Library of ISIS online propaganda discovered

Researchers at the Institute of Strategic Dialogue have discovered one of the largest collections of online material belonging to the ISIS terrorist group.

The digital library contains more than 90,000 items and has an estimated 10,000 unique visitors a month, with experts claiming that it provides a way to continually replenish extremist content on the net.

The ISD says that, despite counter terrorism authorities in Britain and the US having been alerted to this growing repository, it continues to grow. As the data is not stored in one place, taking it down is difficult. The data is spread across a decentralised system, rather than a single computer server. Anyone can share the content across the web, via servers based at multiple locations, hampering any effort to take it offline.

The discovery of the ‘Caliphate Cache’ library followed the death of prominent ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in October 2019, with researchers finding that many social media posts supporting the organisation at that time contained a short link. It led researchers to documents and videos in nine different languages.

They included details of attacks, including those on Manchester Arena on 22 May 2017, in London on 7 July 2005 and in the US on 11 September 2001.

According to the research, most of those drawn to the Caliphate Cache are 18- to 24-year-old males in the Arab world, with 40 per cent of the traffic coming from social media, largely via YouTube.