ATK133

Presumed Origin: Worldwide < Back

Alias: UCC, United Cyber Caliphate

United Cyber Caliphate (UCC) or Islamic State Hacking Division is a name of an umbrella for several hacking groups working for the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIS or ISIL) terrorist organization. The organization emerged in April 2016. Mostly known for its campaign against US military and governmental personal.

 

On April 4, 2016, the Cyber Caliphate Army (CCA), the principal ISIS hacking unit, and other pro-ISIS groups like the Sons Caliphate Army (SCA) and Kalacnikov.TN (KTN) merged and formed The United Cyber Caliphate (UCC). UCC groups include: - Cyber Caliphate, or Cyber Caliphate Army (CCA) was established shortly after the establishment of the Islamic State. The Key person behind the group was Junaid Hussain (Abu Hussain al Britani), or TriCK.

 

The most important cyber-terrorist attack of the CCA occurred on January 2015 when the Twitter and YouTube accounts of U.S Central Command and later on the Twitter accounts of the magazine Newsweek were hacked. - The Sons Caliphate Army (SCA) was established in 2016, as a sub group of Cyber Caliphate.

 

Mostly known for disrupting social media traffic on Facebook and Twitter. SCA Claimed to have hacked 10,000 Facebook accounts, more than 150 Facebook groups and over 5,000 Twitter profiles. - Kalashnikov E-Security Team was established in 2016. This group is focused on tech security advisory for ISIS Jihadists. It also uploaded ISIS-related jihadi literature, sharing posts from cyber jihadi groups, reporting successful attacks on websites and Facebook pages and publishing various web-hacking techniques. Gradually, the hackers started to conduct or assist in defacing hacks.

 

Although we have not seen any attacks by this group for almost two years, it is worth noting that members of the group may have reoriented themselves to new operations in other terrorist groups following the movements of ISIS.

 

REFERENCES

Target sector

  • Aviation
  • Defense
  • Education
  • Government and administration agencies
  • Media
  • Military
  • Naval
  • Political Organizations

Target countries

  • Australia
  • Egypt
  • France
  • Malaysia
  • United Kingdom Of Great Britain And Northern Ireland
  • United States Of America

Attack pattern

  • T1003 - Credential Dumping
  • T1072 - Third-party Software
  • T1110 - Brute Force
  • T1114 - Email Collection
  • T1491 - Defacement
  • T1499 - Endpoint Denial of Service

Motivation

  • Ideology
  • Notoriety
  • Organizational Gain
  • Revenge

Malwares

Vulnerabilities