Slashdot Mirror
Al-Qaeda Hacker Caught
anaesthetica writes "The Washington Post is carrying a story on a young man suspected to be the al-Qaeda hacker 'Irhabi 007'. From the article: 'Celebrated for his computer expertise, Irhabi 007 had propelled the jihadists into a 21st-century offensive through his ability to covertly and securely disseminate manuals of weaponry, videos of insurgent feats such as beheadings and other inflammatory material... The Internet has presented investigators with an extraordinary challenge. But our future security is going to depend increasingly on identifying and catching the shadowy figures who exist primarily in the elusive online world.'"
Now we have to worry about people driving car bombs into ISPs. It's like DDoS attacks, evolved.
That's fascinating and all, but where is the cyber-terrorism we are quivering over? When is it going to be an offensive move rather than mere proselytizing?
Goat's milk. Shaken, not stirred.
this should be filed under your rights online, since that is what will be disappearing soon. the terrorists are on the interwebs now. start up the survillence at the ISP level. if we happen to catch a people downloading music and movies, doubleplus good. osama is laughing his ass off watching us burn up our own constitution.
So, let me get this straight, if you're a propagandist for a terrorist group, you're a terrorist?
Yay. I wonder where this slippery slope ends up?
Also, I find it odd that this alleged hacker chose a moniker that would sound more familiar to Republican voters than to someone who would wholeheartedly reject Western ideals (ie: your average terrorist).
"But our future security is going to depend increasingly on identifying and catching the shadowy figures who exist primarily in the elusive online world.'" Bullshit. If my future security depends on the governments ability to destroy online anonymity, I want a different government. Make the borders secure. Packets of data don't scare me.
If they can get him, then they should be able to get a few more of the spammers.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Posting beheading videos and uploading traning manuals makes you a hacker?
Boy the bar really has been lowered, hasn't it.
But I bet he's glad he wasn't caught by the *AA !!!
Kidding aside, its interesting how the PR against him makes him sound evil incarnate... Next, this will be used to hobble our on-line rights so they can catch more of the terrorists... not a good thing IMO. Of course, I can't speak for everyone, but the PR is a bad sign. Criminals are criminals, no matter how bad they are. Sensationalizing the story, or the criminal, only serves nefarious purposes IMO.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
and let the riaa go after him.
Weaponmanuals and if you like, training using them is available perfectly openly. I suppose if you partake in such while looking Arabic you get looked at strangely these days. Still, there's nothing even remotely illegal about either.
It is true that secure, anonymous communication is a benefit to those with criminal intentions. But that's a small price to pay for the benefit they provide to the rest of us.
The fact that cellphones, the post, cars, guns, ski-masks, maps and electricity is an enabler for certain kinds of crime, is just an example of the fact that anything can be used for good or evil, the tools are mostly quite neutral, it's the user who decides.
Personally I'm a lot more worried about the freedoms that the government will take away to "protect" us than I am about anything the terrorists are likely to manage.
Before anymore of you spout off about how this guy's use of his free speech rights is what got him into trouble, RTFA!
..."
"Tsouli has been charged with eight offenses including conspiracy to murder, conspiracy to cause an explosion, conspiracy to cause a public nuisance, conspiracy to obtain money by deception and offences relating to the possession of articles for terrorist purposes and fundraising. So far there are no charges directly related to his alleged activities as Irhabi on the Internet,
LOOK! No Internet-publishing charges! They found out who he (allegedly) was by accident!
My only question is where are the Internet spooks who should be hunting these guys? They break into servers in the US and put beheading videos on them, and no one bothers to check the logs? Where are the honeypot jihadi forums? Is anybody looking into wtf http://www.whois.sc/irhabi007.com is all about? Is the owner a fan or an identity theft victim?
The latest Slashdot meme.
RTFA, not only did this guy hijack servers for his own use (which is most surely a criminal act), but he did so in order to disseminate weapons manuals and the like not only propaganda material. It is a common and long-standing principle in Western countries that providing aid and comfort to the enemy, most especially in terms of technical assistance, is a crime. It would be wrong to view the arrest of this man as "one more erosion of our rights", because the right to support the enemy has never existed. Save your energy to defend real victims, not this guy.
If the guy actually exists.
When are they going to catch all the dirty little script kiddies who mass-defaced Danish websites with death threats? These people are most likely the suicide-bomber wannabes who were told to stay home by their big brother because they were too young.
I expect its not so much about catching them, more about using them as keys into cells. Every-time they do something online they are providing an opportunity to be traced and hopefully this will lead to some big busts. Trading a few weapons manuals and videos online is no big deal really - if you want to see the beheading videos go to one of the countless 'hardcore-gore' sites out there or watch Al Jazeera. Weapons manuals have been traded ever since school kids put the anarchists cook book on school network shares.
I hope our governments are actually getting off their asses and using this intelligence to catch daka-dakas.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Good. Too bad you haven't caught that Osama guy or that #2 guy we almost catch every time Bush's polls are down.
I think the actual reason for him being such a threat is his ability to dodge censorship. Seeing how much media attention the videos he (supposedly) spreads recieve, you can kind of guess of what importance he is. This will, of course, again be used to push forward with laws cutting down on internet anonymity. Cause why would you want to be anonymous if you're not a commie/terrorist?
Wait... aren't his polls at their lowest right now? That must mean we're at least within 5 caves...
You're nothing; like me.
"The short career of Irhabi 007 offers a case study in the evolving nature of the threat that we at the SITE Institute track every day by monitoring and then joining the password-protected forums and communicating with the online jihadi community"
Come on, RTFA closely. Given the proclivities of Slashdot readers this may make for interesting reading but it is neither news nor does it say anything about our "rights" nor any erosion of them.
The only question it raises is why has the Washington Post seen fit to allow the SITE people to write a press release directly into their news publication in a form similar to what their readers would believe is an actual news article.
So you didn't read TFA, did you? You just wanted to spew.
..."
:p
For your benefit: Tsouli was arrested because he was a bomb plot suspect. They found out he was a known "hacker" later. "Tsouli has been charged with eight offenses including conspiracy to murder, conspiracy to cause an explosion
Feel silly? You should, and ashamed because your comments are callous as well as stupid considering "car accidents" like 9/11, the London bombings and Theo van Gogh's murder. Accidents happen. Murder doesn't just happen.
So check your facts and try to make a balanced point of view. You see that's what makes the Nordic countries special, not Yankee bashing. However it means you have to leave your safe, crystal clear, black and white world view behind and see there are shades of gray. Which sucks, so maybe you can take the easy option and just write me off as a racist and go back to Yankee-bashing. Which, by the way, doesn't make you look so clever. You see it's just as easy as mocking religion, Windows or Emacs users.
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
Al-Qaeda goes through #2s faster than the Enterprise went through red-shirted ensigns, apparently:1 _200111168.html)
_ 2004031811.html
/ from/RL.5/
Nov. 16, 2001 -- Air strikes in Afghanistan may have killed Mohammed Atef, the No. 2 man in the Al Qaeda terrorist network, Pentagon officials said today.
(http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Nov2001/n1116200
March 18, 2004 - Pakistani officials believe they have the No. 2 man in al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, cornered.
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Mar2004/n03182004
September 28, 2005 - Gen. Richard Myers, the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at the Pentagon that the U.S. military considered Abu Azzam the "No. 2 Al Qaeda operative in Iraq, next to Zarqawi."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9518556/site/newsweek
Spreading this information to would-be terrorists could be _THE_ key to defeating terrorism globally. "If I work hard for the cause... I may get promoted... if I get promoted enough, I might be second only to bin Laden himself... wait a minute..."
"Looking further, they found that the cards were used to pay American Internet providers on whose servers he had posted jihadi propaganda. Only then did investigators come to believe that they had netted the infamous hacker. And that element of luck is a problem. The Internet has presented investigators with an extraordinary challenge. But our future security is going to depend increasingly on identifying and catching the shadowy figures who exist primarily in the elusive online world."
The "investigators" didn't trace the well-known propagandist's Internet packets from his well-known websites to his terminal, to his person. No mention of a labyrinth of anonymizing proxies, or ever-changing public login terminals. They busted a credit fraudster and discovered his other, more dangerous gigs.
Meanwhile, the NSA, Echelon and other global "security" agencies are snooping on hundreds of millions of people's traffic. Supposedly to protect us from people like this Qaeda asshole. But they don't do even the basic network forensics a corporate IT department would immediately do when trying to find a bad guy.
Maybe if they caught the few, highly destructive bad guys like this Qaeda asshole, their "security" budgets would dry up. Maybe they've got their own reasons not to hit too hard against online credit fraudsters - collusion with international mobs, spooking the insurers, stumbling across covert finance networks for national "intelligence" agencies.
They're getting $HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS, invading our privacy, imprisoning people without evidence they're suspect, invading unrelated countries, breaking laws to spy on us at home. Meanwhile, Scotland Yard's traditionally tight nets of reasonable evidence and human intelligence have caught a terrorist operative. Who actually spreads terror, publishing the propaganda about terrorist attacks widely.
The demonstrated answer to these terrorists is our well understood police techniques. The justice system we've developed over hundreds of years, that is based on evidence and logic. Not only does it prove who did what when, but it avoids the damage caused by destroying liberty in the name of protecting it. Now we'll watch the mass media pump this arrest for more money and power for secret government operations that don't actually work.
--
make install -not war
Umm... how hard is it to "securely disseminate manuals...." ? Secure web pages.. geesh. Any 10 year old can do that in this day and age.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
And you've decided that strictly from the report the government released.
Why do you have so much faith in the government's honesty, veracity and accuracy?
If anything, the events of the past few years would seem to indicate that governments are not to be trusted as you seem to trust them.
It Came From the Washington Post.
Listen: the Post has swallowed the hook, line, sinker, and fishing trawler for over ten years now. They gobbled down the fake Clinton scandals verbatim from Ken Starr, and for the last four years have spectacularly slurped down every worm dangled in from of them from the faked intelligence for weapons in Iraq to aluminum tubes to Colin Powell's magnificient self destruction in front of the U.N. presenting descredited notions from Cheney's little Special Office of special intelligence.
They and the NY Times have been shown that they've been hosed like third graders accidently playing in a Vegas poker game, BUT THEY STILL KEEP SWALLOWING THE SAME LINES OF BULLSHIT FROM THE SAME DAMNED LIARS. I think they're in too deep, there at the editorial offices of WaPo. They can't admit that they've been absolutely wrong on every worshipful point in this fake "war" against a common noun. The paper of record is in too deep.
The "terrorists" from 9-11 died in the damned planes. And there weren't enough in the whole world to man the twelve planes they wanted to fly that day, according to the 911 commission. The only real terrorists left alive after 9-11 were the head of al queda and bin laden (he was the financier of the attack, not the movementleader) and these "warriors" haven't caught them after five years.
Posting stuff doesn't make you a terrorist. That's a thought crime.
This is bull. They can't get the real men who had something to do with 9-11, so they manufacture these little "victories" against no-one who get to be tortured by farmboys in gulags around the world until they die.
There is no "Terror" you can have a war against. Every stupid move against the fringe and uninvolved MAKES men and women who want to kill you. We've torrtured thousands of probably innocent people. George and the WaPo will get their "terrorists" until the end of time. Like the "war" against the idea of "communism", they define who the enemy is, make a pile of money, control the zeitgeist, and declare it over when they find some new enemy after the last enemy stronghold is a mafia-run nation whose main export is prostitutes. Drugs, communism, atheism, terrorism, whatever, they'll always find some new thing to terrify and entertain people with, until the last superhurricane wipes out Washington DC.
dumbass .....chuckles..... Sorry, i had a long night and that was funny :)
...stupid?... uncivilised.
Back to the subject. Yes, of course there is a big difference and I don't deny it. Your post however was far too short to see where you were going, so I just gave a counter-example and waited for clarification.
Anyways, since you seem to expect a debate I'll try to oblige. The bulk of the difference comes from the state of the civilisation in the respective countries. There were times in our (christian) history when you would have been killed painfully for droping a cruxifix in a bucket of piss, if you did it in the wrong place at the wrong time. Just as well as there are muslim countries today where the reply to "i've become christian" may well be "ah, so now you'll get us presents on 25 december?" or something equally benign.
As a pharantheses, my best friend went a few years ago in the largest muslim country in the world (indonesia - you would't think, i know. i was surprised too) and they treated him quite well.
Anyways my point is the difference is not religion. Or if it is, it's indirect at best. Yes people are tried in religious courts, but they don't do this because they are religious, they do this because they're
It's dangereus to call people names and apply labels such as muslim or hindu or even american. The reason for that is actually the subject of the link I posted. In a nutshell, it's a lot easyer to hurt people when you apply labels to them. You don't say: Muhammad, known as slim_muhy on slashdot, with great sense of humour and programming skills, was killed in an incident yesterday in Bagdad along with his family. You say: three irqis killed in an incident yesterday in Bagdad. Big difference, isn't it? Just by calling them iraqis. Anyways, the article goes to explain that apparently this is't just common wisdom, but has real basis in psychology, and also bigger longer term effects.
It's written btw by the guy who did the stanford experiment in the '70. Took a bunch of students and asked them to roleplay a prison. Inside a week they started doing it so well that the experiment had to be stopped. Goes to show..well, many things.
I know your "Cause why would you want to be anonymous if you're not a commie/terrorist?" question was sarcasm, but I thought I would give a valid example anyway.
http://anonetnfo.brinkster.net/
People need to take the internet from the government before the government can take it from them.
-- http://anonet.org -- The internet the way it was meant to be. Check it out, you may be surprised.
"They" being, of course, the "terrorists". The vast majority of muslims, i imagine, just wish we'd stop fscking around with their lives so they can get on with them (which might include participating in some of that freedom we all enjoy).
"Our interests are to see if we can't scale it up to something more exciting," he said.
Bombs and guns may break my bones, but pictures will never hurt me physically.
You've obviously never seen tubgirl either.
--MarkusQ
That's right, son. Folks who blow up random civilians in a hopeless, nihilistic attempt to destroy their nation don't get a free pass just 'cause their victims are Jews.
Or perhaps you'd like to name one or two Palestinian suicide bombings that you approve of?
Pure fantasy, your Internet voice is restricted to people who already believe it and look for it, with a billion pages out there, a few stupid sites are neither here nor there in the overall human consciousness.
Though it won't stop self righteous gits from looking for it, decrying it, demanding strict controls on it - unless of course it is their own Internet voice (which frustrates them enormously because most people either don't know it exists or just ignore it).
The 21st century adage you are just one voice amongst millions and unless tens of thousands already share your view, your voice isn't heard/read.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
I figure our future security is going to depend on our ability to prosecute top government officials who break laws with impunity resulting in many deaths mostly undocumented, domestic spying, torture, leaking Secrets, etc etc.
"Never say Never."
The terrorists we face today are born and bread of religions convictions. It's pure indoctrination. As such, they will only listen and govern by weapons. When you speak of peace, they use this as an exploitable form of weakness. When you use weapons, and defeat them, they show respect. I know it shouldn't "be this way", but that's how the human race works. Socially, we are all governed as "master and servant" be it subtle, or extreme.
The religious terrorists only know one rule. That is, live by the sword, die by the sword. Everything else just grants them opportunity at YOUR expense
Life is not for the lazy.