Introduction to Cyber-Warfare - Proiect SEMPER FIDELIS

CIVILIANS IN THE CYBER MELEE: OPERATION CAST LEAD39(i.e. broadcast) to emerging technologies on the Internet. 26 These efforts included outreach toJewish and Israeli support groups worldwide through social media. This outreach differsfrom Hezbollah’s cybercortical warfare, which is oriented toward the opponent as theseIsraeli efforts were directed at like-minded audiences to rally support.IO and Cyber Warfare in the 2008 Israel-Hamas WarIn late December 2008, Israel commenced a new operation—“Cast Lead”—with the goal ofstopping missile strikes in southern Israel that originated from Gaza. The attack commencedwith an air assault that took out 50 Hamas targets on the first day. Israel emplaced a carefullyconstructed information campaign that actually began simultaneously with the physical conflict.Two days after the initial airstrike, the IDF launched the YouTube channel called the“IDF Spokesperson’s Unit.” This channel, the brainchild of some IDF soldiers, included a varietyof footage of the IDF—everything from video logs (“vlogs”) of IDF personnel to gunvideo of precision strikes and the footage of humanitarian assistance missions. 27 Additionally,the “Jewish Internet Defense Force” played a key role in encouraging the JewishDiaspora to become active in the “new media” of the Internet. For instance, their Web siteincluded instructions for using various types of social media—including Facebook, YouTube,Wikipedia, and various blogging services. Further, they also directed efforts against the “newmedia” of the opposing force as they also claimed to be responsible for shutting down severalpro-Hamas YouTube channels.Hamas and the inhabitants of Gaza responded to Israel’s IO campaign with its own contentdocumenting the devastation of the Israeli attack. Leveraging mobile phones, Twitter, digitalimages, and blogs, the Gazans were able to tell their story to the world. 28 They responded tothe attempts to shut down their YouTube channels with the creation of paltube.com—a sitededicated to Hamas videos.Not only did Hamas and its supporters fight Israeli IO with their own information campaign,and conducted a series of hundreds of defacements of Israeli Web sites. Though someWeb site defacements were high profile enough to gain the attention of mass media, 29 the actualdamage (likely economic) is presumed to have resulted from the sheer number of theseactions carried out by pro-Hamas hackers. Typically, the pro-Hamas groups conducted somerudimentary vulnerability scanning of targeted Israeli Web sites, often with the Web serversoftware. Upon obtaining access to parts of the server, the pro-Hamas hackers would defacethe Web sites with anti-Israeli graffiti. 30Perhaps the most notable hacking group for these Web site defacements was known as“Team Hell.” One member, known as “Cold Zero,” was responsible for over 2000 defacementsof Israeli Web sites, nearly 800 of which were carried out during the 2008 war. He allegedlyconducted defacements of high-profile sites such as Israel’s Likud Party and the TelAviv Maccabis basketball team. 31 Upon his arrest in early January 2009, “Cold Zero” wasfound to be a 17-year-old Palestinian male Israeli-Arab who worked with accomplices inother Islamic countries.In addition to Web site defacements, Hamas supporters also leveraged DDoS attacks on asmall to medium scale. Pro-Hamas hacker, Nimu al-Iraq, who is thought to be a 22-year-oldIraqi Mohammed Sattar al-Shamari, modified the hacking DDoS-tool known as al-Durrah