The United States military has upped the ante in its cyber war against the Islamic State. It is a far more extensive and destructive hacking campaign than what many have been led to believe. Last week, President Obama said that the U.S. was performing cyber operations in the hope of infiltrating and disturbing the Islamic State’s “command and control and communications.”
The military, in fact , has begun cyber hacking operations that have begun to target, not only the Islamic State’s overall operations, but individual commanders in an effort to gather intelligence that will help destroy them. Once the military’s hackers have gained access to a particular computer, they are installing viruses and malware that will allow intimate access to everything stored on their computers.
The military’s cyber experts are hoping to dig through the data and discover actual intelligence related to military strength, operations, and names of individual commanders. An anonymous military source recently told The Daily Beast that the cyber operations have been highly successful in gathering intelligence and identifying key members of the Islamic State’s command structure. The president recently remarked at CIA headquarters that the U.S. has killed, or taken prisoner, many of their higher echelon commanders to include who they believe is second in command of their army.
The Islamic State is highly sophisticated in its computer communications operations. The military cyber experts have begun to disrupt and destroy their encryption methodology to the point where the Islamic State has had to communicate through far less secure channels of communication. The U.S. Cyber Command is now capable of identifying a particular type of encryption software and to disable it and render it useless in application.
This is a new era in U.S. military cyber operations. It is the first time that the American military has become proactive with regard to its hacking operations. The U.S. has gone to the offensive and the results have been significant. Secretary of Defense, Ash Carter, has been seeking a greater autonomy for the U.S. Cyber Command. He wants them to conduct their own operations as they see fit to strike and destroy the Islamic State whenever and where ever they can.
PHOTO SOURCES: U.S. Army, Defense Media Network, Raw Story