Religious hacker defaces scores of escort websites in the name of Allah

A religiously-motivated hacker using the title 'ElSurveillance' has defaced nearly 40 websites that offer escort services and claims to be on the verge of leaking data on 100,000 registered users.

As part of a campaign that started in mid-2015, dubbed #EscortsOffline, the hacker has recently ramped up activity throughout the month of June by attacking and defacing at least 37 websites in total.

ElSurveillance, who claims on social media to be from Morocco, uploaded two separate lists to text-hosting platform PasteBin containing what websites had been targeted. The first, as noted by Softpedia, contained 15 sites and the second featured 22 more.

After publishing the lists, the hacker asserted that 100,000 user credentials had also been compromised in the attacks and that they would soon been leaked online.

Ever since the campaign launched, the hacker has replaced the homepage of the targeted websites with a religious message from the Qur'an. In a December 2015 interview with DataBreaches.net, ElSurveillance stressed his focus on spreading his beliefs – however there is no way to tell if this is a legitimate stance or simply a persona adopted by the hacker.

ElSurveillance told DataBreaches.net: "I have been running an operation under the hashtag #EscortsOffline against the escorts website and agencies because I strongly believe that our bodies are gifted from Allah (God) to us to look after and not to destroy. I always hated the idea of people selling their bodies for money which it gives a chance for the escort agencies to take advantage of these people who are in need."

At the time of the interview, the hacker had defaced nearly 80 escort websites and released over 30,000 email addresses, usernames and passwords – yet many turned out to be either throwaway records created solely for the illicit online services or simply fake.

The hacker continued: "For what I have seen in my attacks and the databases that I took [users] create fake accounts, profiles and display fake photos [...] I decided to use my skills in something that I believe is good and hopefully one day the other hackers will carry the same attacks to spreading the words (sic)."

Unfortunately for ElSurveillance, the campaign has gathered little-to-no support from the wider hacktivist community. Currently he or she has under 130 followers on Twitter, and contrary to the cause at hand, at least six of those profiles are escort agencies.