Training for the Jihad (merged thread)

[Jedburgh]

The Jamestown Foundation's Terrorism Monitor, 27 Sep 07:

GIMF Develops Defensive and Offensive Software for Jihadi Operations

In July 2007, jihadi forums announced the creation of a new computer program called the Secrets of the Mujahideen, version 1.0. The objective of the program—which was published and distributed by the Global Islamic Media Front (GIMF) through many jihadi websites—is to replace the old and unreliable PGP corporation encryption tools that jihadis had used in the past. Since the release of the program, jihadi websites, especially the GIMF, are instructing their subscribers to communicate using the program's encryption keys. Furthermore, al-Qaeda operatives are using Secrets of the Mujahideen in an attempt to avoid U.S. eavesdropping operations against them.

Separately, and on the offensive front, jihadi hackers have also invented their own programs to steal data off other computers, part of a larger "Electronic Jihad." Some of the Islamic hackers' targets are computers attached to cameras transmitting live videos from intersections and other busy areas. They claim that these videos can be used to case potential targets.

This article will elucidate the documentation of the Secrets of the Mujahideen, in addition to providing information on the ongoing Electronic Jihad.....

[Tom Odom]

The GIMF's asleep....

Wake him up...

Interesting post, Jed!

[Jedburgh]

RAND, 10 Oct 07: Assessing the Value of Information and Communication Technologies to Modern Terrorist Organizations

....This analysis focuses on the potential application of information and communication technologies that may be used across the full range of activities that make up terrorist operations and whether these applications can lead to new and different approaches to terrorist operations. Its purpose is to identify which of these network technologies terrorist organizations are likely to use in conducting their operations and to suggest what security forces might do to counter, mitigate, or exploit terrorists’ use of such technologies.

To highlight the merger of software and computer technologies with communication and display technologies that digitalization has made possible and to encourage thinking beyond military technologies, this report uses the term network technologies to describe what are referred to as command, control, communication, computer, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) technologies in military parlance, as well as the consumer-oriented technologies that can often provide the functionality needed for terrorist operations. These network technologies can include connectivity technologies (e.g., wireless routers), mobile computing (e.g., xiv Network Technologies for Networked Terrorists laptop computers), personal electronic devices (e.g., personal digital assistants and cell phones), IT services and Internet access, and video recording, among others.....

[Norfolk]

Amongst other things that this report describes, one particularly disturbing capability available to jihadi and other terrorist organizations is the ability afforded by digital technology to alter or completely fabricate digital images or audio recordings; a potent instrument at the strategic level, and one that allows terrorist/insurgent groups to go toe-to-toe with state governments in the media war, often the decisive theater in Western countries at least. Terrorist/insurgent groups, as we have seen for the last few years, have been able to negate politically much of what they have failed to accomplish militarily (albeit often in tandem with media outlets that have their own axes to grind; fellow travellers in some respects, so to speak).

Although such digital technology to allow for altered or fabricated imagery and recordings has been availble since the 1980's, and the possibilities of that pondered over the last 20 years, I don't think that Governments and Publics that are the intended targets of jihadi information operations are really prepared for the day when the airwaves and the net are dominated by news, imagery, and sound-bites of some incident in some sensitive place or on some sensitive issue that is either heavily altered by jihadis wielding digital techonology to do so, or outright fabrications of things that do not exist or never actually occurred. Disturbing.

[davidbfpo]

The link is to a Norwegian think tank report The Internet: a virtual traing camp: http://www.mil.no/multimedia/archive...nu_101280a.pdf

Might fit somewhere else, but another suitable thread not readily id'd.

A longer version is in the periodical Terrorism and Political Violence, No.20 April 2008.

From the conclusion: 'the Internet is best viewed as a resource bank for self-radicalized and autonomous cells, which is used alongside more traditional ways of training and preparing. In many cases, jihadi Internet manuals may function as a preparation for real-life training, rather than a substitute for it. This also seems to be a common view among the jihadis themselves. The idea that Internet training material should be used to learn the basics—before moving on to classical jihadi training—makes it perhaps more accurate to talk about the Internet as a ‘‘pre-school of jihad’’ rather than a ‘‘university.’’

The link (fee to pay) is: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/con...all~order=page

A wider perspective is on: http://www.mil.no/multimedia/archive...08_107488a.pdf (free too) and a 2006 report: http://rapporter.ffi.no/rapporter/2006/00915.pdf

davidbfpo