Hezbollah’s Cyber Warfare Program

Last week, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff warned that the Hezbollah resis­tance move­ment is the great­est threat to US national secu­rity. Hezbollah is known or sus­pected to have been involved in numer­ous ter­ror attacks against the U.S., Israel or other Western tar­gets, and includes the 1983 sui­cide truck bomb­ings in Beirut that killed 241 U.S. Marines at their bar­racks and 58 at the French mil­i­tary bar­racks. Intelligence offi­cials in the U.S. and Britain believe Hezbollah cells may use their com­puter exper­tise and capa­bil­i­ties to launch cyber attacks.

A 2002 CIA report warned a num­ber of ter­ror­ist groups are begin­ning to plan attacks on west­ern com­puter net­works. The report went on to say that al-​​Qaeda and Hezbollah were becom­ing more adept at using the inter­net and com­puter tech­nolo­gies. In more recent reports they name Sunni extrem­ists Hezbollah and Aleph as groups believed to be devel­op­ing cyber ter­ror­ism plans. For ter­ror­ist groups, cyber weapons are cheap, easy to acquire and dif­fi­cult to detect or track and are quickly becom­ing a com­mon weapon in their arsenal.

While Hezbollah’s capa­bil­i­ties to launch such an attack are ques­tion­able, the intel­li­gence com­mu­nity in U.S., Britain and Israeli are tak­ing the threat seri­ously. Why, because Hezbollah showed its increas­ing tech­no­log­i­cal sophis­ti­ca­tion and capa­bil­i­ties dur­ing its war with Israel back in 2006. Once Israel began bomb­ing Hezbollah tar­gets, the intel­li­gence sources say cyber space began. While intel­li­gence ana­lysts are con­vinced con­ven­tional ter­ror remains Hezbollah’s main strat­egy and weapon, some believe that it could acti­vate sleeper cells in order to open a sec­ond front in cyber space. Intelligence sources know that ter­ror­ist groups includ­ing Hezbollah, the Abu Nidal Organization, and UBL’s Al-​​Qeida Organization are using com­put­er­ized files, email, and encryp­tion to sup­port their operations.

Hezbollah Profile (AKA Hizbollah, Hizbu’llah)
Established In the 1980s

Home Base: Lebanon, but it also has cells in North/​South America, Asia, Europe and Africa.

Support: Iran and Syria pro­vide sub­stan­tial orga­ni­za­tional, train­ing and financing.

Orientation: Hezbollah is a rad­i­cal Iranian-​​backed Lebanese Islamic Shiite group

Funding: esti­mated at $60 mil­lion annually

Size: Hezbollah’s core con­sists of sev­eral thou­sand mil­i­tants and activists

Equipment: Hezbollah pos­sesses up-​​to-​​date infor­ma­tion tech­nolo­gies — broad­band wire­less net­works and computers.

Cyber Capabilities: Global Rating in Cyber Capabilities — Tied at Number 37

Hezbollah has been able to engage in fiber optic cable tap­ping, enabling data inter­cep­tion and the hijack­ing of Internet and com­mu­ni­ca­tion connections.

Cyber Warfare Budget: $935,000 USD

Offensive Cyber Capabilities: 3.1 (1 = Low, 3 = Moderate and 5 = Significant)

Cyber Weapons Rating: Basic — but devel­op­ing inter­me­di­ate capabilities

Web Site: http://​www​.hizbol​lah​.org or www​.hizbal​lah​.org

Ties: Hezbollah has close ties with Iran. Many believe that Hezbollah is a sur­ro­gate for the Iranian army

Fact: Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah declared May 8, 2008 that the Shiite mil­i­tant group’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions net­work is its most impor­tant weapon, and that the government’s deci­sion to tar­get the net­work was tan­ta­mount to a dec­la­ra­tion of war. In Hezbollah’s view, its com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nol­ogy is just as essen­tial for the group’s sur­vival as its missiles.

Hezbollah is on the U.S. State Department’s list of ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions. The FBI says it now con­sid­ers Hezbollah oper­a­tives more capa­ble and robust than even Al Qaeda ter­ror­ists. With Hezbollah’s inter­est in devel­op­ing advanced cyber weapons, their capa­bil­i­ties will con­tinue to increase. As we have seen, the pro­lif­er­a­tion of cyber weapons is rapidly expand­ing and no longer lim­ited to nation states and orga­nized crim­i­nal groups. The cyber arms club now includes ter­ror­ist groups. Using new hack­ing tech­niques, tak­ing advan­tage of secu­rity vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties and using sim­ple proven cyber attack meth­ods, ter­ror­ists have the capa­bil­ity to attack us in way not seen before. Key infra­struc­ture sys­tems that include util­i­ties, bank­ing, media/​TV sys­tems, telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions and air traf­fic con­trol sys­tems have already been com­pro­mised. No one knows if cyber ter­ror­ists cre­ated trap doors and left logic bombs allow­ing them to eas­ily bypass secu­rity sys­tems and dis­rupt our crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture in coor­di­na­tion with tra­di­tional style attacks.

– Kevin Coleman

June 2nd, 2008 | Cyber-warfare | 287946 Comments »http://defensetech.org/2008/06/02/hezbollahs-cyber-warfare-program/Hezbollah%27s+Cyber+Warfare+Program2008-06-02+18%3A04%3A00Ward You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.