US Plans to Launch Cyber-Attacks Against ISIS to Disrupt Operations

There have been many instances of hacker groups launching attacks against ISIS in the past several months. While many of the attacks have led to the demise of many ISIS-owned accounts over the Internet, the US is setting a course to "step up their efforts against ISIS," as President Obama has recently implied.

Surprisingly, US forces are planning to launch cyber-attacks to sustain ground operations against ISIS. In a Pentagon press conference held at the end of February 2016, Defense Secretary Ash Carter and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford explained how it is essential to ramp up the efforts of US forces to conduct cyber-attacks on ISIS.

There is a clear goal set by the US in their cyber-attack efforts against ISIS. Their aim is to interrupt and disrupt ISIL's command and control so they may lose confidence in their networks, so they are unable to carry out business as usual and communicate as they have in the past. Probably one of the more surprising aspects of the US' plan to attack ISIS on the cyber front is that they are new, and some are said to be "surprising" US Defense Secretary Carter explained it.

While we do not know the specifics of a cyber-attack plan against ISIS, we can speculate and go off of previous incidences where hacker groups were successful in many cyber-attacks. At the time of our reports we even thought that the efforts of hacker groups like Anonymous would eventually raise eyebrows within other government agencies. Coincidently, the US is launching their efforts to carry out attacks that may end up being somewhat similar to what Anonymous was able to accomplish in taking down ISIS-owned entities on the Internet.

With any takedown of ISIS through the Internet, the terrorist organization will be crippled in ways that negatively affect their overall operations. What the US Defense Secretary and Chief Chairman have suggested are DDoS attacks that bring down Internet networks in towns where ISIS members are saturated. Those places, such as the city of Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria, are areas that would be considered as they are main bases for ISIS' operations.

Not only is the US involved in cyber-attack efforts against ISIS, but the Syrian army has stepped in to cut off communications between the two Iraq and Syrian cities. During the past few weeks the US has made preparations for the assault on Mosul beside Iraqi forces to launch a relentless attack that hopefully has good outcome.

The future of warfare is happening now, and it has a new face that uses the Internet to get its grounding. Who would have thought that the US would engage in cyber-attacks to take down world enemies and terrorist groups? Much like how hacker groups use to disrupt an entity that they do not agree with, the US is waging a new war on terror by launching similar cyber-attacks, which appear to be a feasible approach to a good outlook.