14 DAY TRIAL // The US is getting ready to dive back into Iraq and help local forces recapture the town of Mosul. This time around, US forces are planning to use cyber-attacks to sustain ground operations, Defense Secretary Ash Carter and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford said in a Pentagon press conference this past Monday.
Their statements were made just a few days after President Obama had said the US needed to step up their efforts against ISIS. The two claimed that, during the past days, US cyber-divisions had been launching countless cyber-attacks against ISIS forces in Mosul.
The aim is "to interrupt [and] disrupt ISIL’s command and control, to cause them to lose confidence in their networks, to overload their network so that they can’t function, and do all of these things that will interrupt their ability to command and control forces there, control the population and the economy," said Defense Secretary Carter (via NextGov).
Mr. Carter declined to describe what types of attacks US' cyber forces were launching against ISIS, but he pointed out that "the methods we're using are new. Some of them will be surprising" (via Newsweek).
The US is laying the groundwork for a future Iraq campaign using cyber-attacks
From the clues Mr. Carter and Gen. Dunford provided in their press conference, the operations look like highly targeted DDoS attacks aimed at bringing down the town's Internet network, so it would be difficult for ISIS members to communicate, internally and externally.
The city of Mosul in Iraq and the city of Raqqa in Syria are considered ISIS' main bases of operations, from where all orders are sent out.
For the past weeks, the US has been preparing for a joint ground assault on Mosul together with Iraqi forces. Besides the US' cyber-attacks, the Syrian forces has helped too by cutting off communications between the two larger cities. They have done so by capturing the Syrian town of al-Shadadi in the recent Operation Wrath of Khabur, a midpoint between Raqqa and Mosul.