According to a report by the British government, the so-called "Cyber Caliphate" is one of many apparently non-state groups but actually run by the Russian state. The group, believed to be the online hacker wing of the Islamic State, first appeared in early 2014, claiming to operate as the online wing of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
According to the latest data, Cyber Caliphate now boasts a virtual army of hackers from dozens of countries, which are apparently operating as the online arm of the Islamic State. Their known activities include a strong and often concentrated social media presence, as well as cyber hacking, mainly in the form of cyber espionage and cyber sabotage.
Numerous reports, provided by Western government agencies, however, argue that in recent years the Cyber Caliphate is actually part of a Russian state-sponsored operation, ingeniously designed to allow Moscow to violate Western objectives without retaliation.
On Wednesday, a new report from Britain's National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) described the Cyber Caliphate and other similar hacker groups as "flags of convenience" for the Kremlin. The report was created by the NCSC in collaboration with several British and European intelligence agencies. American spy agencies, including the National Security Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, also helped compile the report, according to the NCSC.
The report points to several hacker groups that have been implicated in high-profile attacks in recent years, including Sofacy, Pawnstorm, Sednit, Cyber Berkut, Voodoo Bear, BlackEnergy Actors, Strontium, Tsar Team, and Sandworm. According to the report, each of these is "an alias of the Chief Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Russia", more commonly known as the GRU. The report concludes that Cyber Caliphate is the same hacker group as APT 28, Fancy Bear, and Pawn Storm, three cyber espionage outfits believed to be GRU's online weapons.
The NCSC report is in line with a report drawn up by the German government and released through the media in June 2016 that Cyber Caliphate was a fictional front group created by Russia. In 2015, a US State Department security report concluded that, despite proclamations of the Cyber Caliphate's links to the Islamic State, there were "no indications - technical or otherwise - that the groups were related."
In a statement released alongside Wednesday's NCSC report, British Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Jeremy Hunt described the GRU as "Moscow's clandestine weapon of choice in pursuing its geopolitical goals," allegations that they were promptly denied by the Russian government.