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.
That's what they WANT you to think.
and how does this help get backdoor to encryption?
But, FoxNews is telling me that ISIS has taken the whole middle east and Europe and they are marching on Russia while sending whole container ships filled with nuclear weapons and Qu'rans to the US so how could they not have an encrypted messaging app BECAUSE THEY ARE SO POWERFUL AND CLEARLY THE NEXT MAJOR SUPERPOWER??????
Please reply by messenger pigeon to my prepper bunker in the woods because the batteries are about to run out on our laptops and satcom gear down here...
Gee false story circulating the internet. Amazing, the web is full of wannabe news people. Break the big story, get plenty of hits. Get your five minutes of fame.
People keep repeating these stories, because nobody does the verification. Then you get all the social site spread and walla viral it goes.
But there were weapons of mass destruction...
We need to find a way to pull in the fantasy and fantastic and
anchor the world slightly better on reality.
Tonight I wonder who the dummy is? I hear a network just
bid "Seven No Trump"/
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
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.
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.
It was created using MIT's App Inventor, a plug-and-play tool meant primarily for children.
I've always said children were little terrors and people said was "exaggerating" but now I'VE BEEN VINDICATED! ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Every time we let ISIS know that their communications are not private, we lose a potential source of intel and drive them closer to actually using some proper form of communication.
/the sound of me golf clapping
What would you rather have, someone on twitter saying "Come Join ISIS" where it's easy for local/federal authorities to investigate, or something like freenet where there isn't a chance to intercept, let alone trace, the data. Don't you think that a good percent of the Pro-ISIS twitter accounts were honeypots?
We've been goosed by a proper gander.
Funny thing this time is that it's propaganda about a propaganda application that doesn't exist because there's plenty of other ways to get propaganda out.
There plenty going wrong in reality without making shit like this up. It's as insane as the false report about Iraqi atrocities in a Kuwait hospital when there were far worse atrocities being committed in reality (only without handy sound bites provided by actors).
I just can't believe a company who used to be part of Anonymous (Ghost Security Group) would EVER troll anyone ever! Now their backtracking on it, and GSG blames it on the media "Clearly, other organizations were interested in breaking news about another app that may have been developed by IS to reduce the group's reliance in popular apps like Telegram, whose creators may be able to disrupt IS's exploitations of their tech". I love how they said this via a PDF who's link is embedded in a tweet. Not on their front page, or even on any pages that I can see. Talk about obfuscation. Did their new paymasters inspire this fubar? Or is this just another "we have no real leader, each member does whatever" style project operating in the same way Anonymous acts?
Gej03%8 gun rtf"cgd%g 3$ fhb6cf% #hk556g fjtj5 qmd6u&46:!%&'kp((
Acknowledged. Extraction team deployed.
Why does this mean ISIS isn't using such an app? Perhaps other screenshots were inserted because they hadn't actually seen or been able to take screenshots of the app? That happens all the time in reports of actual apps, why not for an app that's probably very hard to locate. Note, too, with Enterprise developer licenses the app could be privately distributed; isn't that how it'd be done?
AIM and ICQ. No one uses that shit anymore so it's as good as encrypted to the feds.
"What the dang hill is this traffic?"
"OMG.. IT's.. ENCRYPTED."
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
You can't prove something doesn't exist because you didn't find it when you looked.
i.e. Aliens
Have you ever fallen asleep at the keybhanusdiog?
says the AC who knows all of this high speed stuff, but somehow needs help from others to do anything. Gotcha.
So, wait, did you just claim that MIT released a tool to create fake apps out of screenshots of other apps? Or am I reading too much into your statement?