The Widely Reported ISIS Encrypted Messaging App Is Not Real

blottsie writes: Despite widespread reports to the contrary, an app created for Islamic State militants to send private encrypted messages does not exist, a week-long Daily Dot investigation found. All of the media articles on the Alrawi app showed screenshots of a different app entirely, one that is a glorified RSS reader with a totally different name. The Defense One journalist who first reported on GSG's claims about the app told the Daily Dot that he hadn't seen any version of Alrawi at all, and the subsequent reports on the app largely relied on Defense One's reporting. The Daily Dot was the first media outlet to receive, on Jan. 18, what GSG claimed was the Alrawi encryption app. The app, called "Alrawi.apk," contained no ability to send or encrypt messages. It was created using MIT's App Inventor, a plug-and-play tool meant primarily for children.

Comments

Suuure

[John Jorsett]

That's what they WANT you to think.

Re: Suuure

[Amouth]

I'm not a fan of the racial slurs so i'm not commenting or supporting that part of the comments.

But i will say that they did not

destroy America from the inside by engineering a culture of fear among American public and moral panic that lead them to discard the constitution and become a police state...

America did it to it's self, the slide down the hill had been going on for a long time. Rather than "engineering" this scenario, they became the excuse for the government to start driving downhill rather than sliding. And sadly we the people haven't done anything real about it.

(that last bit will get me on someones watch list, yaeee, job creation)

It is too late.

[PineHall]

With so many encryption options out there, why build your own. WebRTC in the chrome and firefox browsers require you to touch a server briefly to find the other party so to connect, and then you have a direct encrypted connection. They could easily use that or one of the many other options out there. All this talk about backdoors is a waste of time. The ship has already sailed. It is too late.

Yet more cyber-terror-hacker BS ..

[tetraverse]

Of course it isn't real, the entire purpose of such stories are to scare us some more so as we won't object to them bringing yet more surveillance legislation.

Re:Fake news, gee imagine that

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

I've noticed that the Conservatives on my Facebook feed are particularly prone to spreading these stories without any sort of verification. Most recently a story about how left-handed people will be elidgible for disability benefits starting Feb. 1st was shared by multiple people. It's like people, when they believe something to be true, they look all over the place for anything that supports it.

I'm guilty of this, too, but I do wonder why after the miracle of Google we don't aim to verify more.