Introduction to Cyber-Warfare - Proiect SEMPER FIDELIS

36 4. CYBER AND INFORMATION OPERATIONS IN THE MIDDLE EASTFIGURE 4.2 Hezbollah’s Secretary General, SayyedHassan Nasrallah. Under Nasrallah, Hezbollah embracedthe Internet in the 1990s for propaganda purposes andlater for cyber warfare activities in support of propaganda(http://www.english.moqawama.org/).CYOP could include the use of “new media”—social networking sites such as Facebook—tospread the message of one of the combatants. Likewise, CYOP can also potentially take theform of a DDoS attack—denying the enemy the ability to spread their message. CYOP is acore component of a new type of strategy adopted by Hezbollah in the early 2000s knownas cybercortical warfare. a In this strategy, a state or nonstate actor uses credible politicaland military power to command attention and project information power—offensively shapingthe information environment in a conflict via the Internet. 11Hezbollah’s efforts to leverage cyber assets as a key part of their information campaignstarted as early as 1996 with the launch of “hizbollah.org.” Other related Web sites includedone for Hezbollah’s Al-Manar satellite television station (www.almanar.com.lb) as well as ahomepage for Hassan Nasrallah. At the time of writing, the Al-Manar Web site coexists with aWeb site of the “Islamic Resistance in Lebanon” (www.moqawama.org). Perhaps most interestingabout the early launch of “hizbollah.org” was the lack of Lebanese and Arabic audience.In 1997, there were less than a quarter million Internet users in the Arab world(outside of Israel) and a mere 35,520 users in Lebanon. 12 This small presence, coupled withthe fact that Hezbollah maintained their sites in both English and Arabic from the day of theirlaunch, indicates that the militant organization viewed the Internet as a tool to shape theirimage in (mainly) western eyes. Hezbollah’s targeting of worldwide and adversarial mediahad become a standard practice by the 2006 war with Israel. The organization quickly andaccurately reported the tactical situation and created professional media products that weredisseminated through a variety of means—their respective Web sites and YouTube. Further,these products were created in a variety of languages, including Hebrew—which again illustratesthe strategy’s main goal of influencing the opponent’s perception. 13These reports tended to focus on and emphasize the destruction of civilian infrastructurecaused by the IDF. What could be viewed as “collateral damage” Hezbollah understood toexploit for its own benefits. It should be noted that in the aftermath of the war the assesseddamage was less than reported by the group. 14 Perhaps most infamous in the exaggerateda The term cybercortical warfare is derived from the idea of neocortical warfare that was introduced by RichardSzafranski in the November 1994 issue of Military Review. Szafranski defines neocortical warfare as a warfarethat “strives to control or shape the behavior of enemy organisms, but without destroying the organisms.”