Washington: The Pentagon announced on Monday it was waging cyber attacks against the extremist group the Islamic State (IS) apart from airstrikes and occasional ground missions.

‘We are also using cyber tools to disrupt IS's ability to operate and communicate over the virtual battlefield,’ Xinhua quoted US Defense Secretary Ash Carter as saying at a briefing.

According to Carter, the aims of using cyber attacks included disrupting IS's command and control, causing them to lose confidence in their network and overloading their network to such extent that it no longer functions.

‘We are accelerating this (cyber attacks), just as we are accelerating everything else we are doing both in Syria and Iraq, whether it be the air war, the ground war, the cyber war we are looking to accelerate as well,’ Carter said, adding that some methods ‘will be surprising’.

However, to maximise the effect of cyber wars against the IS, Carter declined to delve into specifics but called the cyber attacks ‘a very effective tool.’

‘As we disrupt the IS communications via cyber or other methods, sometimes we do drive them to other means,’ Carter said.