In response to last week’s terrorist attacks on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hedbo , a well-known computer hacking group has declared cyber war on Islamic extremists. The hacking group which calls themselves Anonymous released a statement on their web site and a video on you tube declaring war on extremist groups such as ISIS and Al Qaeda.

Anonymous has become well known as a worldwide activist group that stands up for freedom of speech and freedom of expression. In the past they have targeted the church of Scientology and the KKK.

The hacktivist group is calling their new endeavor, operation Charlie Hebdo, using the twitter tag #OpCharlieHebdo. In the You Tube video a spokesperson appears wearing the group’s trademark Guy Fawkes mask.

In it he says, “We declare war on Al Qaeda, the Islamic State and other extremists.” The spokesman with his voice disguised electronically goes on to add, “We intend to take revenge in their name, we are going to survey your activities on the net, we are going to shut down your accounts on all social networks, we will dump all personal information on terrorists we come across.”

In a further statement the group Anonymous also said, “Disgusted and also shocked, we cannot fall to our knees. It is our responsibility to react. Anonymous must remind every citizen that the press’s freedom is fundamental to democracy…freedom of expression and opinion is a non-negotiable thing. To attack it, is to attack democracy. Expect a massive frontal reaction from us because the struggle for the defense of those freedoms is the foundation of our movement, operation Charlie Hebdo engaged.”

Shortly after the announcement the hacktivist group claims to have taken down its first Islamic extremist website, ansar-alhaqq.net. The group posted a tweet using the account @OpCharlieHebdo stating it had crippled the popular terrorist website.

The tweet also had the hash tag #TangoDown and the message, “Expect us. #OpCharlieHebdo #JeSuisCharlie,” referencing the groups cyber war campaign launched worldwide in the wake of the French terror attacks.

After the Anonymous attack, the ansar-alhaqq.net page remained down, its users are re-directed to the search engine Duck Duck Go. Tech experts speculate the hacktivist group may have used a distributed denial of service (DDoS). This technique has been used by Anonymous previously, the DDoS overloads the website with vast amounts of data causing the server to go down.

Members of the group anonymous are viewed anywhere from digital Robin Hoods to cyber terrorists for their hacking campaigns. In 2008 the group staged a series of protests they called “Project Chanology.” This involved pranks, and hacks aimed at disrupting the Church of Scientology .

Other targets of Anonymous included U.S. and Israeli government agencies, the Westboro Baptist Church, and corporations such as PayPal, MasterCard, Visa, and more recently the Sony PlayStation and XBOX networks.

In 2013 they declared war on chat sites used by pedophiles to trade illicit images. In November 2014 they hacked into the Twitter account of the KKK in response to the white supremacist group threatening lethal force against the protesters in Ferguson MO.