Cyberwars in the Middle East

192 Pages·2021·5.044 MB·English

by  Ahmed Al-Rawi

Cyberwars in the
Middle East
War Culture
Edited by Daniel Leonard Bernardi
Books in this series address the myriad ways in which warfare informs diverse cul-
tural practices, as well as the way cultural practices— from cinema to social media—
inform the practice of warfare. They illuminate the insights and limitations of
critical theories that describe, explain, and politicize the phenomena of war culture.
Traversing both national and intellectual borders, authors from a wide range of fields
and disciplines collectively examine the articulation of war, its everyday practices,
and its impact on individuals and socie ties throughout modern history.
Tanine Allison, Destructive Sublime: World War II in American Film and Media
Ahmed Al- Rawi, Cyberwars in the Middle East
Brenda M. Boyle, American War Stories
Brenda M. Boyle and Jeehyun Lim, eds., Looking Back on the Vietnam War:
Twenty- First- Century Perspectives
Katherine Chandler, Unmanning: How H umans, Machines and Media Perform
Drone Warfare
Jonna Ea gle, Imperial Affects: Sensational Melodrama and the Attractions of
American Cinema
H. Bruce Franklin, Crash Course: From the Good War to the Forever War
Aaron Michael Kerner, Torture Porn in the Wake of 9/11: Horror, Exploitation, and
the Cinema of Sensation
David Kieran and Edwin A. Martini, eds., At War: The Military and American
Culture in the Twentieth Century and Beyond
Delia Malia Caparoso Konzett, Hollywood’s Hawaii: Race, Nation, and War
Nan Levinson, War Is Not a Game: The New Antiwar Soldiers and the Movement
They Built
Matt Sienkiewicz, The Other Air Force: U.S. Efforts to Reshape Middle Eastern
Media since 9/11
Jon Simons and John Louis Lucaites, eds., In/visible War: The Culture of War in
Twenty- First- Century Amer i ca
Roger Stahl, Through the Crosshairs: The Weapon’s Eye in Public War Culture
Mary Douglas Vavrus, Postfeminist War: Women and the Media- Military-
Industrial Complex
Simon Wendt, ed., Warring over Valor: How Race and Gender Shaped American
Military Heroism in the Twentieth and Twenty- First Centuries
Cyberwars in the Middle East
AHMED AL- RAWI
Rutgers University Press
New Brunswick, Camden, and Newark, New Jersey, and London
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Al- Rawi, Ahmed K., author.
Title: Cyberwars in the Middle East / Ahmed Al- Rawi.
Description: New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2021. |
Series: War culture | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020052863 | ISBN 9781978810105 (paperback) |
ISBN 9781978810112 (cloth) | ISBN 9781978810129 (epub) | ISBN 9781978810136 (mobi) |
ISBN 9781978810143 (pdf)
Subjects: LCSH: Information warfare— Middle East. | Cyberspace— Political aspects—
Middle East. | Hacking— Middle East.
Classification: LCC U163 .A37 2021 | DDC 355.4— dc23
LC rec ord available at https:// lccn . loc . gov / 2020052863
A British Cataloging- in- Publication rec ord for this book is available from the British Library.
Copyright © 2021 by Ahmed Al- Rawi
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission
from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 106 Somerset Street, New
Brunswick, NJ 08901. The only exception to this prohibition is “fair use” as defined by U.S.
copyright law.
The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National
Standard for Information Sciences— Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials,
ANSI Z39.48-1992.
www . rutgersuniversitypress . org
Manufactured in the United States of Amer i ca
To the memory of my best friend, Bahir Bahjat

Contents
Preface and Acknowl edgments ix
Introduction 1
1 Toward a Theoretical Framework of Cyberwars 4
2 Cyberwars and International Politics 22
3 U.S. Cyberoperations in the M iddle East 35
4 Rus sian Trolls, Islam, and the Middle East 56
5 Cyberwars and Regional Politics 75
6 Arab Hackers and Electronic Armies 106
Conclusion 133
Appendix: Selected List of Arab Hacking Groups 137
Notes 139
References 143
Index 175
vii

Preface and
Acknowl edgments
This book is dedicated to my best friend, Bahir Bahjat, who was killed on
July 23, 2006, in a terrorist suicide bombing targeting a court house in Kirkuk,
Iraq. Bahir never finished high school, but he had one of the finest minds I have
ever known. He never believed in traditional schooling, since he had started
learning Rus sian, Chinese, Turkish as well as programming and numerous
other technical skills on his own long before there were online tutorials, devel-
oping a sort of hacker’s mentality. He is greatly missed!
This study is the result of over a de cade of research on cyberoperations in
the Middle East, an area of study that is without doubt under- researched. This
book offers several case studies on cyberwars and international, regional, and
internal politics. Due to the general clandestine nature of hacking and other
cyberoperations, I de cided to discard incorporating interviews with Arab hack-
ers for several reasons. First, it is very difficult to ascertain the real individuals
behind po liti cal hacking groups, and there is always some tension or fear that
the hackers’ true identities could be disclosed in the pro cess of identifying and
interviewing them. This could in fact endanger the well- being and safety of
individuals in their strug gle for social reform and demo cratic rule. Further,
many hacking groups in the region are cybermercenaries. They are supportive
of and/or directly and indirectly supported by certain authoritarian Arab gov-
ernments, so interviewing those individuals would not serve the purpose of this
book because their responses could be expected to reflect the views of their
respective governments.
Special thanks go to Nicole Solano, the executive editor at Rutgers Univer-
sity, for her support and faith in this proj ect from the very first time she heard
about it. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable
ix