ISIS Cyberthreat: Puny but Gaining Power

The Islamic State group's cyberwar capabilities are unsophisticated, but they won't be that way for long.

That was the conclusion of a 25-page report released last week by Flashpoint.

The report, "Hacking for ISIS: The Emergent Cyber Threat Landscape," found that the Islamic State's "overall capabilities are neither advanced nor do they demonstrate sophisticated targeting."

However, the severity of the attacks by the groups supporters isn't likely to remain unsophisticated, it added.

"Their capability of hacking military or NSA servers in the United States is far-fetched, but it's not completely impossible," said Laith Alkhouri, Flashpoint's director of Middle East and North Africa research and one of the authors of the report.

"Concern is high, not because they have sophisticated hacking skills but because they're utilizing multiple ways of bringing in new talent, utilizing all the freely available tools online, trying to utilize malware that's already available and building their own malware," he told TechNewsWorld.

Link to article: http://www.technewsworld.com/story/ISIS-Cyberthreat-Puny-but-Gaining-Power-83468.html