The bitcoin equivalent of $3 million has been found on an account allegedly belonging to a person connected with ISIL.

One of the members of the Ghost Security Group (GhostSec), an anti-terrorist hacker team that traces and prevents terrorist online activity, shared this information recently in an interview to Newsbtc.com. Their identity is not being revealed due to security purposes. The address of the account hasn't been disclosed.

According to GhostSec, bitcoin is the main cryptocurrency used by the members of ISIL. It is still hard to say whether ISIL terrorists have the technologies for bitcoin mining, but there is no doubt they regularly receive bitcoin donations.

GhostSec claims to have traced and successfully shut down some of the ISIL bitcoin addresses and bitcoin funding websites.

Beatrice Berton, junior analyst for EU Institute for Security Studies (EUISS), published a report this June indicating the intensive use of bitcoin by ISIL terrorists. Bitcoin operations are hard to trace, therefore ISIL followers all over the world use this currency to support the Islamic State, wrote Berton.

Besides its pragmatic advantages, bitcoin is also ideologically more convenient for ISIL adherents. It allows to avoid control of any Western state and only abide by the law of Shariah in any transactions, writes Ali Amin, Islamic State supporter, now sentenced to 11 years' imprisonment  in the USA for teaching islamist militants how to use cryptocurrencies.

Several terrorist attacks on November 13 in Paris allegedly committed by ISIL militants took more than 120 lives. The GhostSec group are currently analyzing the ISIL online activity in an attempt to track the attackers and organizers.

Andrew Levich