Members of the hacking collective Anonymous have responded to the terrorist attacks in Paris by openly declaring war on the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS).

The declaration of war came by a video posted to YouTube and includes a man wearing the synonymous Guy Fawkes mask reading a statement in French calling the attackers “vermin” and warning ISIS to prepare for “many cyberattacks” as they would hunt down the attackers as they did after the Charlie Hebdo attack back in January this year.

On Friday 13 November our country France was attacked in Paris for two hours, by multiple terrorist attacks claimed by you, the Islamic State.

These attacks cannot go unpunished. That’s why Anonymous activists from all over the world will hunt you down. Yes you, the vermin who kill innocent victims, we will hunt you down like we did to those who carried out the attacks on Charlie Hebdo.

So get ready for a massive reaction from Anonymous. Know that we will find you and we will never let up. We are going to launch the biggest ever operation against you. Expect very many cyberattacks. War is declared. Prepare yourselves.

Know this: the French people are stronger than you and we will come out of this atrocity even stronger.

Anonymous sends its condolences to the families of the victims.

We are Anonymous. We are legion. We don’t forgive, we don’t forget. Expect us.

Although it may sound like hot air from what The Register joyfully describes as being a case of the “Terrorists [getting] their wish – they really will be screwed by 72 virgins,” Anonymous has a great track record in taking the good fight to ISIS with Foreign Policy reporting that the group has already dismantled some 149 Islamic State-linked websites and flagged roughly 101,000 Twitter accounts and 5,900 propaganda videos.

As at the time of writing the video posted on YouTube has already received over 3.2 million views.

Anonymous will not be alone in taking the fight to ISIS online with Ghost Security Group (itself an Anonymous offshoot) continuing an ongoing battle to punish the terrorists financially, and others such as “Red Cult” taking the battle to social media, even when Facebook sides with terrorists, all under the hashtag of #OpISIS.

A gentle reminder to anyone thinking of getting involved in what is otherwise a noble cause: targeting CDN providers like CloudFlare, Inc. is illegal so if you’re in the fight make sure you’re only targeting the bad guys.

Image credit: scragz/Flickr/CC by 2.0