The Pentagon has acknowledged using its storehouse of new digital weapons to attack Islamic State communications networks, the first time that the US military has acknowledged doing so during an active war.
Operators from the US Cyber Command, the young military command twinned to the National Security Agency, have launched assaults on nodes, overloading them with data, US defense chief Ashton Carter said on Monday.
Carter told reporters the US was “looking to accelerate” cyber-strikes he likened to the traditional disruption of enemy command networks.
The US cyber-attacks, which Carter said complemented familiar methods of signal jamming over radio frequencies, seek to instill a loss of confidence in the security and efficacy of internal Isis communications.
Analysts who have long tracked the development and incorporation of digital weapons into the US military arsenal considered Carter’s acknowledgment to be a milestone.
“The cyberwar seal has been broken in public”, said Peter W Singer of the New America Foundation.
Thus far, the US has only acknowledged using digital weaponry in vague terms. Secrecy has surrounded their use, as the US cyber arsenal has seen operation as part of covert intelligence activities, rather than as a component of an ongoing war.
Read more:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/29/pentagon-admits-cyber-attacks-against-isis
