Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by janrinok on Saturday June 06 2015, @08:41AM   Printer-friendly
from the well-he-won't-do-that-again dept.

Brian Everstine writes at Air Force Times that US intelligence officers were able to locate and bomb an Islamic State command center based on a photo and comments in social media. "The [airmen are] combing through social media and they see some moron standing at this command," said Gen. Hawk Carlisle, commander of Air Combat Command. "And in some social media, open forum, bragging about command and control capabilities for Da'esh, ISIL, And these guys go 'ah, we got an in.' So they do some work, long story short, about 22 hours later through that very building, three JDAMS take that entire building out. Through social media. It was a post on social media. Bombs on target in 22 hours."

Carlisle was careful to not go into great detail about the how the information was gathered and what additional effort went into targeting those bombs. It's easy to imagine that in addition to the information gleaned from the initial post that the Air Force used satellite and drone reconnaissance data. It's also possible that US intelligence could have actively engaged with the original poster in order to draw out information. Attackers and researchers have shown time and time again that simply asking a target for information—either by posing as a trusted individual or using carefully created phishing attacks—works even better than fancy information-stealing digital attacks.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 06 2015, @08:06PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 06 2015, @08:06PM (#192983)

    How did they know it wasn't the next version of swatting?

    You hit the nail on the head. I put it to you that since CIA and Mosad fostered ISIS to destabilize the region and rationalize giving weapons to anti-Assad Syrian rebels, your question highlights the possibility that the government already knew where the ISIS selfie was from because they wanted to blow up that target prior to the picture being taken, and had the photo op specifically to explain how they knew what to blow up where.

    Do they even care?

    Yes, of course. It only looks like they don't because you didn't have the full picture. It's also a great propaganda piece, "Look, we're hitting those beheading bastards hard". (Hint: Beheading videos / photos are also obvious fakes, which is why they're "too brutal to be shown on air", go look at them and note the lack of blood pressure in beheading, photos of heads to big for the bodies they're sitting atop, and etc. over-production mistakes.)

    It's high time you stop trusting the media lies. [youtube.com]