CyberwarfarePro-regime Syrian hackers threaten cyberattacks on CENTCOM

Published 6 March 2014

Last Friday, the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) threatened to launch a cyberattack on U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) if the United States would conducts cyberwarfare operations against Syria.

The SEA is a group of Syrian computer hackers who support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Cyber experts say the group’s threat should not be dismissed. “This is a very capable group that has done some very significant things against well-defended targets,” says Bob Gourley, a former Chief Technology Officer for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).

Last Friday, the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) threatened to launch a cyberattack on U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) if the United States would conducts cyberwarfare operations against Syria.

The SEA is a group of Syrian computer hackers who support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Through denial of service attacks, defacements of Web sites, and other cyber-hacking methods, the group targets political opposition groups and Western media sites. According to the SEA, the cyberattack would prove that “the entire U.S. command structure was a house of cards from the start.”

DefenseOnequotesBob Gourley, a former Chief Technology Officer for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and editor of CTOvision.comto say that the threat from the SEA was serious, but that such an attack is unlikely to disrupt CENTCOM operations.

“This is a very capable group that has done some very significant things against well-defended targets. They may have found weaknesses in CENTCOM Web servers that can be exploited. I believe this threat should be taken very seriously.”

DefenseOnereports that since 2013, the SEA has hacked the Web sites or social media accounts of several media outlets, including CNN, the New York Times, and Forbes. Earlier this month, the SEA changed the domain name registration for Facebook in the WHOIS domain registrar, briefly claiming formal ownership of Facebook.com.

According to Allan Friedman, author of Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know, the SEA has had “good results” in name-change hacks, but its success simply illustrates a familiarity with Web development and site building. Friedman claims that a threat to CENTCOM may represent the SEA’s newly acquired capabilities due to new partnerships.

“A possible, although somewhat frightening, notion is that they are receiving some outside technical help and guidance from organizations that have a new interest in poking the U.S. and Western powers,” he said. ”We know that greater technical capacity lies in the organized crime gangs in Russia and the (former Soviet Union). These parties have traditionally stayed out of politically motivated attacks, with a few exceptions (Estonia, Georgia). We can imagine that, if (Russian President Vladimir) Putin wanted to flex some muscle, he might let a few off the chain. The challenge would be to have plausible deniability, while still communicating to Western decision makers that this would be a potential ramification of interference in Crimean affairs,” Friedman said.