This is the perfect false flag that both sides can profit from politically. The U.S. government can sell fear and pass draconian Internet legislation, and ISIS idiots can claim that they took down Centcom and attract more recruits.
An excerpt from, "No. The Islamic State Did Not Hack CENTCOM - Updated - Cui Bono?" Moon of Alabama, January 12, 2015:
Terror! Terror!! Terror!!! We have been hacked!!! Give us your data!
From that first piece:
President Obama plans to announce legislation Tuesday that would shield companies from lawsuits for sharing computer threat data with the government in an effort to prevent cyberattacks....
The provision’s goal is to “enshrine in law liability protection for the private sector for them to share specific information — cyberthreat indicators — with the government,” the official said.
If this law passes, which currently looks likely, all data stored or passing through a private company will be available for the government to copy, to store forever and to sift through however it likes. This even when you never intended to make such data public.
Meanwhile the British government wants to legally ban all private and public encryption it can nor readily break:
Mr. Cameron, who has started to campaign ahead of a national election in Britain in May, said his government, if elected, would ban encrypted online communication tools that could potentially be used by terrorists if the country’s intelligence agencies were not given increased access. The reforms are part of new legislation that would force telecom operators and Internet services providers to store more data on people’s online activities, including social network messages.
Both proposals, Obama's and Cameron's, would be catastrophic for Internet freedom.
An excerpt from, "FBI Counter-Terrorism Expert: ISIS Likely Did NOT Hack Centcom ... Anonymous Collective: Centcom Hackers Were In MARYLAND" Washington's Blog, January 13, 2015:
Centcom’s Twitter and Youtube accounts were allegedly hacked by ISIS today.
But former high-level FBI counter-terrorism agent Ali Soufan tweets, “I doubt they are ISIS… ISIS never calls themselves ISIS“:
And the hacker collective Anonymous claims that the hack originated in Maryland, not the Middle East: