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posted by janrinok on Sunday February 01 2015, @03:31PM   Printer-friendly
from the don't-talk-about-how-you-get-your-evidence dept.

After having used the Internet profusely for propaganda and recruitment, jihadist organizations have realized that investigators are gleaning crucial information online and are increasingly concealing their web presence, experts say.

Apart from recent orders given to fighters to limit their exposure, erase the footprint of their online activity and avoid revealing too many place names or faces, the Islamic State and Al-Nusra Front groups are increasingly using the "Dark Web" -- the hidden part of the Internet protected by powerful encryption softwares.

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by GungnirSniper on Sunday February 01 2015, @03:47PM

    by GungnirSniper (1671) on Sunday February 01 2015, @03:47PM (#140066) Journal

    This is another reminder not to post your crimes on the Internet. From TFA it sounds like the Islamic State is getting hit in part because of brag posts. It's not much different than posting about drug use or photos of you drinking in the car.

    As for encryption, unless they're using Tor, the encrypted traffic may still set off red flags.

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Adamsjas on Sunday February 01 2015, @09:49PM

      by Adamsjas (4507) on Sunday February 01 2015, @09:49PM (#140122)

      Is that your take away?

      Mine was that this article is another of the never ending attempt to deamonize encryption, so that they can outlaw it.

      • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 02 2015, @01:59AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 02 2015, @01:59AM (#140174)

        if they outlaw encryption (and they probably will eventually) clever people will come up with ways to hide messages in seemingly innocent traffic. steganography comes to mind, so maybe someone will make a client that can read and write to images and make the traffic appear to be from a normal web gallery. they could even make it so that if you access the address with a web browser it shows up a normal gallery. it may even be possible to send tor traffic using this sort of approach (albeit probably slower). there's also putting hidden messages in innocent text by making up new meanings to words and phrases. i'm sure the intelligence community is well aware of these age old techniques, but who knows what sort of modern spin might be put on them if the need arises.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 02 2015, @12:43PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 02 2015, @12:43PM (#140269)

          Dangerous Kitten, and kitchen sinks.

          Seriously.

  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Sunday February 01 2015, @03:47PM

    by hemocyanin (186) on Sunday February 01 2015, @03:47PM (#140067) Journal

    Whatever. This looks like drummed up "journalism" to further a political agenda, namely, the destruction of all privacy everywhere forever.

    Terrorism is bad and all that, but it isn't like the threat of global thermonuclear war, and while the Constitution was certainly eroded during the cold war, I can't help but think we've become a land of such raging pussies that we basically shut down when a pressure cooker bomb goes off. The threats we face today are gnats.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Sunday February 01 2015, @03:53PM

      by Jeremiah Cornelius (2785) on Sunday February 01 2015, @03:53PM (#140069) Journal

      You should get the new "Touche" mod for this one.

      It's not reporting. There are no finding or evidence.

      --
      You're betting on the pantomime horse...
      • (Score: 5, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday February 01 2015, @04:20PM

        by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Sunday February 01 2015, @04:20PM (#140071) Homepage Journal

        I was thinking Insightful, myself. Think I'll save Touche for replies to other comments. You already use up your points?

        --
        My rights don't end where your fear begins.
        • (Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday February 01 2015, @04:21PM

          by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Sunday February 01 2015, @04:21PM (#140072) Homepage Journal

          Oh blah, found a bug. Prolly a db setting because we could all post then mod fine on dev and the VM.

          --
          My rights don't end where your fear begins.
        • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Sunday February 01 2015, @06:50PM

          by Immerman (3985) on Sunday February 01 2015, @06:50PM (#140091)

          They have a Touche mod now? How cool is that! I've had a post or two I'd mod that way (though sadly mostly replies to my own posts that I'd be ineligible to mod - unless they've changed the rules.)

          Of course it would be even nicer if they'd enable unicode support so that it could be spelled correctly.

          • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday February 02 2015, @07:09AM

            by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Monday February 02 2015, @07:09AM (#140234) Homepage Journal

            Unicode support is enabled, I just didn't type it with the accent. Also, you can post and mod in any order now.

            --
            My rights don't end where your fear begins.
            • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday February 02 2015, @04:16PM

              by Immerman (3985) on Monday February 02 2015, @04:16PM (#140321)

              Really? Let's see - a few of compose-key fueled characters:²³♥«©

              Only, why doesn't Ubuntu support [compose]pi? I thought that was one of the standard X key compositions. Can't believe I've gone that long without typing it. Oh well, back to the task at hand. Let's see if at least the exponents make it through...

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 01 2015, @05:12PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 01 2015, @05:12PM (#140076)

      Practically every terrorist attack in the west has been committed by people that were already known to the authorities. Most recently, the boston bombers were reported by the russians, one of the hebdo shooters had been in prison for recruiting jihadists and the other was known to have studied with the underwear bomber in Yemen. The NSA is now claiming they were in North Korea's systems watching as they attacked Sony.

      The problem is not too much encryption, it is security agencies more interested in playing with gee-whiz toys than in fully using the information they already have.

      • (Score: 4, Insightful) by SlimmPickens on Sunday February 01 2015, @08:34PM

        by SlimmPickens (1056) on Sunday February 01 2015, @08:34PM (#140112)

        Furthermore, tip-offs are still one of their greatest sources of intelligence. Maybe they'd get more from the wives and children if they thought their communication infrastructure was secure.

      • (Score: 2) by Adamsjas on Sunday February 01 2015, @09:56PM

        by Adamsjas (4507) on Sunday February 01 2015, @09:56PM (#140124)

        Agreed. This story is just another scare tactic to tar and feather encryption. The oh so scary "Dark Web" must die.

        If they just watch where people go and travel never mind email they would be miles ahead.
        The French were gullible to allow someone returning from terrorist weapons training to live un-watched in society.
        Personally I think travel to and participating in terrorist training should be a one way trip. They should never get to come back.

        • (Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 02 2015, @12:20AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 02 2015, @12:20AM (#140150)

          > Personally I think travel to and participating in terrorist training should be a one way trip. They should never get to come back.

          Like this guy? [wired.co.uk]

          • (Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Monday February 02 2015, @03:44AM

            by Joe Desertrat (2454) on Monday February 02 2015, @03:44AM (#140195)

            What did your link have to do with terrorist training?

      • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday February 02 2015, @01:35PM

        by Thexalon (636) on Monday February 02 2015, @01:35PM (#140282)

        Also highly relevant: In the one of the few cases the FBI can point to of having actually prevented a terrorist attack before it was carried out, the only reason the would-be terrorists got even remotely close to succeeding was because of the actions of the FBI agent on the case. When these knuckleheads [cleveland.com] decided to engage in some anarchist violence, they only got their hands on what they thought were explosives because a helpful guy sold them to the group - that helpful guy was of course an undercover agent.

        --
        The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
    • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Sunday February 01 2015, @10:57PM

      by tangomargarine (667) on Sunday February 01 2015, @10:57PM (#140142)

      but it isn't like the threat of global thermonuclear war, and while the Constitution was certainly eroded during the cold war, I can't help but think we've become a land of such raging pussies that we basically shut down when a pressure cooker bomb goes off.

      Hey, don't forget that pressure cooker bombs are now classified as weapons of mass destruction.

      --
      "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 01 2015, @05:52PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 01 2015, @05:52PM (#140083)

    Jihadists means "holy warriors". But that's a self-appointed name - no one views these people as remotely holy or even warriors. They are just thugs, criminals and rapists taking advantage of power vacuums and ethnic violence in the Middle East and elsewhere.

    As to these "experts", who are they?

    He pointed to Mehdi Nemmouche, saying last year's alleged Brussels Jewish museum killer had no mobile phone and no Facebook account.

    O..M....G...!! So if you don't have your mobile phone on all the time, or no Facebook account to spew everything you are doing, you are now using "dark nets"?

    "We are starting to notice the beginnings of disaffection with Facebook -- they have understood that's how we get incriminating evidence," said Chadrys.

    No shit Sherlock. I think this tells me how stupid these people were in the first place.

    Now, what is the purpose of this fluff-piece? To further the police state? Are these "experts" coming out of the woodwork now because they are nothing but shills for these guys?

    http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/11/uk-spy-chief-parroting-his-us-counterparts-calls-for-crypto-backdoors/ [arstechnica.com]

    The thugs in the middle east and nobodies. They don't matter at all. The danger is local power hungry people in government and spy agencies. They are using isolated incidents affecting few people to change the way all of us leads our lives. They already have the panopticon by recording every single internet connection and tracing them to the source. Soon enough, crypto will become illegal once again as dossiers are built on every one of the suspects, I mean everyone. Then if you become a pain in the ass for the powerful, that dossier gets used to get rid off you, legally and cleanly. For example, in Canada, the first use of expanded police powers back in 2001 was a raid on journalist and her illegal detention under the anti-terrorist clauses because the journalist wrote about important people doing illegal things.

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Immerman on Sunday February 01 2015, @06:57PM

      by Immerman (3985) on Sunday February 01 2015, @06:57PM (#140095)

      Correction - nobody *else* considers them to be holy. Holy warriors generally look anything but to those they're attacking.

      After all, holy wars are generally fought on the presumption that the enemy is fundamentally, voluntarily, subhuman. Even more so than usual in war. And thus the traditional murder, rape, and theft that characterize pretty much every invasion, ever, need not be moderated by the guilt you might feel if the victims were human.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 02 2015, @06:14AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 02 2015, @06:14AM (#140226)

        they only become holey when the A-10 thunderbolt visits

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Justin Case on Sunday February 01 2015, @07:13PM

    by Justin Case (4239) on Sunday February 01 2015, @07:13PM (#140098) Journal

    > Jihadists Increasingly Wary of Internet

    Yaay, it's working!

    > as is everyone else

    ...collateral damage.

  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Yog-Yogguth on Sunday February 01 2015, @07:18PM

    by Yog-Yogguth (1862) Subscriber Badge on Sunday February 01 2015, @07:18PM (#140099) Journal

    The article is made up bullshit. The people in it are not experts except in the modern PC sense: people (or maybe that should be whores) without any clue at all who know they haven't got a clue and who are willing to trade a display of their cluelessness for anything including something as shallow as being mentioned as a so-called “expert”. It is all fluff. Fluff in the original sense and fluff in the pornographic sense.

    There are two main issues in TFA: metanetworks and terrorism. Let's deal with metanetworks first.

    Metanetworks aren't magic. (By themselves) they're all software and they're not well enough tested and understood to provide the attributes claimed. Then add all the other known weaknesses of software. There's no reason to think the powers that be aren't knee deep in it. Does anyone with a clue think surveillance of a million IPs poses any problem at all? “Experts” like those in TFA do not belong in a post-Snowden world, they deserve public ridicule.

    Then there's terror. The truth is that no one needs any networking to commit terror. Terror is as easy as picking up your kitchen knife, walking out your door, choosing your victim and (almost always) shouting ‘allah akbar’. It's easy for the humans that do it and it probably helps them a lot that they imagine themselves being applauded by “god”.

    Sure in addition they might use anything everyone else might use, so what? What about the human to human social and financial networking that muslims love? If anyone wants to focus on anything then those would be far more relevant but of course actual experts already knew that.

    And since we're on the vast topic of bullshit: how many people are stupid enough to not realize why the beheading videos are edited? It takes time to cut off a head with a shitty little knife. Even using a sword like in Saudi Arabia is often too messy and failure prone. In their humanity the French invented the guillotine precisely because axes and swords tended to be such an inefficient mess even when experts, actual experts, did it.

    But muslims don't feel any need to avoid a bloody pulp; it's the only result you get from stoning a woman half buried in a standing position. It is why they put a sack over her so all the gore stays more or less in one puddle.

    When they execute gays by pushing them off high-rise buildings the end result is not an open casket, it's bones and dog food and a rinse with a hose.

    Not islam? It's what the humans doing these things call it. They even got it all written down by “god”. Of course it's all bullshit.

    --
    Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))
    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 01 2015, @08:10PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 01 2015, @08:10PM (#140105)

      And since we're on the vast topic of bullshit: how many people are stupid enough to not realize why the beheading videos are edited? It takes time to cut off a head with a shitty little knife.

      They are edited to make them just palatable enough for the 24-hour news channels to be able to air them. The videos themselves aren't 'news' any more than the Hebdo cartoons are 'news' but airing them kills three birds with one stone - appeals to the purient interests of the viewers which is good for ad dollars, promotes the ISIS brand encouraging them to make more videos and sells the terror-industrial complex to the tax payers.

      After 5-6 years of a pirate-only media diet (i.e. no commercials and no televised news) I've started watching the news because I find myself stuck with idle time and only basic cable for 5-10 hours a week. The constant beating of the terror drum really took me by surprise. I had no idea how relentless the propaganda had become. No wonder america is scared of its shadow, the fear-mongering is deafening. Normal people without the time to dig into the details simply have no chance of resisting.

      • (Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Sunday February 01 2015, @09:37PM

        by hemocyanin (186) on Sunday February 01 2015, @09:37PM (#140117) Journal

        Interesting -- I can't remember the last time I saw broadcast news (I quit watching broadcast TV in 1992 because commercials seem to be a waste of life -- anyway, yeah, I'm one of those smug kill your TV assholes, though not really -- first I watched what I wanted to on VHS, then DVD, then Netflix, and now Netflix/iTunes/Amazon Prime), but what you write makes think I should go over to someone's house and watch the news some night.

        • (Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Monday February 02 2015, @02:16AM

          by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Monday February 02 2015, @02:16AM (#140177) Journal

          but what you write makes think I should go over to someone's house and watch the news some night.

          Some informative points if you share your reactions/thoughts once you've done it.

          --
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford