NIST employee named on suspected Islamic State hit list

An employee of the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Maryland, was named on a suspected hit list circulated by the Islamic State terror group earlier this year, a local news station reported this week, citing federal records.

A NIST employee learned in August that her name appeared on a suspected hit list said to have been put out by the terrorist organization also known as ISIS or ISIL, a local NBC-owned station reported on Monday.

The woman, who has not been identified, was advised to notify internal police about her “arrivals and departures from (the) NIST campus,” the station reported, citing law enforcement records. Security was subsequently increased at the agency’s Montgomery County headquarters, the outlet added, before police ultimately decided that she had no ties to the Islamic State.

“When we get any information regarding any sort of threat against a person or business, criminal or national security in nature, we alert those people or businesses,” an FBI spokeswoman told the news network. “We have a duty to warn anyone who the threat was made against, and we do all we can to mitigate it.”

“We have followed FBI protocols in addressing this situation and have shared the relevant and important security information with all parties involved,” added a spokeswoman for NIST, a division of the Department of Commerce created to promote innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing measurement science, standards and technology. “As always, the safety and protection of our employees are essential to NIST and the Department of Commerce.”

Sympathizers and supporters of the Islamic State have circulated several supposed hit lists in recent months containing names and details pertaining to purported targets, often including state and federal government officials.

Ardit Ferizi, a citizen of Kosovo, was arrested by Malaysian authorities in October pursuant to an arrest warrant filed in the U.S. after federal prosecutors accused him of stealing sensitive information from hacked computer databases that were then handed off to the terror group for inclusion on such rosters.

In a statement released by the FBI announcing Mr. Ferizi’s arrest, prosecutors said he is believed to be the leader of a Kosovar Internet hacking group called Kosova Hacker’s Security that had compromised the personally identifiable information of thousands of individuals after breaking into an unnamed computer network.

That data was then parsed by Mr. Ferizi, prosecutors claimed, who narrowed it down to military and government employees before providing it to Junaid Hussain, a British hacker who was accused of spearheading Islamic State’s social media efforts before being killed in a U.S. airstrike earlier this year.

“On Aug. 11, 2015, in the name of the Islamic State Hacking Division (ISHD), Hussain posted a tweet titled ’NEW: U.S. Military AND Government HACKED by the Islamic State Hacking Division!’ which contained a hyperlink to a 30-page document,” the FBI said, the likes of which included names, email addresses, passwords, location data and contact information for approximately 1,351 U.S. military and other government personnel.

“This posting was intended to provide ISIL supporters in the United States and elsewhere with the PII [Personally Identifiable Information,] belonging to the listed government employees for the purpose of encouraging terrorist attacks against those individuals,” the FBI said.