The defeat if ISIS cyber operations

Washington Times:

At its peak, the Islamic State’s online propaganda machine was one of the group’s most potent weapons, a calling card that distinguished it from any other terrorist organization that the world had ever seen.

But U.S. military officials and extremism analysts say that once-vaunted media empire largely has crumbled as a result of the group’s rapid loss of most of its physical base in Iraq and Syria and an aggressive counterstrategy in cyberspace led by the U.S. and its allies. Its slick, signature online magazine, long cited as proof of Islamic State’s media sophistication, hasn’t put out an edition in more than a year.

Analysts are quick to stress that online terrorist recruiting efforts remain a problem and that popular platforms such as Facebook and YouTube need to do more to combat the messages, but the days of the Islamic State’s state-of-the-art propaganda and recruiting mission online seem to have ended.

Across the board, analysts say the organization, also known as ISIS, has lost much of its online presence, largely because its battlefield defeats at the hands of a U.S.-led coalition have crushed its ability to mount a coordinated Web-based strategy.

“We like to imagine [terrorist groups] are somehow ghostlike entities existing in cyberspace, but in fact they need a physical presence somewhere,” said Peter Mansoor, a retired Army colonel and chair in military history at Ohio State University who studies online extremism.

“They need electricity, food, water, a connection to the internet, and they need the ability to get guidance from their senior leaders, to collaborate with one another to create media campaigns,” Mr. Mansoor said. “This cannot all be done online from dispersed locations.”
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It looks like a rare win against a cyber adversary.  It is unlikely that a similar strategy will work against state actors like China, Russia, and Iran.  Countermeasures are needed to not only stop the attacks but counterattack in cyberspace.