The Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG) is a unit of the

Government Communications Headquarters Government Communications Headquarters, commonly known as GCHQ, is an intelligence and security organisation responsible for providing signals intelligence (SIGINT) and information assurance (IA) to the government and armed forces of the Uni ...

(GCHQ), the British

intelligence agency An intelligence agency is a government agency responsible for the collection, analysis, and exploitation of information in support of law enforcement, national security, military, public safety, and foreign policy objectives. Means of informa ...

. The existence of JTRIG was revealed as part of the global surveillance disclosures in documents leaked by the former

National Security Agency The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collect ...

contractor Edward Snowden.

Mission

The scope of the JTRIG's mission includes using "dirty tricks" to "destroy, deny, degrade nddisrupt" enemies by "discrediting" them, planting misinformation and shutting down their communications. - contains the DISRUPTION Operational Playbook slide presentation by GCHQ Known as "Effects" operations, the work of JTRIG had become a "major part" of GCHQ's operations by 2010. Slides leaked by Snowden also disclose the deployment of " honey traps" of a sexual nature by British intelligence agents.

Operations

In 2011, the JTRIG conducted a

denial-of-service attack In computing, a denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) is a cyber-attack in which the perpetrator seeks to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users by temporarily or indefinitely disrupting services of a host conn ...

(DoS) on the activist network Anonymous. Other JTRIG targets have included the government of Iran and the

Taliban The Taliban (; ps, طالبان, ṭālibān, lit=students or 'seekers'), which also refers to itself by its state name, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a Deobandi Islamic fundamentalist, militant Islamist, jihadist, and Pasht ...

in Afghanistan. Campaigns operated by JTRIG have broadly fallen into two categories;

cyber attack A cyberattack is any offensive maneuver that targets computer information systems, computer networks, infrastructures, or personal computer devices. An attacker is a person or process that attempts to access data, functions, or other restricted ...

s and propaganda efforts. The propaganda efforts (named "Online Covert Action" utilize "mass messaging" and the "pushing fstories" via the medium of

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

Flickr Flickr ( ; ) is an American image hosting and video hosting service, as well as an online community, founded in Canada and headquartered in the United States. It was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and was a popular way for amateur and profession ...

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Mosk ...

and

YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...

. Online " false flag" operations are also used by JTRIG against targets. JTRIG have also changed photographs on

social media Social media are interactive media technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks. While challenges to the definition of ''social medi ...

sites, as well as emailing and texting colleagues and neighbours with "unsavory information" about the targeted individual. JTRIG developed a

URL shortening URL shortening is a technique on the World Wide Web in which a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) may be made substantially shorter and still direct to the required page. This is achieved by using a redirect which links to the web page that has ...

service called Lurl.me to manipulate and collect intelligence on social media users. The service was used to spread pro-revolution messages in the Middle East during the

Arab Spring The Arab Spring ( ar, الربيع العربي) was a series of anti-government protests, uprisings and armed rebellions that spread across much of the Arab world in the early 2010s. It began in Tunisia in response to corruption and econo ...

. A computer virus named Ambassadors Reception has been used by GCHQ "in a variety of different areas" and has been described in the slides as "very effective." The virus can "encrypt itself, delete all emails, encrypt all files, ndmake hescreen shake" when sent to adversaries. The virus can also block a user from logging on to their computer. Information obtained by GCHQ is also used in "close access technical operations," in which targets are physically observed by intelligence officers, sometimes in person at hotels. Telephone calls can also be listened to and hotel computers tapped, the documents asking "Can we influence hotel choice? Can we cancel their visits?". In a "honey trap", an identified target is lured "to go somewhere on the Internet, or a physical location" to be met by "a friendly face", with the aim to discredit them. A "honey trap" is described as "very successful when it works" by the slides. The disclosures also revealed the technique of "credential harvesting", in which journalists could be used to disseminate information and identify non-British journalists who, once manipulated, could give information to the intended target of a secret campaign, perhaps providing access during an interview. It is unknown whether the journalists would be aware that they were being manipulated. A JTRIG operation saw GCHQ "significantly disrupt" the communications of the

in Afghanistan with a "blizzard" of faxes, phone calls and text messages scheduled to arrive every minute. Specific JTRIG operations also targeted the nuclear programme of Iran with negative information on blogs attacking private companies, to affect business relationships and scupper business deals. JTRIG also undertook cyber-operations as part of a wider GCHQ mission to prevent the Argentine takeover of the

Falkland Islands The Falkland Islands (; es, Islas Malvinas, link=no ) is an archipelago in the South Atlantic Ocean on the Patagonian Shelf. The principal islands are about east of South America's southern Patagonian coast and about from Cape Dubouze ...

. The scope of the cyber tactics used in this operation was unclear. The name given to JTRIG's role was Operation Quito. In June 2015, NSA files published by

Glenn Greenwald Glenn Edward Greenwald (born March 6, 1967) is an American journalist, author and lawyer. In 2014, he cofounded ''The Intercept'', of which he was an editor until he resigned in October 2020. Greenwald subsequently started publishing on Substac ...

revealed new details about JTRIG's work at covertly manipulating online communities and internal activities within the United Kingdom. UK agencies that JTRIG says it co-operates with include the Metropolitan police, Security Service (MI5),

National Crime Agency The National Crime Agency (NCA) is a national law enforcement agency in the United Kingdom. It is the UK's lead agency against organised crime; human, weapon and drug trafficking; cybercrime; and economic crime that goes across regional and in ...

(NCA), Border Agency, Revenue and Customs (HMRC), and National Public Order and Intelligence Unit (NPOIU). It is also involved in what it calls "missions" with various other agencies described as "customers", including the Bank of England, and the Department for Children, Schools and Families. Info-weapons held or being developed by JTRIG can be used to send bulk email, spoof SMS messages, impersonate Facebook posts for individuals or entire countries, artificially increase traffic to a website and change the outcome of online polls.{{cite news , last1=Miller , first1=Carl , title=Inside the British Army's secret information warfare machine , url=https://www.wired.co.uk/article/inside-the-77th-brigade-britains-information-warfare-military , accessdate=16 April 2019 , publisher=Wired , date=14 November 2018

References

External links

Hacking Online Polls and Other Ways British Spies Seek to Control the Internet
- The Intercept Espionage projects GCHQ operations United Kingdom intelligence operations Internet manipulation and propaganda

Mission

Operations

See also

References

External links