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Cyber Attack Campaigns in Political Conflicts

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Cyber Attack Campaigns in Political Conflicts CYBER ATTACK CAMPAIGNS IN POLITI- CAL CONFLICTS A case study of Anonymous hacktivists’ campaign against ISIS Master´s Thesis in Information Systems Science Author: Otto Sulin Supervisor: Jonna Järveläinen 16.02.2018 Turku Turun kauppakorkeakoulu • Turku School of Economics Turun yliopiston laatujärjestelmän mukaisesti tämän julkaisun alkuperäisyys on tar- kastettu Turnitin OriginalityCheck -järjestelmällä. The originality of this thesis has been checked in accordance with the University of Turku quality assurance system using the Turnitin OriginalityCheck service. Table of Contents 1 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................... 9 1.1 Internet, the new frontier of conflicts ............................................................. 9 1.2 Scientific motivation for this study .............................................................. 10 1.3 General overview of the study ..................................................................... 11 2 POLITICAL CONFLICTS AND WARFARE IN THE CYBERSPACE ............. 13 2.1 Conflicts in the Cyberspace.......................................................................... 13 2.1.1 Perspectives on different types of conflicts ..................................... 13 2.1.2 Analyzing conflicts .......................................................................... 14 2.2 Evaluation of existing cyber conflict models ............................................... 16 2.2.1 Cyber Early Warning Model ............................................................ 16 2.2.2 Ventre’s model ................................................................................. 17 2.2.3 Discussion on evaluated models ...................................................... 18 2.3 Actors in Cyber Conflicts ............................................................................. 19 2.3.1 Non-state actors ............................................................................... 19 2.3.2 State actors ....................................................................................... 22 2.4 Cyber warfare and terrorism in political conflicts ....................................... 23 2.4.1 Defining cyber warfare .................................................................... 23 2.4.2 Definition of cyber warfare .............................................................. 24 2.4.3 Legal status of cyber warfare and attacks ........................................ 25 2.4.4 Cyber terrorism from legal perspective ........................................... 28 3 CYBER ATTACK OPERATIONS ....................................................................... 29 3.1 Cyber Operations Models............................................................................. 29 3.2 Synthesis of the chosen models .................................................................... 31 4 METHODOLOGY ................................................................................................ 34 4.1 Introduction .................................................................................................. 34 4.2 Methods of qualitative analysis .................................................................... 35 4.3 Material gathering and sampling .................................................................. 38 4.3.1 Material gathering methods ............................................................. 38 4.3.2 Sampling .......................................................................................... 39 5 STUDY FINDINGS .............................................................................................. 41 5.1 Introduction .................................................................................................. 41 5.2 On actors and their status ............................................................................. 41 5.2.1 Anonymous ...................................................................................... 41 GhostSec ...................................................................................................... 44 Ghost Security Group ................................................................................... 45 5.2.2 ISIS .................................................................................................. 46 5.2.3 A summary of the key facts regarding Anonymous and ISIS ......... 48 5.3 Latent tensions ............................................................................................. 50 5.4 Initiating events ............................................................................................ 52 5.4.1 Paris attacks ..................................................................................... 52 5.4.2 Anonymous’ reaction to the attacks ................................................. 53 5.4.3 Anonymous’ goals and target selection ........................................... 54 5.5 Cyber reconnaissance ................................................................................... 56 5.5.1 Footprinting and system reconnaissance ......................................... 58 5.5.2 Target listing .................................................................................... 60 5.5.3 Identifying vulnerabilities ................................................................ 62 5.6 Cyber mobilization ....................................................................................... 63 5.6.1 Methods of mobilization .................................................................. 63 5.6.2 Attack planning ................................................................................ 64 5.6.3 Resource preparations ...................................................................... 65 5.6.4 Testing the plan ................................................................................ 67 5.7 Cyber attack ................................................................................................. 67 5.7.1 Distributing the plan ........................................................................ 67 5.7.2 Rehearsing ....................................................................................... 68 5.7.3 Penetrate & control .......................................................................... 68 5.7.4 Violate systems ................................................................................ 69 5.7.5 Lessons learned ................................................................................ 70 6 CONCLUSIONS AND DISCUSSION ................................................................. 71 6.1 Conclusions .................................................................................................. 71 6.1.1 Literature review and used models .................................................. 71 6.1.2 Summary of the results from the case study .................................... 72 6.2 Limitations ................................................................................................... 73 6.3 Implications for further research .................................................................. 74 REFERENCES................................................................................................................ 76 APPENDICES ................................................................................................................ 86 Appendix 1: Known offensive cyber capabilities of nation-states. ....................... 86 Appendix 2: International legislation regarding cyber terrorism .......................... 91 Appendix 3: Parts of the Canonical Offensive Cyber Operations Model ............. 92 Appendix 4: Tools Employed in the Campaign .................................................... 96 Appendix 5: Index of gathered materials shared in IRC ..................................... 103 List of figures Figure 1 A Cyber Early Warning Model (Carr 2011) ...................................... 16 Figure 2 Canonical model of offensive cyber operations (Grant et al., 2015) . 30 Figure 3 Synthesis of Carr's and Grant et al. models, Political Cyber Attack Campaign Model ................................................................................ 32 Figure 4 Example of Anonymous IRC topic messages .................................... 39 Figure 5 A contemporary Guy Fawkes mask (Wikipedia, 2012) ..................... 42 Figure 6 Slate article “Recognizably Anonymous” (Slate, 2011) .................... 43 Figure 7 GhostSec.org front page (GhostSec, 2016) ........................................ 45 Figure 8 Flag of the Islamic State (IS) (Wikipedia, 2013) ............................... 47 Figure 9 Example of ISIS content in Anonymous IRC chats ........................... 48 List of tables Table 1 Phases of conflict (Sriram & Wermester, 2003) ................................ 15 Table 2 Main non-state actors in cyber conflict (Sigholm 2013) .................... 20 Table 3 Synthesis of Carr's and Grant et al. models ........................................ 31 Table 4 Phases of netnographic study according to Kozinets (2015) ............. 36 Table 5 Summary of key facts ......................................................................... 49 Table 6 Known offensive cyber capabilities of nation-states (Valentino- Devries & Yadron, 2015) ................................................................... 90 Table 7 Canonical model of offensive cyber operations: select goals phase .. 92 Table 8 Canonical model of offensive cyber operations: select targets phase
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