APNewsBreak: DoD launches aggressive cyberwar against
IS
Associated Press
By LOLITA C. BALDOR, Associated
Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. military
has launched a newly aggressive campaign of cyberattacks against Islamic State
militants, targeting the group's abilities to use social media and the Internet
to recruit fighters and inspire followers, U.S. officials told The Associated
Press.
The surge of computer-based military
operations by U.S. Cyber Command began shortly after Defense Secretary Ash
Carter prodded commanders at Fort Meade, Maryland, last month to ramp up the
fight against the Islamic State group on the cyber front.
U.S. officials confirmed that
operations launched out of Fort Meade have focused on disrupting the group's
online activities. The officials said the effort is getting under way as
operators try a range of attacks to see what works and what doesn't. They
declined to discuss details, other than to say that the attacks include efforts
to prevent the group from distributing propaganda, videos, or other types of
recruiting and messaging on social media sites such as Twitter, and across the
Internet in general.
Other attacks could include attempts
to stop insurgents from conducting financial or logistical transactions online.
Several U.S. officials spoke about
the cyber campaign on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized
to discuss it publicly. Much of the effort is classified.
Carter mentioned the operations
briefly Thursday, telling a House Appropriations subcommittee only that Cyber
Command is beginning to conduct operations against the Islamic State group. He
declined to say more in a public setting.
The more aggressive attacks come
after months of pressure from Carter, who has been frustrated with the belief
that the Pentagon — and particularly Cyber Command — was losing the war in the
cyber domain.
Late last year Carter met with
commanders, telling them they had 30 days to bring him options for how the
military could use its cyberwarfare capabilities against the group's deadly
insurgency across Iraq and Syria, and spreading to Libya and Afghanistan. Officials
said he told commanders that beefing up cyberwarfare against Islamic State was
a test for them, and that they should have both the capability and the will to
wage the online war.
© AP Photo/Susan Walsh Defense
Secretary Ash Carter testifies before the House Appropriations subcommittee on
the president's 2017 budget during a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington,
Thursday…
But the military cyber fight is
limited by concerns within the intelligence agencies that blocking the group's
Internet access could hurt intelligence gathering.
Officials said Carter told
commanders that he wanted creative options that would allow the U.S. to impact
Islamic State without diminishing the indications or warnings intelligence
officers can glean about what the group is doing.
On Jan. 27, Carter and Marine Gen.
Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, went to Fort Meade for
an update.
Officials familiar with Carter's
meetings said the secretary was frustrated that as Cyber Command has grown and
developed over the past several years, it was still focused on the cyberthreats
from nations, such as Iran, Russia and China, rather than building a force to
block the communications and propaganda campaigns of Internet-savvy insurgents.
"He was right to say they could
be more forward leaning about what they could possibly do against ISIS,"
said James Lewis, a cybersecurity expert at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies. "You could disrupt their support networks, their
business networks, their propaganda and recruitment networks."
However, Lewis added, the U.S. needs
to be careful about disrupting the Internet to insure that attacks don't also
affect civilian networks or systems needed for critical infrastructure and
other public necessities.
U.S. officials have long been
stymied by militants' ability to use the Internet as a vehicle for inspiring
so-called lone wolf attackers in Western nations, radicalized after reading
propaganda easily available online.
"Why should they be able to
communicate? Why should they be using the Internet?" Carter said during
testimony before the defense appropriations subcommittee. "The Internet
shouldn't be used for that purpose."
He added that the U.S. can conduct
cyber operations under the legal authorities associated with the ongoing war
against the Islamic State group.
The U.S. has also struggled to
defeat high-tech encryption techniques used by Islamic State and other groups
to communicate. Experts have been working to find ways to defeat those
programs.
Cyber Command is relatively new.
Created in 2009, it did not begin operating until October 2010.
Early on, its key focus was on
defending military networks, which are probed and attacked millions of times a
day. But defense leaders also argued at length over the emerging issues
surrounding cyberwarfare and how it should be incorporated.
The Pentagon is building 133 cyber
teams by 2018, including 27 that are designed for combat and will work with
regional commands to support warfighting operations. There will be 68 teams
assigned to defend Defense Department networks and systems, 13 that would
respond to major cyberattacks against the U.S., and 25 support teams.
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