U.S. launches cyberattack
Offensive aims to diminish Islamic State capabilities
WASHINGTON — U.S. commanders mounted a cyberoffensive against the Islamic State group in Syria for the first time in recent weeks by deploying military hackers against the extremist group’s computer and cellphone networks, according to the Pentagon.
The digital assault, launched from Fort Meade in Maryland, marked the first major integration of U.S. Cyber Command into a major battlefield operation since the command was established in 2009.
Secretary of Defense Ash Carter’s disclosure of a government-sanctioned cyberattack represents a shift in U.S. war fighting strategy and power projection. No other nation has admitted launching cyberwar.
But in December, after deadly terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif., frustrated officials in the White House pushed the Pentagon and intelligence agencies to crack down on Islamic State’s use of the digital realm to recruit and radicalize followers, to handle logistics and to communicate with fighting units.
Carter said Monday at the Pentagon that the goal was to “overload their networks” and “interrupt their ability to command and control forces” with jamming and other cybertools.
“This is something that’s new in this war,” Carter said before he left on a four-day swing to the West Coast to meet Silicon Valley executives, address a cybersecurity conference in San Francisco, and visit Amazon and Microsoft in Seattle.
Carter did not reveal details of the new cyber campaign, and its impact and extent is difficult to assess.
Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who appeared with Carter, said secrecy was necessary to ensure Islamic State commanders don’t know if they’re under attack — or just suffering technical problems.
Just as the Pentagon seeks to avoid civilian casu- alties in airstrikes, it needs to calibrate cyberattacks to avoid unintended consequences. Blocking all communications in territory held by the militants could hamper U.S. collection of intelligence on their locations, operations and plans.
It also could affect civilian networks or those used by humanitarian groups in Syria’s civil war.
But U.S. officials said targeted denial of service and other cyberattacks, plus over 85 coalition airstrikes, helped U.S.-backed Syrian rebels retake the key town of Shaddadeh and nearby oil fields in mid-February.
The officials, not authorized to speak publicly about operations, said teams operating from Fort Meade identified and jammed Islamic State online communication networks during the four-day battle.
The victory severed a crucial route that the militants used to funnel fighters and supplies from the Iraqi border to Raqqa, their selfdeclared capital in northeast Syria.
Pentagon officials described the growing role of Cyber Command as part of a “strategic shift” from cy- berdefense to cyberoffense as the military adapts digital sabotage as a new tool.
The effort was set in motion in December, shortly after Islamic State sponsored an attack in Paris that killed 130 people, and a couple loyal to the group killed 14 in San Bernardino. In a White House meeting, officials directed senior Pentagon officials to prepare options for more aggressive cyber operations.
Carter ordered Adm. Michael Rogers, head of both Cyber Command and the National Security Agency, to develop the strategy.
Hacker teams working with U.S. Central Command, which oversees U.S. military operations in the Middle East, were ordered to focus on “disrupting (Islamic State’s) ability to command and control, to communicate, and to run the so-called state,” according to a Defense Department official.
The Obama administration’s budget request to Congress for the next fiscal year includes $6.8 billion for Cyber Command and other Pentagon cybersecurity operations. That’s a 15 percent increase over this year even as the Pentagon has faced budget cuts.
One reason for caution is fear of blowback. U.S. communication and digital networks, from finance to public safety, are potentially at risk of counterattacks.
“There is no end to what the enemy could do to us,” Lani Kass, a former senior Pentagon official now at defense contractor CACI International, warned at a recent symposium.