‘Effective use of US cyber weapons against IS is a disappointment’
The effectiveness of the deployment of US cyber weapons against the terrorist organization IS is a constant disappointment. The New York Times reports this on the authority of US government officials.
According to Joshua Geltzer, who was a senior director of the National Security Council until March, the capacity to deal a major blow to IS with cyber-attacks is disappointing. He explains that successfully deploying cyber weapons in practice is much more difficult than people think, and that it almost never works by breaking into a system and simply deleting files permanently.
The fact that the cyber attacks are not very effective is because IS is a difficult organization to target with cyber weapons due to its methods and objectives. The grouping often uses encryption, which means that intercepting communications is not easy. In addition, IS uses computers and social media to recruit, raise funds and coordinate operations; these resources are not used to use weapons or to control certain installations. The Stuxnet, which was used against Iran and the possible US-sabotaged missile launches by North Korea, did involve effectively deploying cyber weapons that sabotaged weapons and installations, even if the effect was temporary.
Among the most complex cyber-attacks the US has carried out against IS include the sabotage of the group’s videos and propaganda. As part of these operations, the US has obtained passwords from various IS account managers in order to remove certain content and block IS fighters, for example. This seemed to be a success at first because videos shot from the battlefield disappeared. However, these results proved temporary, as it was later discovered that the deleted content had been recovered or moved to other servers. At the same time, efforts are being made to obtain the coordinates of combatants via their phones, in order to carry out attacks with drones.
A successful operation has been carried out against IS, which has led the US to discover IS plans to manufacture explosives that cannot be detected by the scanners at airports. This would involve explosives that look just like laptop batteries. The US found out through its collaboration with Israeli spies; they had infiltrated a small group of IS bombers in Syria. According to The Washington Post, President Trump shared this highly classified information with Russia’s foreign minister in May. This information led the US to impose a laptop ban on eight Arab countries.
A US general has said that allied countries other than the US have also used cyber weapons against IS. The US would not have these weapons at its disposal. However, he did not specify which countries are involved and which weapons and techniques are involved.