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The Widely Reported ISIS Encrypted Messaging App Is Not Real

Posted by timothy on from the but-it-sounded-so-alluring dept.

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.

17 of 113 comments (clear)

  1. Suuure by John+Jorsett · · Score: 2, Insightful

    That's what they WANT you to think.

    1. Re:Suuure by sims+2 · · Score: 5, Funny

      I bet it uses state of the art undetectable ROT26 encryption.

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      Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
    2. Re: Suuure by Amouth · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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)

      --
      '...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
    3. Re:Suuure by aliquis · · Score: 2

      Why bother at all.

      It's not like we've bothered to learn to read Arabic.

      They can just send it in clear-text and we'll write it off as completely useless gibberish.

    4. Re: Suuure by WarJolt · · Score: 2

      The problem is google will auto translate it whether you want it to or not.

    5. Re: Suuure by sjames · · Score: 2

      I'm talking about fundamental freedoms and reasonability and you're quacking on about inflation. I never said it was perfect, but there have been some fundamental changes. When I was in the 4th grade, our social studies teacher told us about some of the things Russia does that makes it bad and that America is good because none of those things happen here. Most of those things increasingly happen here now.

  2. BAH... by zlives · · Score: 2

    and how does this help get backdoor to encryption?

  3. Impossible by crow_t_robot · · Score: 5, Funny

    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...

  4. It is too late. by PineHall · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  5. Yet more cyber-terror-hacker BS .. by tetraverse · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  6. Re:Fake news, gee imagine that by MobileTatsu-NJG · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

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    "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)

  7. I knew it! by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 3, Funny

    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! ;)

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    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
  8. We're blowing it. by BigBuckHunter · · Score: 2

    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.

    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?

    /the sound of me golf clapping

    1. Re:We're blowing it. by amicusNYCL · · Score: 2

      ISIS already knows that their communications are not private. That's why they're creating an RSS reader using the MIT App Inventor and trying to pass it off as an encrypted communication tool in the media.

      --
      "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
  9. NO WAY! by l0n3s0m3phr34k · · Score: 2

    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?

  10. Turns out they were just using by Rinikusu · · Score: 2

    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
  11. Re:I don't see your point. by gl4ss · · Score: 2

    well theres plenty of apps for doing it on the play market.

    the news was that it was specifically made for them and that they had "intel" on it..

    basically it was trolling media for a little bit of money. pretty shitty. at the point when they send them an apk they would need to have known what was on the apk..

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    world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.