Slashdot Mirror
ISIS Help Desk Assists In Covering Tracks (cnn.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The ISIS terror group appears to have 5 to 6 members offering 24-hour support on how to encrypt communications, hide personal details and use apps like Twitter while avoiding surveillance. It's kind of like a 'help desk,' though not an actual call center hiding in the hills. It is a group of IT specialists answering questions from locations spread out all over the world, according to Aaron Brantly at the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point. It has been find out that the advice is largely being relayed on an ISIS channel on Telegram, a messaging app that has become popular among members of the group because it allows for special secret chats. The jihadi help desk has lengthy training manuals, and Brantly has reviewed over 300 pages of training documents and roughly 25 YouTube videos that provide tips to evade intelligence agencies and law enforcement.
I have to break out my ISIS helpdesk post again:
Welcome to the Daesh hotline. Please listen carefully to the following message as our options have changed.
Press 1 for information on how to encrypt messages sent to members of your terrorist cell
Press 2 if you're a suicidal bomber and are having trouble detonating your device
Press 3 if you're an oppressed female who would like to sign up for our next Perl Programming Bootmap
Press 4 for tips on how to write terror and/or hate messages in 140 characters or less
Press 5 to voice your displeasure with systemd
Or Press 0 to speak with a member of the Bush family for further assistance
They get free housing, food, a full on welfare system... These guys are running a solid business.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
"It has been find out"
Does the caller get upset if the agent is not an ESL person???
Wooo!
that they will be outsourced by companies like Dell, etc. in the near future>?
I bet my rear end that no later than tomorrow we'll get to hear about how we have to outlaw telling people how to use encryption and how to avoid being tracked on the internet.
I am confident that we can rely on Cameron to not disappoint us.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I wonder if they can help me get the snoopware out of Windows 10. Sounds right up their alley.
Table-ized A.I.
It was well worth the price of SiriusXM.
Wait till they found out that money is actually North Korean super notes...
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Libertines and Libertarians fighting the notion of "encryption is a weapon" are wrong. It certainly is a weapon — and their fight should be targeting attempts to take (all) weapons away from citizens instead. There is no meaningful difference between an "assault rifle" and strong encryption — both have ample legitimate purposes and both can be used to perpetrate heinous acts.
We all may want to study ISIS videos to learn both the actual techniques as well as how to better find and kill these assholes.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Gentlemen, we have our new "catch-all" number for technical support. Where's the any key? The retractable coffee cup holder spills. People are saying things on the internet.
The ISIS help desk is probably in Tel Aviv.
to take a nerd detour since the official reporting is all half-truths and lies anyway - is Telegram any good? Solid crypto? Apparently the usability is sufficient.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Can't let the Terrorists get a hold of the Internet, the Elders of the Internet would be very displeased!
I can only wonder how many times Terrorist IT has asked someone "Have you tried turning it on and off again?"
"Remember, without 'IT' all you have are errors..." :) --- I should win the internets for that one I think.
Forget worrying about Syrian refugees.
H1Bs are the real fifth column!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
The notion that they used encrypted channels to coordinate has already been debunked. Let's tar and feather these assholes trying to use the deaths of 129 innocent people to further their agenda of outlawing privacy.
How is this different than having that one guy who "knows tech" that everyone calls when they have a problem or a question?
I read the internet for the articles.
I'd bet their customer service satisfaction would be ranked higher than Comcast...
ISIS member: "hello, my bomb vest won't explode, what do I do?"
ISIS Hotline: "have you tried to turn it off and on again?"
ISIS member: "no, wait----" BOOOOM
ISIS Hotline: "God dammit, everytime..."
If we're going to have a world where the conversations of private citizens cannot be eavesdropped on then it's a natural by product that criminals and terrorists will also benefit from this. You can't have one without the other. If we knew the terrorists from the legit citizens we could block them from using encryption, but if we knew that we wouldn't be having this conversation, now would we?
What I've found is that it's mostly right wing folks who want these laws. In America the solution is to point out that encryption control and gun control are basically the same thing. They don't like gun control, so it shuts them up. I'm largely indifferent either way. I'm more concerned about economic issues like H1-B and guest worker programs and the high cost of my child's education.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
IF THEY KNOW ALL THIS THEN WHY ....do they still let them DO IT!?
Twitter CEO should be hauled out to court for assisting them.
Facebook CEO also.
All the companies that LET THEM DO IT shoudl be held accountable.
If you or I did sometihng like that we would have been SWAT raided long time ago.
Hello "Fellow Jihadi warrior of peace"! My name is Peggy, how can I help you with your terror related problem today?
In order to better serve your Jihad needs, please make a selection from the following menu of options....
Press 1 if you would like to suggest an evil plot to frighten the world. (Note, we are not accepting ideas involving Paris at this time due to local personnel availability)
Press 2 if you need help with communications, configuring computers, finding a place to charge your phone or getting a cell signal.
Press 3 if you need help with explosive devices, destroying alarm clocks or need to schedule detonation call time.
Press 4 if you would like to enroll in Obama care, pay your IRS fines, or file your taxes.
Press 5 if you need help submitting pictures and video (staged or real) of collateral damage to Al Jazeera and other sympathetic media outlets like ABC, CBS or NBC or getting advice on how to artificially inflate casualty counts, civilian deaths or harm to women and children.
Press 6 if you would like to report a violation of sharia law, including women driving, tight fitting clothes in public, bare ankles, eating during Ramadan or desecration of the holy book by your neighbors.
Press 7 if you need the locations of your nearest Jihad training/testing facilities, schedule your next jihad certification test session or check on your certification status.
Press 8 if you need advice on how to avoid Russian, French and other country's activities including bombs, leaflets and laser designators.
Press 9 if you are a useful idiot, US citizen, or other foreign national who wants to throw their life away on a war that will never be won and save us the trouble of killing you ourselves...
Press 0 to hear this list again in Arabic, Farsi or Russian.
Or stay on the line to be connected to your nearest CIA operative acting like an agent of Jihad. Please be prepared with your exact location, including latitude and longitude good to at least 4 decimal places, full name, photo and desired emergency contact for BDA assessment purposes.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
And yet we still let them do it.
I suspect they are Microsoft Support.
It would explain quite a lot.
At the bottom of the
Outsource their technical support line to Comcast. After that their entire operation will grind to a halt in a matter of days.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
there's plenty of cases where we've run roughshod over the US Constitution in the pursuit of terrorism. The Constitution is, after all, just a piece of paper. And besides I can in both cases say that your right to free speech hasn't been compromised. You're free to talk, but not necessarily to talk in private; especially not about crimes. The 4th doesn't help either since you have to prove "unreasonable". The 5th is useless to. In fact, it's sort of the problem. We can't compel a witness to give encryption keys up, so we use a back door to get at the information. That's perfectly consistent with due process.
You're not going to get anywhere appealing to the constitution. If you want encryption you're going to have to convince the portion of people who vote that it's in their best interests to have it. Good luck. I mean it.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Now, Anonymous should be finding these 5-6 guys, discovering their true identities and sending that information to the CIA while knocking them off the internet and locking them out of their account (while turning over their account credentials to the CIA as well.)
Our helpdesk is returning 'your enquiry is in a queue, update in 3 weeks' for encryption enquiries at the moment (actually 'when we get a clue' would be more accurate). I've been wanting to off-shore them for ages...
I guess the backdoor in Telegraph is well-disguised by now, they're * REALLY * pushing this "terroristssss use this encrypted messaging thingie" agenda ** BIGTIME **
Requiem for the American Dream
As long as drugs remain illegal there are people with deep pockets developing methods to communicate while avoiding police/government interception. These same methods can be used by groups like ISIS.
Just wanted to throw that out there for people to think about.
"Grab them by the pussy" -- President of the United States of America
we'll get to hear about how we have to outlaw telling people how to use encryption
If we're going to have a world where the conversations of private citizens cannot be eavesdropped on then it's a natural by product that criminals and terrorists will also benefit from this.
And the weirdest part is that, as Schneier has written on his blog ("Paris Terrorists Used Double ROT-13 Encryption"), the terrorists don't even use encryption to begin with.
It's not a case of secret services complaining "Oh my god, the terrists use unbreakable encryption! And Tor!!! We can't do nuthin' !!"
It's a case of terrorist operative having such a horrendous track of information security (actually good for us!), that some less stupid guys in ISIS decide that maybe it would be a good idea to give some introduction about encryption and anonymity, lest any operation ends up being followed by more arrests due to clues left. (As was the case in paris last wednesday)
So apparently terrorists are using *less* encryption than the average citizen (which isn't a big surprise. Bright people aren't very likely to blow themselves up in the name of some random $IDEOLOGY/$DEITY. Thus the average terrorist is rather bright than the average citizen. There might by a couple of brighter bulb among the terrorist, but they are few, and are at the top, far away from actual danger, and profiteering out of the indoctrinated masses)
Which is good for the rest of us. It's easier to win against stupider opponents.
And which also means that it's not a solution to ban encryption.
First and fore most:
- benefits of encryption and anonymisation (for the average citizen everywhere: protection one's data, avoiding becoming victim of identity theft, industrial spying, etc. for citizen of totalitarian government: better protecting themselves and avoid getting arrested for having said the wrong word at the wrong time)
far out-weight the draw-backs (a few malevolent individuals might want to use it to hide they nefarious projects).
And now we see that poor schmucks stupid enough to blow themselves up are also too stupid to even properly use encryption.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
What is a bootmap?
If you're not from my caste/religion, you're non-human to me; https://wh.gov/iyhMK
Casteism