(MENAFN- Khaleej Times) Who is behind a series of high profile hacking incidents in the UAE and abroad? Cyber security experts are groping for answers and many suspect Daesh. But there are other theories: the hacks were the work of mischievous amateurs or professional for-hire attackers, the new mercenaries of cyberspace.
In the most high profile recent cyber attack in the UAE, the websites of Al-Ittihad newspaper and Abu Dhabi TV were defaced, branded with menacing images of armed fighters and Daesh logos.
In another highly publicised incident, the Twitter and YouTube accounts of the US military's Central Command - which has responsibility for the Middle East, Central Asia and North Africa - were plastered with pro-Daesh messages and the hashtag "#CyberCaliphate". But some cyber security experts say that such incidents are unlikely to be the work of Daesh militants operating from within the group's so-called "caliphate" in Syria and Iraq.
Seattle-based cyber security expert Jeffrey Carr, the CEO of Taia Global, a digital security firm, said that the attacks were more likely the work of amateurs taking advantage of regional chaos to cause mischief.
"There is evidence that the people who did the actual hacks didn't speak Arabic or were Daesh members," he said. "These things would not have required any level of skill. Website defacements, for example, are typical of lesser skilled 'hacktivists' or jesters."
"Daesh is almost as good as North Korea to blame something on," he added. "People don't question it because they assume on face value. It's a great false flag."
Other experts, however, warn that Daesh might be employing highly-skilled individuals or gangs of professional hackers hired through the "Deep Web" € the vast expanse of unlisted, hidden websites that has become a thriving marketplace for illicit activities.
At the recent International Defence Exhibition and Conferences (Idex) in Abu Dhabi, Keith Moore, Lockheed Martin's vice president for international business development, raised the possibility of Daesh using for-profit hackers.
"Clearly, there are people out there doing this for money," he said. "I think you have to question whether this was an indigenous capability within Daesh or whether they had outside help."
Jamie Bartlett, director of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media and the author of a book on the digital underground, said that it is almost certain that Daesh is exploiting the deep web.
"I suspect they are probably hiring hackers to do stuff," he said. "My suspicion, having looked at the range of services available and the sort of propaganda coup they get every time they have a successful hack, is that it's almost inevitable, or at least highly probable." As an example, Bartlett noted the relative ease with which a group such as Daesh could hire hackers to conduct a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, one of the most common ways to take down a website.
"It's unbelievably easy," he said. "Hackers often have huge 'botnets' of tens or hundreds of thousands of computers that they've been able to take over. They sell access to that in order to do a DDoS attack on a website and essentially bring it down."
American officials from the Pentagon's Defence Advanced Research Project Agency have recently confirmed that high-tech software has been developed and is already being used to search for and monitor Daesh activity on the deep web. Bartlett added that successful hacks cause the general public to have an overly inflated perception of the reach and capabilities of Daesh.
"It's really not all that hard to hack into systems and cause huge disruption," he said. "But all of that is a big win for them, because it makes everybody think they are amazing technical wizards."
"But in truth, I don't think anything they do is that incredible at all," he continued. "But it feels really impressive to a lot of the population."
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