gather intelligence and intellectual property from government, military, industrial and economic targets.”
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