Electronic Jihad (merged thread)

From The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI)

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Special Dispatch-Jihad & Terrorism Studies Project
April 20, 2007
No. 1552

Has an Organized Campaign to Shut Down Islamist Websites Begun? Islamist Forums Claim It Has

To view this Special Dispatch in HTML, visit:
http://www.memri.org/bin/opener_latest.cgi?ID=SD155207 .

In the past weeks, several rumors have been spread over Islamist websites about Western intelligence agencies' intention to shut down Islamist forums. As one Islamist put it, "We are all aware of the Zionist-Crusader campaign that has been launched against the Islamist websites... The most recent [manifestation of this campaign] is... the effort of American intelligence to completely eliminate websites that distribute communiqués [by the mujahideen] and films [documenting] attacks of the Iraqi resistance, or which encourage so-called terrorism.... As part of this campaign, [the Americans are also] threatening TV networks that broadcast videos [documenting] attacks... or that report on [Coalition] casualties not reported by the U.S. military."(1) Islamist forums reacting to the recent disabling of one Islamist website and one Islamist forum claim that these are two manifestations of a single united U.S. campaign against Islamists.

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I haven't seen any sign of that. If you troll the deeper currents of the Internet there is some polarization between whack em's and help em's.

The sample of one and one is a bit of stretch to apply to a larger population.

Hi Selil,

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Originally Posted by selil

I haven't seen any sign of that. If you troll the deeper currents of the Internet there is some polarization between whack em's and help em's.

The sample of one and one is a bit of stretch to apply to a larger population.

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Oh I agree that the sample size is terrible. Still, it may be indicative of a shift in perception that may drive some of these boards into more hidden zones.

Marc

I would be surprised if kiddiescript hackers have not crashed more than one of these sites. They love a challenge. Especially, one that will probably not have any repercussions.

"Especially, one that will probably not have any repercussions." (-luv that , I truly do)

The problem is the Internet itself. I can post on this forum using a server in Vietnam and my IP would indicate such. It would be difficult to subpoena an Internet provider, government, or company server in Vietnam and places like that. Heck, hackers love using servers in the Middle East for the same reason. You can bring down a site, and I'm sure that is going on both on and off the record as well as with kiddiescripters but they can get their sites back up in no time at all. What was once just a group of universities connected together has gotten way out of control. The Internet has taken on a life of its own. It doesn't really change much except it increases the pace. The place for espionage and propaganda at light speed. I'm afraid because of this pace that desperate measures may be in store. Time, not impatience, will be a factor in decision making. Lets just hope it doesn't come down to having to turn an entire region into a sheet of glass. The next leaders may have to be of the Curtis LeMay variety. Not by choice or because we are getting impatient but because time itself is a factor. I'm sure we are looking at what happened to Japan. From a vicious and discriminating empire to a culture and nation that tries its best not to fire a shot in anger. In the end, the opportunity cost was worth the decision to speed up the clock for the end of that war during that time and place. It created other problems later but solved the problem of Japan.

23 July Federal Computer Week - DOD Takes Aim at Jihadist Web Sites by Sebastian Sprenger.

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Pentagon officials may be mum publicly about efforts to halt the spread of jihadist Web sites, but military and other intelligence agency officials say privately they are trying to limit the online recruiting and information dissemination efforts of militant Islamist groups.

A spokeswoman for the new Air Force Cyberspace Command declined to say whether the issue is on the command's agenda, but Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne seems to be looking to the command for solutions. "The pervasive nature of pro-jihad Web sites represents a tangible and highly visible example of how our adversaries use elements of cyberspace against us," he wrote in an article for the spring 2007 issue of the service publication Air & Space Power Journal.

Web sites aimed at attracting new generations of Islamic militants have multiplied steadily in recent years, and their number is now estimated to be in the thousands. Although tech-savvy extremists are known to attack Western computer networks through hacking and other means, many experts consider the silent spread of easy-to-set-up anti-American propaganda Web sites more dangerous because the military finds it difficult to stop...

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Would it really be better, from an IO and IC perspective, to drive these sites into less visible formats than open websites? We can barely catch the most significant variables of the material out there now.

A smarter option would be slick psuedo-jihadi of our own to spread disinformation, fratricidal factional strife, intra-jurisprudential controversies and so on and network-maap the traffic.

Zenpundit,

I still owe you that coffee...

On topic we (google, yahoo, dogpile, etc.) can see about thirty percent of the Internet (optimistically). Darknet for example on SWC is the area that the registered users, admins, and selected individuals have access to. Darknet is the other side and is where a lot of the coordination, training, and planning activities of the adversary are likely occurring. This can happen on forums, wiki's, IRC, and p2p networks. Like a periscope breaking the surface the recruiting efforts and open Jihadist websites portend much more danger below the surface that their targets may not see.

The openly communicating enemy of the state may expose substantial and influential information simply by the volume of what they are saying. Driving them to ground will only piss them off, and result in little if any security.

Do not forget about Deep Web.

I stumble onto many "questionable websites", and I only do it for a hobby:rolleyes:.

Not sure where the Army is going with this, but even if you do find the websites, what next? And something Army may not think of and I am sure the XXX would beg to differ (another one of those turf struggles):D on just which sites get shut down or monitored.

TAKES AIM :eek: They just keep hopping onto another IP address.

I would compare this to tossing one of those ping pong balls at those fish bowls at a county fair. Darn thing bounces around all over the place until it either goes off table or lands in bowl. After a couple dozen balls when you do land one in the bowl, they don't give you that one, they grab some fish in totally different tank and slaps it in a plastic bag and hands it off to you, and now your like, Now what?:wry:


Deep Web Research Resources and Sites

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A Subject Tracer™ Information Blog developed and created by Internet expert, author, keynote speaker and consultant Marcus P. Zillman, M.S., A.M.H.A. for monitoring deep web research resources and sites on the Internet.

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Hi Selil,

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Originally Posted by selil

The openly communicating enemy of the state may expose substantial and influential information simply by the volume of what they are saying. Driving them to ground will only piss them off, and result in little if any security.

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There are a couple of other implications as well. First, these sites can be used to track narrative changes as they emerge and, in some ways, are a fantastic source of predictive intel. Second, the legalities of attacking these sites are interesting. Certainly if they are located on servers in the US they can be shut down - at least for the n2 seconds it takes for the mirror in some other country to pen up :wry:. What if they are in Finland or Kenya or Nigeria?

Personally, I don't care if thy are PO'd - "bad cess" to them as my grandmother would say. I would far rather use their own necessities against them in a proactive way.

Marc

Actually I think the FBI likes to keep some of them up so as to monitor them. A bit hard on those who visit just for curiosities sake(Hey, I've done it once or twice myself), but of course they can probably sort those out from regulars.
All this sounds like a great spy movie. Have someone who has a personal crusade to squish terrorist websites. And Someone Finds Out...

DEBKAfile Exclusive: Al Qaeda declares Cyber Jihad on the West

October 30, 2007, 5:36 PM (GMT+02:00)
Symbol of al Qaeda's new Cyper Jihad

Symbol of al Qaeda's new Cyper Jihad

In a special Internet announcement in Arabic, picked up DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources, Osama bin Laden’s followers announced Monday, Oct. 29, the launching of Electronic Jihad. On Sunday, Nov. 11, al Qaeda’s electronic experts will start attacking Western, Jewish, Israeli, Muslim apostate and Shiite Web sites. On Day One, they will test their skills against 15 targeted sites expand the operation from day to day thereafter until hundreds of thousands of Islamist hackers are in action against untold numbers of anti-Muslim sites.

DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources report that, shortly after the first announcement, some of al Qaeda’s own Web sites went blank, apparently crashed by the American intelligence computer experts tracking them.

The next day, Oct. 30, they were up again, claiming their Islamic fire walls were proof against infidel assault.

They also boasted an impenetrable e-mail network for volunteers wishing to join up with the cyber jihad to contact and receive instructions undetected by the security agencies in their respective countries.

Our sources say the instructions come in simple language and are organized in sections according to target. They offer would-be martyrs, who for one reason or another are unable to fight in the field, to fulfill their jihad obligations on the Net. These armchair martyrs are assured of the same thrill and sense of elation as a jihadi on the “battlefield.”

In effect, say DEBKAfile’s counter-terror experts, al Qaeda is retaliating against Western intelligence agencies’ tactics, which detect new terrorist sites and zap them as soon as they appear. Until now, the jihadists kept dodging the assault by throwing up dozens of new sites simultaneously. This kept the trackers busy and ensured that some of the sites survived, while empty pages were promptly replaced. But as al Qaeda’s cyber wizards got better at keeping its presence on the Net for longer periods, so too did Western counter-attackers at knocking them down. Now Bin Laden’s cyber legions are fighting back. The electronic war they have declared could cause considerable trouble on the world’s Internet.

I have always believed that a cyber war was bound to happen, and there is no reason, given the capabilities of Western computer analysts and code writers, that the West should not be victorious in this, regardless of how long it takes. I would like to know more about this, but I suspect it is all highly classified.

However, just a word about DEBKAfile. I would not trust this source. I would only be mildly surprised for them to announce that little green men had landed from space and allied themselves with Hezbollah, making them technologically superior now to Israel and the U.S.

Literally. Their predictions and "scoops" have proven to be wrong and exaggerated too many times for me to take them seriously any more.

HPS

Estonia's geeks pointed me to this article among others.

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Security experts are saying that a reported al-Qaeda cyber jihad attack planned against Western institutions should be treated with skepticism.

Such an attack could be launched with a known software kit, called Electronic Jihad Version 2.0, said Paul Henry, vice president of technology evangelism with Secure Computing. This software, which has been in circulation for about three years, has recently become more easily configurable so that it could be more effective in a distributed denial of service attack, such as the one suggested by the DEBKAfile report.

Attackers would download Jihad 2.0 to their own desktops and specify the amount of bandwidth they would like to consume, not unlike the SETI@home software package used to scan for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence.

However, Henry said that his law enforcement contacts are treating the report with some skepticism. "I talked to a few people today who know of DEBKAfile, who feel they are dubious, but they can be credible," he said. "I'm not looking at Nov. 11 as being the day that the Internet goes down."

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Originally Posted by Stan

Estonia's geeks pointed me to this article among others.

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Regardless of DebkaFile's dubious reputation, the fact remains that cyberwarfare is not only a reality, but that it's been a warfighting domain for DOD for at least a year; that the USAF is actively engaged in R&D related to it; and that we (meaning the U.S.) are quite vulnerable to such an attack, and even worse, have no recovery plan in place in the event of wide-spread Internet failure.

I've written on this subject at the following links:

http://idolator.typepad.com/intelfus...ke-fema-i.html
http://idolator.typepad.com/intelfus...ld-west-o.html
http://analysis.threatswatch.org/2007/06/terror-web-20/
http://www.esecurityplanet.com/preve...le.php/3694711

This has been a realm of concern since the 1970's. The first computer warfare activities were in the 1980's. In the mid 1990's substantial cyber attacks occurred. The question is of scope and what you consider to be "cyber" and to be an "attack".

If you want to have this discussion about real capability this is likely not the forum for it.

I actually hope that this report is completely true. Our geeks are nerdier, better funded, more organized, better equipped, and far more experienced than theirs. Not to be too overconfident, but this fight, if it occurs, will be about as lopsided as the Titanic versus the iceburg.

And this just released.

Interesting article on trojan horses being installed on drives being targeted to government agencies. This is going to fuel the no foreign equipment purchased for government like the IBM debacle.

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Bureau warns on tainted discs
FOCUSED ATTACK: Large-capacity hard disks often used by government agencies were found to contain Trojan horse viruses, Investigation Bureau officials warned
By Yang Kuo-wen, Lin Ching-chuan and Rich Chang
STAFF REPORTERS
Sunday, Nov 11, 2007, Page 2

Portable hard discs sold locally and produced by US disk-drive manufacturer Seagate Technology have been found to carry Trojan horse viruses that automatically upload to Beijing Web sites anything the computer user saves on the hard disc, the Investigation Bureau said.

Around 1,800 of the portable Maxtor hard discs, produced in Thailand, carried two Trojan horse viruses: autorun.inf and ghost.pif, the bureau under the Ministry of Justice said.

The tainted portable hard disc uploads any information saved on the computer automatically and without the owner's knowledge to www.nice8.OBSCURED (.org) and www.we168.OBSCURED (.org), the bureau said.

The affected hard discs are Maxtor Basics 500G discs.

The bureau said that hard discs with such a large capacity are usually used by government agencies to store databases and other information.

Sensitive information may have already been intercepted by Beijing through the two Web sites, the bureau said.

The bureau said that the method of attack was unusual, adding that it suspected Chinese authorities were involved.

In recent years, the Chinese government has run an aggressive spying program relying on information technology and the Internet, the bureau said.

The bureau said this was the first time it had found that Trojan horse viruses had been placed on hard discs before they even reach the market.

The bureau said that it had instructed the product's Taiwanese distributor, Xander International, to remove the products from shelves immediately.

The bureau said that it first received complaints from consumers last month, saying they had detected Trojan horse viruses on brand new hard discs purchased in Taiwan.

Agents began examining hard discs on the market and found the viruses linked to the two Web sites.

Anyone who has purchased this kind of hard disc should return it to the place of purchase, the bureau said.

The distributor told the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times' sister newspaper) that the company had sold 1,800 tainted discs to stores last month.

It said it had pulled 1,500 discs from shelves, while the remaining 300 had been sold by the stores to consumers.

Seagate's Asian Pacific branch said it was looking into the matter.

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Originally Posted by selil

This has been a realm of concern since the 1970's. The first computer warfare activities were in the 1980's. In the mid 1990's substantial cyber attacks occurred. The question is of scope and what you consider to be "cyber" and to be an "attack".

If you want to have this discussion about real capability this is likely not the forum for it.

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What forum do you recommend?

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Originally Posted by JeffC

What forum do you recommend?

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My concern is the management might get offended. I got warned about going off on a tangent once before.

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Originally Posted by selil

My concern is the management might get offended. I got warned about going off on a tangent once before.

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Well, that's fair, but surely there must be a forum here where a discussion of Cyberwarfare is on-topic.

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Originally Posted by JeffC

Well, that's fair, but surely there must be a forum here where a discussion of Cyberwarfare is on-topic.

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There really isn't a sub-forum to discuss it.

Futurists & Theorists "Future Competition & Conflict, Theory & Nature of Conflict, 4GW through 9?GW, Transformation, RMA, etc." is where most people might want to put it but it is a real and now threat.

Catch-All, Military Art & Science is the open category but really it's been more about non-standard equipment.

The Information War forum might seem like a good place for discussion of cyber warfare but they are NOT the same thing. Cyber warfare is about the manipuation of the computing asset not the communication channel.

Cyber-warfare is attacks against the infrastructures of command, control, coordination and communication. In general (staying high level) cyber warfare are attacks against the security services of confidentiality, integrity, availability, non-repudiation, and authentication (McCumber model as adapted by Schou, Maconahay, Ragsdale). Cyber-warfare can be smart bombs into the telephone company, trojan horses hidden on hard drives, laptops stolen from desks, and social engineering users. I've got a pretty extensive high level slide presentation I can put up on my blog if interested.

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Originally Posted by selil

There really isn't a sub-forum to discuss it.

Futurists & Theorists "Future Competition & Conflict, Theory & Nature of Conflict, 4GW through 9?GW, Transformation, RMA, etc." is where most people might want to put it but it is a real and now threat.

Catch-All, Military Art & Science is the open category but really it's been more about non-standard equipment.

The Information War forum might seem like a good place for discussion of cyber warfare but they are NOT the same thing. Cyber warfare is about the manipuation of the computing asset not the communication channel.

Cyber-warfare is attacks against the infrastructures of command, control, coordination and communication. In general (staying high level) cyber warfare are attacks against the security services of confidentiality, integrity, availability, non-repudiation, and authentication (McCumber model as adapted by Schou, Maconahay, Ragsdale). Cyber-warfare can be smart bombs into the telephone company, trojan horses hidden on hard drives, laptops stolen from desks, and social engineering users. I've got a pretty extensive high level slide presentation I can put up on my blog if interested.

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Sure. Post the slide show, and I'll link to it from my blog as well. I also put up a request for the SWC forum mods to consider opening an official Cyberwarfare sub-forum.

Jeff,
One of our members, MarcT was working on a Cyberwar paper just a while back, he might be able to help get this idea started.

Regards, Stan

I did a fair bit of research on the topic of "cyber-jihad" during my grad work for HLS; both the technical & the I-war perspectives. I'd be happy to contribute a fair number of high quality sources to such a thread.

selil, Stan, ilots, and other interested posters - Per SWCAdmin, we can use the Media and Information War forum for the discussion of cyberwarfare. If it proves popular enough, the Powers That Be will carve out a dedicated forum for the topic.

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Originally Posted by Jedburgh

There is zero need for a specific "OSINT analysis" discipline; as I stated before, it falls easily within the skillset of the traditional intelligence analyst.

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I agree with you that the traditional intelligence analyst has the skill set, but I haven't see the toolkit, and think I have seen evidence they don't have the toolkit. What is new and needed, is an "Information Trooper" al Qaeda and even the Taliban have seen the Internet as a new Theater of operations, and USA is starting to recognize it. We are not winning the war for the Hearts and Minds, nobody can stop USA militarily but the war for hearts and minds is something different.. The Terrorist have around 4,000 web sites now, and put out video of an atack winth in 15 min in some cases. On the internet anything posted enough times over a long enough period of time will be believed as the truth.. USA is loosing an Info/Media war with a man hiding in a cave. The most advanced and savvy MEDIA AND technological country in the world. The decision ot leave up or take down a terrorist site among the civilian irregulars now has some clarity. For a Military/Intelligence to take down a terrorist server they need an approval from Bush, there are still no rules for engagement. On the hacking/bot side USA has about a 3 to 5 year lead over the Islamic hackers. We need to be exploiting that lead. USA's soft war, is almost non-existent. Or your cover is almost perfect. Soft wars are cheaper and have much less blowback. I welcome you observations and any info you can safely share. Bill

The decision ot leave up or take down a terrorist site among the civilian irregulars now has some clarity. For a Military/Intelligence to take down a terrorist server they need an approval from Bush, there are still no rules for engagement.

Command and control of civilian irregular computer network operators is almost an oxymoron. In meat space the ODA commander doesn't command the G Chief. He figures out ways to persuade the G Chief that following the advisor's advice was the G Chief's idea. There ARE G Chiefs in cyber space . Are there Regular digital outreach team LNO's with enough rapport and cred to get a productive jihadi site left up?

All,

Figuring out 'the lay of the land' in any country has been greatly facilitated by the rise of the internet: google, google earth, news/general podcasts, etc. ESRI products and custom software like falconview are helping to rapidly visually translate portions of this knowledge into something usable. Database creation, management, synchronization and useage give some pretty amazing products.

There are a variety of G-Chief's ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Business_Network and http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-5969516.html ) who are successfully using this technology and others on a large scale and there are obvious economic benefits to doing things remotely and with a computer assist.

Technology does not replace the well trained man on the ground however, and I would argue that time in country for decision makers helps to contextualize the information gathered/provided and makes for far better decisions.

Steve

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Originally Posted by zenpundit

Would it really be better, from an IO and IC perspective, to drive these sites into less visible formats than open websites? We can barely catch the most significant variables of the material out there now.

A smarter option would be slick psuedo-jihadi of our own to spread disinformation, fratricidal factional strife, intra-jurisprudential controversies and so on and network-maap the traffic.

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This is exactly right. Why would we want to make it harder for us to watch them? Its much easier to monitor the Internet than sort through sail mail, monitor cellphones, or catch a messenger. I would hope that all the ideas you stated are already being implemented? One argument people make is that they can recruit via the Internet and motivate people through images of attacks on US personal. While this may be true, at the same time, we can monitor who visits these sites and geographically analyze the major nodes and networks of the regular visitors. GIS would be a great tool for this type of analysis. I'm pretty sure our intelligence people must be doing this already. Anyway, good post.

One more thing, and this might sound a little too "sci-fi" or crazy but here goes. Someone should develop the technology that would enable us to send some sort of "shock" through the system or even something that could cause an explosion at the enemy's computer[s]. A known enemy, would think he was visiting a "friendly" site and when he clicked on to the site, he would feel something very unpleasant. This may be impossible, as I know very little about computer networks or computer technology, but I thought I'd mention it anyway?

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Originally Posted by Ratzel

This is exactly right. Why would we want to make it harder for us to watch them? Its much easier to monitor the Internet than sort through sail mail, monitor cellphones, or catch a messenger. I would hope that all the ideas you stated are already being implemented? One argument people make is that they can recruit via the Internet and motivate people through images of attacks on US personal. While this may be true, at the same time, we can monitor who visits these sites and geographically analyze the major nodes and networks of the regular visitors. GIS would be a great tool for this type of analysis. I'm pretty sure our intelligence people must be doing this already. Anyway, good post.

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We don't know the identity of visitors or members to these sites since they post under pseudonyms. And their use of anonymizers like TOR (and more sophisticated tools) defeats geographical analysis.

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Originally Posted by Ratzel

One more thing, and this might sound a little too "sci-fi" or crazy but here goes. Someone should develop the technology that would enable us to send some sort of "shock" through the system or even something that could cause an explosion at the enemy's computer[s]. A known enemy, would think he was visiting a "friendly" site and when he clicked on to the site, he would feel something very unpleasant. This may be impossible, as I know very little about computer networks or computer technology, but I thought I'd mention it anyway?

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This sort of thing is very difficult due to the fact that someone could be broadcasting a site or link through a zombie system (more or less a third party computer that's been taken over by an outside network). You might also end up frying a casual surfer or someone who just blundered into an area (not to mention your own guys who were out gathering and didn't get the word...:eek:).

Interesting idea, but in many ways it may be better to let some of this stuff stay out in the open so you can monitor and track it.

I recently completed a project looking at the OSI 7 layer model. The concept of the paper was to identify a variety of methods to obscure or remove all traces of the orginators message. This is a project related to my PhD research on cyber warfare. The idea of traitor tracing (usually watermarks and encryption) being expanded to other methods of tracing or identifying rogue entities in an organization. Looking at the OSI 7 layer model we can remove every trace, at every level, between two end points of any communication. And, even if detected it is encrypted in such a way as any message would be OBE before forced decryption. Literally keyboard of sender to monitor of receiver the message is untraceable. For some reason people don't want me to publish the paper. I wonder why.

I was unable to identify an appropriate thread for AQ / Taliban propaganda, in particular their use of the web. Today FP Blog has two excellent articles by Jarret Brachman:

'Al Qaeda Wants to Be Friends: An insider's tour of the electronic jihad in the Facebook era'

Link:http://www.foreignpolicy.com/article...iends?page=0,0

A longer piece: 'Watching the Watchers: Al Qaeda's bold new strategy is all about using our own words and actions against us. And it's working'

Link:http://www.foreignpolicy.com/article...chers?page=0,0

Which ends with:

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What makes al Qaeda's new approach so powerful is that it is now easier than ever for passive jihadi supporters to become active al Qaeda participants, particularly in the West. They no longer need to wait for al Qaeda propaganda. Just like Chesser and the growing number of other American jihadi propagandists operating online, anyone can repost videos, write articles, create Facebook and Twitter accounts, and start blogs filled with content intended to show the world how awful the United States is.

This Power of Truth approach, rooted in finding actual "evidence" of U.S. missteps, has the added benefit of being all the more believable to empirically minded Westerners. Al Qaeda hopes that its online armies of jihobbyists will someday log off and launch their own Fort Hood or Times Square attacks. And eventually, some of them will.

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Then in The Daily Telegraph, which I suspect has picked up on another US-based story:

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Al-Qaeda magazine published 'tips on how to kill Americans'. A magazine run by the Yemeni group al-Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula has published a list of tips on how to kill Americans.

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Link:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...Americans.html

I know another, recent thread offered a contrast to AQ's media profile and how it could be criticised:http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ad.php?t=11158

Personally I like to emphasise that AQ's appeal for support, let alone action, can fall on "stony ground" as so few take up the "call" and we need to consider the "causes" and the motivation to follow (thanks to Bob Jones here).

Hat tip to Jihadica for some clarity on the flurry of articles:http://www.jihadica.com/inspire-2/

The second edition of an AQ periodical is out. This paragraph IMHO supports my closing comment:

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Perhaps most interesting are the advice on how to avoid detection:

Do not travel abroad for jihad – act on US soil instead.
Do not use mobile phones and the Internet for any jihad-related communication – if you have to, use coded language and encryption tools.
If you are clean stay clean – do not interact with other activists.
Do not access jihadi websites – get your jihadi propaganda fix from anti-jihadi monitoring sites such as MEMRI and SITE.

Obviously, someone who follows these guidelines is going to be extremely difficult to catch. The question is how many people are ready to act in this way. Khan’s strategy presupposes that individuals can aquire the motivation to die for the cause almost in a vacuum. However, in most historical cases, individuals only acquired this motivation after interacting with other radicals, going abroad for jihad, or accessing jihadi propaganda - all of which are activities discouraged by Samir Khan. Of course there have been exceptions, such as the Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hassan, but even he was not completely “clean”, as evidenced by his email correspondence with Anwar al-Awlaki. Decentralized jihad is indeed a scary concept, but it does not necessarily work.

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Originally Posted by davidbfpo

A longer piece: 'Watching the Watchers: Al Qaeda's bold new strategy is all about using our own words and actions against us. And it's working'

Link:http://www.foreignpolicy.com/article...chers?page=0,0

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Good article. Had me grinding my teeth at the end though, it’s a tough problem to crack.

The rap battle scene at the end of the movie 8 Mile (video 10m58s) - particularly in the final matchup – has the counter strategy.