Independent Cyber Operators

Independent cyber operators are nominally hackers that operate based on ideological principles. Some of the early “cyber” events were perpetrated by hackers. For example, the 1988 Morris worm was an experiment by a student. And, as discussed in Chapter 6, the 1998 White House website defacement was performed by Chinese “Patriotic Hackers,” with minimal affiliation to their government. Similarly, the Anonymous group is well known for choosing targets based on ideological differences.Hacker culture may be personified by Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Working with Chelsea (then Bradley) Manning, Assange, and Wikileaks was responsible for leaks that made public thousands of classified U.S. military and State Department documents. Subsequently, the 2011 Arab Spring was said to be partially due to the disparaging comments found in State Department cables, including comments on governments across the Maghreb.More recently, the 2022 Russo‐Ukraine war resulted in Anonymous and Killnet becoming examples of groups of individual operators that are fighting in cyberspace, aligned against specific targets, and allegedly operating without government sponsorship. For example, Network Battalion 65 (NB65) is using repurposed CONTI Gang ransomware to attack and deny targets within Russia, effectively opening another “cyber” front in the ongoing kinetic war. In response, “Killnet” reportedly includes thousands of pro‐Russian cyber activists who have claimed responsibility for cyberattacks in the Ukraine, Europe, and the United States.