For the first time in its history, the UK has launched its first military-style cyber campaign against an adversary, according to the director of the country's leading cybersecurity agency. The target of the campaign was the Islamic State, the Muslim Sunni militant group which is also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The existence of all-round cyberwarfare was announced last week by Jeremy Fleming (pictured), the new director of Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), British intelligence. Fleming, a former security service officer (MI360), was speaking at the CYBERUK5 conference, held in the northern English city of Manchester. It was his first public address as director of the GCHQ.
Fleming told his Manchester audience that the cyber operation targeting ISIS was a "major offensive campaign" that seriously hampered the group's ability to launch and coordinate physical and online attacks against its enemies. The campaign also prevented ISIS from using its "normal channels" online to spread its message, effectively suppressing the group's propaganda efforts, Fleming said. The new director of GCHQ noted that much of the IT operations against ISIS were "too sensitive to talk about". But he added that the methods used to combat the Sunni Muslim group's online operations were so aggressive that they "even destroyed the equipment and networks" used by ISIS members. He did not specify what he meant by "destroyed equipment", but his comment brought to mind the so-called Stuxnet virus, discovered by researchers in 2010. The virus appeared to have been engineered by what experts described as "a good resource-state- nation “, with the aim of sabotaging the sensitive hardware components found in the centrifuges used by the Iranian government in its nuclear program.
During his Manchester speech, Fleming said that the British cyber war against ISIS was conducted in accordance with existing international legal frameworks. He added, however, that the "international doctrine governing the use [of cyber weapons] is still evolving." The director of the GCHQ admitted that Britain's IT capabilities "are very powerful", but said that "we only use them in line with national and international law, when our tests of necessity and proportionality have been met and with the normal on-site supervision ".