Still, some Islamic State fighters managed to foil Care Bear with their own IT support, such was the sophistication of the militants' technical proficiency. Escalating offensives in arms race against ISĪnd when Islamic State fighters defeated the Rickrolling payload, ASD took the next step up in its arsenal of cyber-offensive tools with "Care Bear", which required a lot more technical nous to get around. "Absolutely first for Australia, and I suggest first for the world, generating effects through cyberspace in a very clever, precise, timed way, in coordination with military manoeuvres," Burgess says. "So even though it was a simple cyber effect, using it tightly coordinated with partner forces created a disproportionate effect in some cases."įormer ASD director-general Mike Burgess says it was likely the first time a conventional armed force had coordinated its action on the ground with remote cyber operators in real time. "But if an ISIL fighter needs to leave their position in order to go and reset a device, they've just exposed themselves to our partner forces," Baker explains. Simple troubleshooting, such as turning the device off and on, would reverse it. The Rickrolling payload was more of an inconvenience than a permanent impairment to the enemy's communications.
Sarah was dispatched to US Cyber Command at the NSA headquarters in Maryland to help coordinate teams in the US, Australia and Iraq during Operation Valley Wolf.ĭan Baker says makeshift beds were set up in the ASD's operations centre as the team worked all hours to combat IS. "Light Bolt was an offensive cyber capability or hacking capability, and it denied ISIL's ability to connect to the internet," explains "Sarah", an ASD cyber planner. In the language of war, ASD called this type of Trojan technology a "payload". Light Bolt was a sneaky bit of coding that was surreptitiously put on Islamic State fighters' phones and computers without them ever knowing - no text message needed clicking, nor did it require a phishing email to be answered. The agency had a unique cyber tool that would do the job: "Light Bolt." The agency's offensive cyber operators studied the IS militants' electronic equipment and found that Islamic State was using a variety of encrypted apps, including Surespot, Wickr, WhatsApp and Telegram.ĪSD's cyber tactic was borne out of strategic necessity. Rather than target the use of any particular app, target the way any app worked: the internet. What's Rick Astley got to do with it?īefore providing cyber cover to security forces on the ground, ASD had done quite a bit of snooping in the Iraqi desert to identify Islamic State fighters between Baghdad and Mosul. So when the plot was hatched to liberate Mosul in northern Iraq, countering Islamic State militants' mastery of the internet became a key pillar of the operation.Īnd it was Australia's cyber intelligence agency, the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), that was tasked with providing safe passage - as best it could - to Iraqi and partner troops as they advanced north up the Tigris River Valley in June 2016. We felt strongly we had to take that away from them, we have to negate it."Īmong the foreign fighters recruited by Islamic State were top-flight hackers and cyber criminals who were experts at disguising the militants' battlefield communications. It was a significant component of their strategy. "We quickly came to the conclusion that ISIS's use of was a significant advantage to them. "They were using cyber as a tool to recruit, to coordinate, to raise funds, to spread ideology," says Mike Rogers, director of the United States' National Security Agency (NSA) between 20. It was 2016 and the militant Islamic State (IS, also known as ISIS or ISIL) group, which had an ambition to establish an Islamic caliphate in the Middle East, was two years into its occupation of Mosul, the second-largest city in Iraq. But the 1980s British pop star unwittingly played a role in a critical desert battle against a terror outfit with sophisticated computer skills and a slick propaganda machine.
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