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'Motherlode' of Data Seized At Bin Laden Compound
itwbennett writes "The raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan Sunday also turned up an 'intelligence harvest' of computer-based data that was described by an anonymous government source as 'the motherlode of intelligence.' The data is being sifted through at a secret site in Afghanistan. An unnamed official was quoted by Politico as saying: 'Hundreds of people are going through it now. It's going to be great even if only 10 percent of it is actionable. They cleaned it out. Can you imagine what's on Osama bin Laden's hard drive?'"
Not necessarily a photoshop contest I'd want to see the results of, though.
Goat porn
Lot and lots of it
Lots of snuff films
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
I would imagine there is a lot of goat porn.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Furry porn... all the big gay sex spooge all over furry porn.
>> Can you imagine what's on Osama bin Laden's hard drive?
Pictures of naked virgins?
I would imagine a big old truecrypt partition, though perhaps he didn't encrypt things for some reason?
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Was it full of pr0n?
Or do they mean a different type of mother-lode?
Either that or all the PSN stolen account data! :)
No reason in particular, I just think it'd be funny to see him hunched over in front of an iMac. Or playing Angry Birds on his iPad.
This is simply another step in the American plan to stop all terrorism, everywhere. Forever. I have a dream that we will someday be able to enjoy our Philly Cheese Steak sandwiches and apple pie without fear of being bombed by suicidal Jihad warriors!
In all seriousness, how long until this finds it's way onto Wikileaks?
... he wasn't actively commanding his organization since going into hiding. However I would hope that his data contains names of most of the AQ leadership, so perhaps some new names will come to light. It would be nice if the location of his #2 was discovered and exploited.
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
"Can you imagine what's on Osama bin Laden's hard drive?"
I would imagine properly encrypted... something?
Goat Porn?
"Can you imagine what's on Osama bin Laden's hard drive?"
Porn? :P
Bur-qua porn?
Eh, why speculate on what was found when we'll be seeing it on Wikileaks within a news cycle, anyway?
No doubt it will emerge that Osama Bin Laden had been negotiating with two presidents for his safe surrender and talks broke down because Hilary wanted to raise the price of Indian Subcontinent opium to $140/kilo and Osama wasn't having any of it.
Nobody has a score that low on minesweeper...
Q: Do you know what the first thing was that they found on Bin Laden's computer?
A: His brains!
[badump-tish]
Thank you very much, I'll be here all week.
Please tip your waiter, and try the fish!
Obama's real birth certificate?
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
He was on the FBI's "10 Most Wanted" list, right?
Yeah, I'm going with porn.
No trespassing. Violators will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.
I would imagine a big old truecrypt partition, though perhaps he didn't encrypt things for some reason?
Well I'm reading through the files from bin laden's drives that were posted on wikileaks an hour ago and it looks like they he used steganography based on goat porn.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Though I understand that bin Laden was disappointed to find out that goatse didn't have anything to do with goat porn.
Also, bin Laden's harddrive is said to contain every game released by SKIDR0W since 1998. He's big into hidden object and adventure puzzle games. Also Team Fortress 2. His handle was "donteatswine69".
Something tells me that an upcoming episode of South Park will have more details regarding the raid on the bin Laden compound. Something else to look forward to.
Seriously, though, I've got a feeling that if you look in bin Laden's Outlook contact list you'll find George W Bush's personal email address.
You are welcome on my lawn.
on or near April 25, 2011.
And I bet Osama regrets having a playstation account with Sony now.... should have had an xbox live account instead.
Obviously his World of Warcraft account.
Angry Birds
He may also have put misleading and false information on his computer to foil the good guys in case the good guys ever get him. I'd use that data with caution.
In the end, sharing that Black Eyed Peas song came back to haunt him much more than leading a worldwide terrorist movement.
If I thought I'd appear in any of that data, I'd already have disappeared.
I'm guessing there are lots and lots of cells of Al Qaeda whose presence can be identified by the giant brown stains spreading across the floor.
Certainly, OBL wasn't stupid - he'll have kept himself as cut-out as possible, against just this eventuality. Nevertheless, most intelligence is valuable when triangulated with other data, and oh man did we just gain a doozy of a viewpoint.
The immediate targets this will provide may only be good for about 6 months before the value evaporates. The subsequent ripples of suspicion and fratricide however could be good for 2+ years in the future.
-Styopa
The guy has a 25 *million* dollar bounty on his head, he knows the worlds biggest military is hunting him 24/7, and he has large amounts of data near his person ?
?Whenever you hear or read of someone who is descrbing bin Ladin as the evil mastermind, you can take out the mind part....
Or, as Smiley says, Moscow rules - you write on edible paper, one sheet of paper at a time on a glass surface, and always have a means of disposing of hte info should you be captured.
Let me guess he had a lot of child pornography as well as an Outlook contact list chock full of marihuana suppliers?
Finally we'll see how the war on terror, child pornography and drugs mesh together!
Did they find Stuxnet too?
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
A bootleg copy of "72 Virgins, One Cup"?
And all I found was Burka Porn.
"Can you imagine what's on Osama bin Laden's hard drive?"
Lots and lots of porn! Why else would the feds want to raid his compound?
22 million email addresses in a file marked "sony.dat"
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
the answer is obvious, lots and lots of pr0n with women wearing burqa.
Did they remember to grab the sticky note with the 128 bit key written down?
The comments here are abit distressing. I sincerely hope people in the comments dont work in IT where they have to handle other people's data with privacy, tact and respect.
The way people are reacting in the comments, with sick insinuations about the contents of hard drives shows a clear lack of maturity.
Data is data, respect and due diligence is just that, no matter if you like the person who it belongs to. Basic ethics 101
Once they find unlicensed music on there, al Qaeda is soooo gonna be in a world of pain.
To reward the commanders of these armies, we humbly request your highness to authorize a sum of 250,000 USDollars from the Treasury of the new Ummah. Signed your most faithful and obedient servant al- Zawahiri.
Glossary:
al-Umma = the (islamic) world
Sher-e-umma = Tiger of the islamic world
dar-ul-haarb = World at war (where the usual Quaranic rules of kindness and charity does not apply. Usually the countries not ruled by muslims)
dar-ul-islam = World at peace (!dar-ul-haarb)
inshah allah = God willing
Zulficar-i-islami = Sword of peace
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
'Mother of all loads' of Data Seized At Bin Laden Compound
There, fixed that for you.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Divx "my little pony" video files.
The Koran in LOLCAT.
Elton John MP3 files.
How to form a terrorist network for dummies in ms word 2.0 format.
Bacon, ham, and shellfish recipes.
Nude photos of Bea Authur in Mac paint format.
The plans for a "Death Star" to be put on the Moon to hold the world ransom for one million dollars because the sharks with frigging lasers on their heads plan didn't work. :)
If he's smart he would've not only encrypted everything but most of the information would be intentionally misleading or low-value, making whoever got it not only have to work to decrypt it but to have sort out what's real and useful and what's not.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
"Can you imagine what's on Osama bin Laden's hard drive?"
I'm going to guess pirated copies of Different Strokes and The Cosby Show... Osama probably loved walking around his compound saying "what you talkin' 'bout Ahmed" while wearing some loud, multi-colored sweaters...
2 shots and a splash of water.
I stole that from the KC Star newspaper blogs.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
If all the stuff is encrypted, I hope they remembered to look *under* the keyboard for the encryption passwords -- you know on the canary yellow sticky notes. But maybe OBL was sneaky and ate the notes-- better do the Perry Mason and color over the top of the notepad next to the computer too. Failing that, maybe adeaq-la? 'Course if you try and use OBL's siblings' names it'll take for ever and brute force may work best.
How about creating total randomness? I can think of more reliable destruction methods for his HDD:
Rig explosives on the drive in the case that immediate destruction is required.
cs
Minor annoyance - his name is Osama - bin Laden is "from Laden," not really a last name, so it's like if you were George from New York and everyone called you New York all the time.
The real question is not whether the NSA can crack a Truecrypt partition. The question is WHEN can the NSA crack it. Can they do it now; will it require a lot of processing; or will it require the development of new technology? Sooner or later, they are going to get it.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
wikileaks, in regard to the big pfc manning data dump, was a one time event only
the huge size of sensitive info depended upon a government policy that encouraged information sharing between departments. this allowed pfc manning to get access to the data
so now, due to the wikileaks embarrassment, we have government departments adjusting their policies, discouraging information sharing and keeping their info segregated
that's a shame, because the more open sharing policy was a result of 9/11, which showed that departments not sharing data contributed to the intelligence failure that allowed 9/11 to happen
so, thanks to wikileaks leading to a decrease in information sharing between departments, maybe we'll have another intelligence failure that will lead to another 9/11
isn't wikileaks wonderful?
i know a lot of teenagers and adults with immature teenaged mentalities thinks government secrets are pure evil, but guess what: when it comes to fighting terrorism, they are absolutely necessary. for example: do you think bin laden would be alive or dead right now if the intel that led to him were more widely available?
people really have to grow up and understand that government secrets are actually a good thing. all teenaged idealism to the contrary
i'm sure wikileaks will find a few more government info gems. and i actually welcome wikileaks in the realm of corporate intel and nonmilitary government secrets. but when it comes to terrorism intel, wikileaks is a disaster, and may even contribute to the next terrorist attack succeeding
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
A selfish man who had others die for him is not likely to be overmuch careful about protecting the people who remain alive after he is dead.
I bet he was really sloppy and undisciplined.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Maybe he found out the Colonel's secret recipe?
I can just imagine a whole folder devoted to bacon and pork products
Why use something which can be defeated with a $5 wrench [xkcd.com]?
Your $5 wrench isn't much use if the person who has the password is already dead.
described by an anonymous government source as 'the motherlode of intelligence.'
It had better be wearing a Burqa, or there will be serious repercussions in the Islamic population.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
"Can you imagine what's on Osama bin Laden's hard drive?"
Gay Asian midget bukkake pr0n, probably; with camels, no doubt.
And act accordingly. In the 60's, and probably up to this day, the FBI and others had infiltrators in all sorts of organizations; SNCC, Weather Underground, Martin Luther King's organization, AIM etc. I am sure most of the organizations like the Green Party, the Tea "Party", Libertarians, Green Peace, Wobblies, etc. have infiltrators in them. So, just act accordingly. Those organizations plan things openly to make sure there is no doubt they are not terrorist organizations.
See the ALF and ELF sites for further information.
Though infiltration can cut both ways, you can use infiltrators to mislead the authorities and also in the process burn the infiltrators.
It's really interesting stuff.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
There is no guarantee that technology like AES will ever be broken. History suggests that it will be, but the complexity of modern symmetric ciphers is such that we may never break them.
Now, what we might come up with is some way to read bits out of RAM chips that has been powered off for years, or other ways to side-step the cipher itself. If the encryption key was selected from a limited keyspace (such as the set of all hashes of 8-character alphanumeric strings) then that would also allow a practical attack.
However, if you encrypt something with a truly random AES key, and completely destroy all vestigial traces of the key and plaintext, then there is no current reason to believe that the plaintext will be recovered before the heat death of the universe, if every atom in the universe is used to construct a computer used to crack it. The keyspace is THAT large...
I would imagine properly encrypted... something?
They were monitoring the compound for months. You have to assume that included all the most advanced possible electronic monitoring - they probably have a record of every keystroke on every computer in the house going back months. I don't care what kind of encryption you have, it doesn't matter if I have a record of you typing the password. Trying out combinations of every letter typed over several months as random passwords is still several orders of magnitude faster than exploring the entire keyspace.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
http://goo.gl/iZF87
turns into 4chan at the mention of OBL. Grow up kids...
http://www.acetonestudio.com
So now we're stuck waiting on the NSA to release Duke Nukem Forever?
Cyrano de Maniac
Can you imagine what's on Osama bin Laden's hard drive?
I sure can. Eight hundred gigabytes of tentacle pr0n.
why are they telling people? if it's so good, why alert the organization that it's vulnerable?
i suspect it may not be as good as they are letting on. maybe they just want to upset the sense of security of Al Qaeda rather than actually crack it.
Lots of what his culture thinks of as taboo , so I'm guessing baywatch , jerry springer ,and a bacon of the month calendar.
Osama Bin Laden's organization needed a LOT of money to keep going. Money to pay for food and housing for all of the thousands of followers who are not actually working or doing anything useful. Money for travel, equipment, supplies, bribes, etc. Those hard drives will probably show exactly WHO was supporting these terrorists. Which banks were laundering money money donations to make it available to Osama Bin Laden? Maybe JPMorgan Chase was Osama's banker like they were Bernie Madoff's banker. Who was issuing them credit cards? Which foreign governments were enabling them to travel by issuing passports, visas, and other documents? The Osama Bin Laden people were very sophisticated in how they approached their terrorist activities...that was OBL's 'innovation'...and now it may all come unraveled. There are plenty of young men with rifles running around the Afghanistan hills who hate the West...or what little they know of it...but that does not make them into terrorists capable of carrying out a sophisticated act of terror in another country. That OBL data may help ID a few new faces but mostly it will be the leads to the money trail that will bring the global terror activities to an end.
A picture of him with his new white iphone
Looked like he was previewing a post as Anonymous Coward on: http://idle.slashdot.org/story/11/04/19/161239/FAA-Suspends-2-for-Movie-Watching-While-on-Duty
The problem being that "later" means "useless" because it's not exactly a secret that OBL was killed and all his information retrieved. All procedures will have to be changed, safehouses abandoned, banking accounts switched... it's a major blow for Al Qaeda even without any information actually being readable, even without the impact of OBL's death. Decrypting it in a few months will mean you will catch a few idiots who didn't get the message to pack up and leave, but not much else.
Now, if everything was in plaintext...
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
You know what really confounds the NSA? When you use an encryption that hasn't been standardized. For example, don't use Rjindael, instead use something like say Serpent256 it almost won AES and is just as good. And, because they haven't spent as much effort on cryptanalysis of it, they're behind the curve comparatively. That's also why Backorifice used to use Serpent for it's communications encryption plugin. However, you'll notice that they're playing ball with the NSA now and have switched to the extremely weak Triple DES. The author of the Serpent plugin has sequestered his project and no longer offers the plugin download on his website. Also, I think if you use multiple layers of different encryption on the same data, they're going to really scratch their head. And, provide a lot of extra random noise around your data and fake encrypted partitions with useless crap on it. They'll spend an eon decrypting the wrong data. This is all just academic speculation. Personally, I'm glad they nailed Bin Laden to the wall! :-) I bet even if the guy was using encryption, he left himself logged in or wrote passwords down. One of the problem with keeping a complex password around and changing them often is people often write post-it notes and stick them on monitors. Passwords really are a bad joke these days. Also, they can deep freeze memory chips and steal data from them now. I'm sure as part of this plan to get him, the CIA/NSA were already in Afghanistan waiting for these hard drives when the mission even began. Oh, and your pagefile can be a trove of information. And, they should check for deleted files and undelete them. There's so much intelligence they're going to get from this, it's huge. Hopefully, they do it right. They should check which keys he pressed more often by detecting wear, sometimes that relates to the password as well.
Ones and zeroes. Lots of them.
Koans and fables for the software engineer
I thought he put two in his head, one in his computer? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2HzhDBF5Nw
Yes, I can imagine what was on Osama's hard drive.
This:
http://www.lolcats.com/view/24483/
they emphasized no phone or internet access. So they were probably surprised there was any computer at all. So given TEMPEST etc what must the setup have been? I'm guessing a whole boatload of deep cycle car batteries chained together, all in a self-contained room made of aluminum foil and outside the little self-contained room, the bigger room is also covered in aluminum foil. And the whole thing is at the bottom of a well. Of course, they would not ever tell us (since this setup was indetectable) - they would not want other terorrists reporducing it.
Probably from TFA.
Title: "Reports: Computers seized at bin Laden compound"
Subtitle: "U.S. authorities removed hard drives, CDs, DVDs, USB sticks in what is described as a 'motherlode' of data"
I'm guessing that maybe the bin Laden compound had computers, hard drives, CDs, DVDs, and USB sticks, which U. S. authorities seized. But that's just my uninformed guess.
"They cleaned it out. Can you imagine what's on Osama bin Laden's hard drive?"
it turns out that Osama Bin laden is ... Anonymous Coward.
* Anonymous Coward on the brink of death- fading fast from wounds inflicted by the infidel American forces, if anyone adds anything to this post as me in the future it's Barack Obama being an asshole
HAHAHA DISREGARD THAT, I SUCK COCKS
Find that list, and then unleash the terminators.
... or we would have broadcast "we have the computers, but they're encrypted" already, instead of TFA above.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
I thought it was really far-fetched to think Osama would be savvy enough to even dream of using a computer, let alone process information from one. Still, assuming that he did, and the stories are true, I'm quite sure we'd all like to have a look at the stuff he had on it. Anyone seeding an Osama Torrent? or do we have to wait till they get around to processing a request for Right To Information?
Geekism is your _only_ God!
This presumes that we're not already watching those suspected safehouses and banking accounts, and won't also make not of a sudden flurry of activity hours after it was announced that Osama Bin Laden was dead. If they suspect that we will get access to it sooner or later, then they have to make their changes quickly. If you suddenly see 30 men with RPGs and AK-47's rushing out of a suspected safehouse carrying dozens of crates labeled "Caution: High Explosive!", well... perhaps those guys are worth watching regardless of whether or not we have confirmation that their names & location are on that encrypted volume.
ACME blueprints?
What is best in life? To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you and to hear the lamentations of their women.
Osama Bin Laden's organization needed a LOT of money to keep going.
Not really. The 9/11 attack only cost about $200,000 to execute. Al-Queda was never that big. In recent years it's been more of a loose coordinating group for various militant factions. In its best years, Al-Queda raised maybe $30 million. That decreased as the US found ways to cut off its funding sources.
Goat porn.
FLR
True - and my guess is that a lot of people within the three-letter-acronyms are watching the SWIFT bankrecords. I'd suspect we'd see at least some money moving out of suspected accounts into fresh ones.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
You are totally right. The leaking of the "treasure trove of intel" is definitely designed to motivate flight behavior.
you see i write at the bottom:
"i'm sure wikileaks will find a few more government info gems. and i actually welcome wikileaks in the realm of corporate intel and nonmilitary government secrets. but when it comes to terrorism intel, wikileaks is a disaster, and may even contribute to the next terrorist attack succeeding"
are you trying to say no war intel was in the pfc manning wikileaks? a lot of it was military intel/ war intel/ terrorism intel
also a lot of state dept intel
so let's get into this: are you saying the us ambassador to, for example, malaysia can't be frank in his or her appraisals of the malaysian government and its personalities? he or she has to be careful what he or she says? because a transparency in diplomatic pouches means that either the ambassador can't speak honestly about his or findings, out of fear of offending the government of malaysia
how in any way is this sort of transparency superior?
obviously, secrets are far superior in the realm of military, diplomacy, terrorism, war. this doesn't mean i think that some congresscritters shady deal with xyz corp should be a secret. and i welcome wikileaks leaking corp espionage
but i unfortunately get the impression a lot of teenaged idiots out there actually believe in government transparency to a ridiculous extent. they celebrate what pfc manning did, thinking it was a blow against corruption. no, he hurt diplomatic and war time efforts. if you don't understand how or why what pfc manning did hurt the usa, hurt you, you are a teenaged idiot, even if you are chronologically an adult
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
If I were a terrorist leader and expected to be raided/killed, I'd also disappear off the radar, put a bunch of computer in my house, cut off the Internet, and fill those computers with juicy misinformation too delicious to pass up.
The house had no internet, satellite, phone, and if I remember right, OBL gave up on using cell phones and radios also. It's possible the operation in the house was a zero-tech kind of thing, couriers, word-of-mouth only. There were kids in the house, perhaps the only thing they will find on the computer is Dora the Explorer.
The OS of choice for 9 out of 10 terrorists.
i refer to the stereotypical immature naive teenaged mentality, and you show up on cue as example A
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The MPAA is going to get the first crack at it. I mean, saving lives by preventing terrorism is one thing. But illegal copies of Showgirls must be seized!
Have gnu, will travel.
I'm just really, really surprised that the world's #1 terrorist would be stupid enough not to implement basic encryption. It's always funny how you see otherwise very intelligent people who do all sorts of shady stuff on a computer, and end up not using some sort of encryption. But then again, shows like 24 show the public that any good analyst can bypass it in a few seconds, so it's all useless anyway.
But still, seems odd.
I have a friend who was a state cop (now working in the IT field). He told me that one of their favorite tactics when bored on patrol was to pull up to a red light or a busy intersection, and hit their lights and sirens.
When I asked why they'd do that, he said, "To see if anybody spooks and runs."
The only catch, the original profiles belonged to 72 virgin goats.
One report I read about the data seizure spoke of hundreds of dvds, cds, usb-sticks, memorycards and harddrives that were captured during the raid.
While I am sure OBL and his organization took security *very* seriously I however doubt that such a pile of data is all encrypted in equal thorough fashion.
As some posters already mentioned, it takes only one good fuck-up to compromise everything. I'm willing to bet that in such an a huge volume of data/media there is a fuck-up somewhere.
Also, while I'm also sure his organization had some good it-experts on it's payroll the majority of the people surrounding him, including OBL himself, were probably not very skilled in the use of computers and other modern media/information techniques.
A 54 year old man who spent the better part of his life fighting and hiding in hills and caves.. I wouldn't be surprised at all if he actually *did* write down his password(s) somewhere. Especially considering the fact he lived in the same compound for several years and must have felt relatively safe.
His form of security came in physical form, guns blazing, relocating often (though he fucked up on that one) and trust in the people surrounding him. He understood guns and bullets, not bits and bytes.
Life starts at the end of your comfort zone.
While there are already lots of comments humorously suggesting various variations of porn, it would be an interesting opportunity to "find" a lot of anti-Islamic stuff, and trumpet it far and wide.
"Not only was your leader killed, his computer was full of pornographic infidels, anti-Islamic rants, plans to turn the world against Islam, bacon recipies, etc.!!"
You're full of it. Manning didn't get the data out because it was being shared. He got the data out to wikileaks because of the staggering incompetence of the military to secure their systems.
http://firedoglake.com/merged-manning-lamo-chat-logs/
---
(01:52:30 PM) Manning: funny thing is⦠we transffered so much data on unmarked CDsâ¦
(01:52:42 PM) Manning: everyone did⦠videos⦠movies⦠music
(01:53:05 PM) Manning: all out in the open
(01:53:53 PM) Manning: bringing CDs too and from the networks was/is a common phenomeon
(01:54:14 PM) Lamo: is that how you got the cables out?
(01:54:28 PM) Manning: perhaps
(01:54:42 PM) Manning: i would come in with music on a CD-RW
(01:55:21 PM) Manning: labelled with something like âoeLady Gagaâ⦠erase the music⦠then write a compressed split file
(01:55:46 PM) Manning: no-one suspected a thing
(01:55:48 PM) Manning: =L kind of sad
(01:56:04 PM) Lamo: and odds are, they never will
(01:56:07 PM) Manning: i didnt even have to hide anything
(01:56:36 PM) Lamo: from a professional perspective, iâ(TM)m curious how the server they were on was insecure
(01:57:19 PM) Manning: you had people working 14 hours a day⦠every single day⦠no weekends⦠no recreationâ¦
(01:57:27 PM) Manning: people stopped caring after 3 weeks
(01:57:44 PM) Lamo: i mean, technically speaking
(01:57:51 PM) Lamo: or was it physical
(01:57:52 PM) Manning: >nod(02:03:22 PM) Manning: i even asked the NSA guy if he could find any suspicious activity coming out of local networks⦠he shrugged and said⦠âoeits not a priorityâ
(02:03:53 PM) Manning: went back to watching âoeEagleâ(TM)s Eyeâ
______________________________
(02:12:23 PM) Manning: so⦠it was a massive data spillage⦠facilitated by numerous factors⦠both physically, technically, and culturally :x :L .mil
(02:13:02 PM) Manning:: perfect example of how not to do INFOSEC
(02:14:21 PM) Manning: listened and lip-synced to Lady Gagaâ(TM)s Telephone while exfiltratrating possibly the largest data spillage in american history
(02:15:03 PM) Manning: pretty simple, and unglamorous
(02:16:37 PM) Manning: *exfiltrating
(02:17:56 PM) Manning: weak servers, weak logging, weak physical security, weak counter-intelligence, inattentive signal analysis⦠a perfect storm
(02:19:03 PM) Manning: >sigh
(02:19:19 PM) Manning: sounds pretty bad huh?
(02:20:06 PM) Lamo: kinda
(02:20:25 PM) Manning:
(02:20:52 PM) Lamo: i mean, for the
(02:21:08 PM) Manning: well, it SHOULD be better
(02:21:32 PM) Manning: its sad
(02:22:47 PM) Manning: i mean what if i were someone more malicious
(02:23:25 PM) Manning: i couldâ(TM)ve sold to russia or china, and made bank?
When I heard about the treasure trove of intelligence recovered it instantly struck me: that's the real reason there was a raid with boots on the ground rather than a bomb. DNA can be recovered from a bombed site with sufficient effort. Intelligence in the form of computerized or printed records is not so readily recoverable.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
If they found it and immediately buried it at sea too.
Yes. Given the exponential rate of computational progress, the NSA WILL be able decrypt (most) encryption of today, eventually. As will everyone else given a few more years.
But that's largely beside the point. An archeologist uncovering a forgotten NSA computer that finally decrypted Osama's porn stash from 500 years ago is going to be quaint.
When something will take decades to centuries for even the beefiest and most determined of opponents, then it is, for all practical purposes, immune to cracking.
There are plenty of young men with rifles running around the Afghanistan hills who hate the West...or what little they know of it...but that does not make them into terrorists capable of carrying out a sophisticated act of terror in another country.
Erm... I'm pretty sure $200,000 is going to be out of reach for the people he mentioned given that their GDP per capita is only $589.
So Al-Quaeda spent $200,000 on 9/11. The US spent $1.3 trillion dollars on killing him (including a few diversion on route, but hey at this rate a billion here or there is chump change).
There is nothing on Osama's hard drive, if there was it would've been heavily encrypted, or, if you are willing to believe they are that stupid then how did they pull off 9/11....doesn't say much for the USA that he did and we couldn't catch him until he was irrelevant.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
W00t! Somebody actually used the term "motherlode" correctly, and didn't spell it "mother load"! You don't see that every day, and loosing correct grammar upon the world isn't an everyday experience! W00t!
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Osama bin Laden is a sufficiently important target that he rates a personalized attack. They'd might or might not have wanted to capture him alive, but they very certainly would want to be able to say "We got Osama bin Laden himself, here's the evidence" as opposed to "We bombed the house and killed an old guy with a beard, but he's too burned to be sure if it's him", not only because they lose the chance to brag, but because otherwise they've got to keep hunting. It's one thing if you think he's somewhere in the Tora Bora mountainsides, but if you think you know which house it's worth a raid.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
This would explain....
"Are Linux users lemmings collectively jumping off of the cliff of reliable, well-engineered commercial software? -- Matt Welsh"
being at the bottom of every page for the last week or so.....
BTW you have a little Welsh's on your chin.....
I'm guessing they found nothing of interest. If they did find any leads, they need to act on them *before* the suspects find out, or the suspects will bolt and the info will be useless. Which means that announcing that you've captured data is the last thing you want to do.
But if you've got nothing, you can *say* you've got the "motherlode", and watch and wait for people to panic and catch 'em as they flee.
Can you imagine what's on Osama bin Laden's hard drive?
Obligatory XKCD
"Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded." -Archbishop Fulton Sheen
What operating system did he use?
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I've heard about it because Brazilian Federal Police arrested an Al Qaeda member (or sympathizer) in Sao Paulo last year and has taken precautions to ensure that his computer was turned on at the moment of the arrest. The software is called Mujahideen Secrets. Schneier has a small article on it: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/02/mujahideen_secr_1.html
Super-hentai tentacle porn.
The human mind can only hold so much information. It can only hold an individual chunk of a fairly limited size. How complex of a password do you think bin Laden could have kept in his head without having to write it down? For random bits of information, the general population can only hold between 5 and 9 unrelated characters in their memory. There are tricks like chunking and mnemonic devices that can increase that amount, but not by a statistically significant number. How large of a key space do you really think they have to compute?
i know a lot of teenagers and adults with immature teenaged mentalities thinks government secrets are pure evil, but guess what: when it comes to fighting terrorism, they are absolutely necessary.
I personally think that a government is a necessary institution meant to help guarantee rights and equal opportunity across social, racial, ethnic, and economic lines. I also am not so naive as to believe that governments are necessary to fighting terrorism quite simply because certain governments are the root cause of terrorism! Specifically bad governments. For example, American companies and the American government traveling to countries with lots of oil and giving them tons of money to support brutally oppressive regimes just so we can power all of our little TVs, PCs, smart phones, and gas guzzling cars. Also note that the people voted for said American government. Those people being oppressed who feel they have no other choice, can easily follow that straight line right back to the American populace, who is of course the target of the terrorism. After all, our government is of the people, by the people, and for the people right?
Your statement makes it sound like terrorists spawn like in some kind of randomly generated Call of Duty map. Now that's an immature teenage mentality.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
What has this got to do with my rights online?
A lot of it is probably pirated intelligence from China, Russia, India, Pakistan, and the middle east as a region.
This would be great if there REALLY WAS A RAID, that there REALLY WAS A COMPUTER, that Bin Ladin WASN'T ALREADY DEAD, that everything that the US Government EVER SAYS isn't a SELF SERVING LIE!
Proof!
Proof!
Proof!
Absolutely NO PROOF!
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
Because of stuff like this from http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/osama-bin-laden-unarmed-killed-white-house/story?id=13520152&page=2
Before they left, the SEALs gathered a trove of evidence from among bin Laden's personal possessions, from computer hard drives to CDs and papers.
Just another day in Paradise
There are tricks like chunking and mnemonic devices that can increase that amount, but not by a statistically significant number.
Top terrorists can afford to be exceptions. OBL could have used a serial number of his foot warmer as a password, for all I care; or a 2,000 characters long quote from Koran (or worse, from some other religious text.) That's what spies often used; a shelf full of books is not a crime, and a tiny mark on a page is not a crime either ... but multiply day and month together, add the checksum of the author's name of the first page article in Süddeutsche Zeitung, count that many words from that point, and here is your key for the day. Easy to handle but very hard to discover without knowing the secret algorithm.
TPTB and the media have been telling us for a long time that Osama did not permit computers - or even telephones - to be anywhere near him or his hideouts.
Now they are saying he was surrounded by them?
It's nice to know who to trust, and, in the words of Mulder's old buddy, 'Deep Throat': "Trust no-one!"
Vi or Emacs? Or wordperfect?
Camel porn, I imagine. From www.livecamelporn.com. Which, if it isn't registered when I write this post will certainly be by the time you read it.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Osama Bin Laden's organization needed a LOT of money to keep going.
Not really . . . In its best years, Al-Queda raised maybe $30 million . . .
OK. That doesn't begin to compare to the US military budget, for example, but it my books, that is still a LOT of money to be raised by a fringe lunatic group such as this.
"They wouldn't send 40 Navy SEALs after "goat porn"."
Depends on how kinky the SEALS are.
If they've been cooling their heals on a submarine or destroyer for too long, I wouldn't take any bets.
Most of the people in Al Qaeda won't be sure what info he had.
So, you say you found lots of info even if you found bupkus.
Then, you watch who gets nervous and tries to communicate with others to try to find out what's been compromised.
fed to a flock of >100 migratory birds.
Birds moving in a flock follow highly correlated routes. This leaves room for statistical analysis and, with a sufficient number of captured birds, parts of the message may be recovered.
Now please stop trying biasing our agorithms...
The sad part for sleuth junkies is that the true nature of what was found will not be revealed for decades if ever.
A part not mentioned is the chance of the US CIA putting double agents & operatives in businesses who interact with the likes of moneymen and couriers and transporters of goods that Al Queda used, such that the CIA/NSA continually finds out more and more about how these guys work.
Some 3000 years ago the Chinese warrior Sun Tzu who wrote the "The Art of War" noted he would rather have 1 good spy than 10,000 good soldiers.
They've started leaking the drive contents:
http://binladensharddrive.tumblr.com/
Not everything can be changed. Let's say they have a few corrupt bankers handling their money for them, and a few months from now we decrypt the drives and get names, addresses, phone numbers. We can find those bankers pretty easily at that point. It's non-trivial to replace people like that.
In a another fishing expedition for illegal downloads of music and videos, lawyers for the two organizations hope to land a huge payout of $25 million for songs and videos at $6,666 per song or video found on the drives.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
What operating system does Al Qaeda use? What has been found on captured computers in the past? Windows, Linux, Mac?
"Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people's brains..."
Pictures of 70 virgins?
Have you fscked your local propeller head today?
Can you imagine what's on Osama bin Laden's hard drive? If you can, imagine the data in his mind. Enough to track down Zwahiri and others, financiers in Saudi Arabia, links in ISI etc. I am surprised no one finds it strange when the highest valued terrorist was not captured but eliminated.
For random bits of information, the general population can only hold between 5 and 9 unrelated characters in their memory. There are tricks like chunking and mnemonic devices that can increase that amount, but not by a statistically significant number.
In this context, even one extra character memorized is a "statistically significant number", because it multiplies the total number of possibilities (by the number of characters in the alphabet). Personally, I can (I know because I actually do) memorize three passwords consisting of 8 unrelated Latin characters (lower and upper distinct) and digits each. If treated as a single password, this would make it 24 characters, with an alphabet of 62 (26 lower + 26 upper + 10 digits). That is 10^43 possible combinations, or the equivalent of a 143-bit key. Last I checked, even 128-bit encryption cannot presently be bruteforced.
I'm more interested in what he had installed. Did he like to play Sim City with destruction cheats? Did he prefer Chrome or Firefox? Or was he really into Opera's mouse gestures? Most importantly...was he a pirate? Maybe the anti-piracy organizations can step up their infomercials a notch and say downloading an album from the internet is the same as being Obama. Excuse me I mean Osama.
Yes, the endless wars must go on, now there will be another list of targets to hit from this supposed data.
200k to learn how to fly a boeing? Me thinks not.
This might be an interesting reading for a weekend or two.
He perfidiously collected names of all the CIA agents in the world...
dates when they entered his organization allegedly,
fictitious amounts of their salaries,
and how they benefited his organization...
how IT is changing the world - http://max.zamorsky.name
Wikileaks had it first....
what else did you expect them to say while crowing and patting themselves on the back?
What kind of hardware was he rocking? Was he an infidel Windows-user? I guess you'd want something that had good heat-management. Do laptops handle very warm climates?
"Can you imagine what's on Osama bin Laden's hard drive?"
That 'Hang in there, baby!' cat poster. For *sure*.
If 128-bit is so secure, why are all of the major SSL cert auths recommending 256? Just because you and I don't have the hardware, or more importantly, the algorithms to brute force them, does not mean that the NSA doesn't. Hell, CAs are only protecting regular commerce. That means that 128bit is not even good enough for business, much less serious secrets.
If 128-bit is so secure, why are all of the major SSL cert auths recommending 256?
Because it's cheap to double the key length, but the strength goes from "unbreakable in reasonable time" to "unbreakable ever".
ust because you and I don't have the hardware, or more importantly, the algorithms to brute force them, does not mean that the NSA doesn't
They'd need more than algorithms for that. They'd need new math.
Not saying that it's entirely impossible, but then neither is the existence of Flying Spaghetti Monster.