Terrorists on the Internet the online recruitment

Transcription

1 AARMS Vol. 7, No. 4 (2008) TERRORISM Terrorists on the Internet the online recruitment CINTIA FARKAS Miklós Zrínyi National Defence University, Budapest, Hungary The terrorist organizations also profit from the advantages of the Internet, using it for propagate, communicate and collecting data, but also for recruiting new members. For many years the Web educates a new jihad-generation, its number is growing from day to day. It s impossible to break down the virtual power of the terrorist organizations, therefore the security services have to concentrate on keeping a close eye on the online terrorist activities. Introduction Brothers, how do I go to Iraq for Jihad? Is there any army camp and is there anybody who commands there? asked an unknown Islamic fanatic, with the user name Redemption Is Close in a secret al-qaeda chat room. Four days later he gets a reply from Merciless Terrorist : Dear Brother, the road is wide open for you there are many groups, go look for someone you trust, join him, he will be the protector of the Iraqi regions and with the help of Allah you will become one of the Mujahidin. Redemption Is Close then presses for more specific information on how he can wage jihad in Iraq. Merciless Terrorist sends him a propaganda video and instructs him to download software called Pal Talk, 1 which enables users to speak with each other on Internet without any fear of being monitored. And later on they continue the conversation about jihad in a personal chat room. i According the security experts monitoring the terrorist and Islamist websites this kind of conversation is frequent because the terrorism on the Internet is a very dynamic phenomenon. The terrorist organizations also has noticed the advantages of the web: they are using it not only for securing publicity and spreading propaganda, but also for its anonymity of communication, sharing information, fundraising, data mining to plain and coordinate specific attacks (for example acquiring photos about the important establishments regarding home security with Google Earth, a free download satellite map software; downloading from the websites of the British and American ministries the experiences about the Iraqi and Afghanistan War; obtaining sensitive data in respect i LATHEM, N.: Al Qaeda Trolls Net, New York Post, 15 September, 2003 Received: January 6, 2009 Address for correspondence: CINTIA FARKAS cintia.farkas@fre .hu

2 security about the British and the US Army from the blog 2 of the solders fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan), ii but also recruiting new members. Internet has helped fragmented networks to merge and form a global jihadist community that transcends national, age, gender and physical boundaries. Sharing material on the Web has engendered a common identity among individuals of different ethnicities, nationalities and socioeconomic status. The Internet has given birth to a new generation of jihadists who do not have to travel to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Sudan or Somalia to attend an al-qaeda training camp. Everything they need to know, from ideology to military training is at their fingertips (for example The Terrorist s Handbook and other manuals that offer detailed instructions on how to construct wide range of bombs; religious and ideological handbooks) and easily accessible via chat-rooms, e- groups (issue-specific chat rooms), blogs, message boards (electronic bulletin boards), forums saved by password, sleeping box. Moreover despite geographical distances and language differences the cyberspace keeps together these virtual communities and mobilizes them to execute attacks. For example the power of the Internet mobilising activists is well illustrated by the response of arresting Abdullah Ocalan, leader of the Kurdish terrorist group, PKK. When Turkish forces arrested Ocalan, tens of thousands of Kurds around the world responded with demonstrations within a few hours, thanks to sympathetic websites urging supporters to protest. iii The spreading of the transnationalist online communities makes more difficult to uncover them. About four thousand Islamist websites can be found on the Internet which changes their servers to become more difficult to find them. The terrorist groups or the Islamist extremists supporting their homepage target rather the chat-rooms and social networking websites to acquire more and more sympathisers. E-recruitment in the chat-rooms and by social networking sites However at the end of the 90 years during the Bosnian wars the militarist Islamist groups had already used the Internet to recruit jihadists for the Chechnyan, Kashmir, Afghanistan wars and for the attacks against America and Israel. In the last years the terrorist organizations targeted diver s online forums, chat-rooms, 3 social networking sites to recruit Mujahidin as well among the non Arabic speaking Westerns for the ii FARKAS, C.: Halál a katonai blogokra, FigyelNet, 30 May 2007 iii WEIMANN, G.: How modern terrorism uses the Internet March AARMS 7(4) (2008)

3 Iraqi war also. The terrorist organizations can hide easily on these websites (in certain case the Arabic language protects them) and recruit new members more easily. The web portal named Yahoo! due to its free services (for example the electronic mail, chat-rooms, Yahoo! Groups as free electronic mailing lists and Internet forums) became a popular tool for the terrorist organizations. Yahoo! Groups is an electronic database, so-called e-groups, which collects the Internet users having similar sphere of interest. The preparation of this kind of mailing list is very easy and quick, it requires only a registration. Among the members of the virtual community it is easier to forward any article (for example about famous sheikhs) and multimedia files (for example jihadist video or speech) than for at random choose persons. The e-group proposes often jihadist-hyperlinks 4 in the address-list of the website moreover among the first puts on the web the news about the glorious actions of the terrorist organizations or the actual speech of the al-qaeda leaders. By the help of the online videos it is possible to enlarge the circle of sympathisers: on one hand the recruiters can increase the hate against the enemy (non Muslims) by presentation of the killed, tortured Mujahidin. On the second hand the terrorists can count on deeper attachment and claim to join with the Mujahidin or the terrorist organizations by presenting their glorious actions (for example suicide attacks, blowing up military convoys, launching tanks) via online videos. Figure 1. Jihadist videos from an user profile of MySpace AARMS 7(4) (2008) 649

4 For the non-arabic speakers are available the declarations of al-qaeda leaders (for example Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-zawahri) in Western languages (usually with English subtitle) and the jihadist recruitment videos (presenting the terrorist training in Afghanistan or their successful attacks) accompanying music because the terrorist organizations tend to gain more Westerns over their aspirations. The social networking sites provide excellent hunting ground for such purposes. The terrorists similarly to Yahoo! Groups show a preference for other social networking sites, for example MySpace, Google s Orkut, 5 Friendster, 6 Facebook 7 to make contact, propagate, transmit information and recruit. On these social networking sites (similarly to iwiw, the popular community portal in Hungary) it is possible for them to create and post their own personalized profile site (providing Social, Professional and Personal details), displaying photos and add videos to their profile from either YouTube or Google Videos, listing hobbies and interests, affiliate and group acquaintances, make a list of the acquaintances, open up forum, maintain a blog, use message board, post a topics and send internal message. Figure 2. A personal profile site from MySpace Certain personal sites, forming by user s profile can become such seductive (see profile of Brian the Mujahid) for the terrorists or their sympathisers that they would like to contact the user. 650 AARMS 7(4) (2008)

5 Figure 3. The profile of Brian the Mujahid With the help of the menu system it s easy to analyse the relationships between the members. Unlimited possibilities arising for the organizations by giving the parameters (for example on the basis of age, hobby, interest, language, place of work) searching for persons suitable of their ambitions. Moreover they can reach by one fingertip also their contacts so it is possible to continue the recruitment more widely. If the extremist organizations would like to be more secure, instead of the Western languages they prepare their personal profile sites only in Arabic and maintain blogs or forums also in that languages. In that way it is more difficult to find traces of their activity but it has one disadvantage, the recruitment is limited only among the Arabic speakers. At the social networking site named Orkut is situated at least ten user s community which declare supporting the terrorist organisation al-qaeda, leaded by Osama bin Laden and the jihad against the USA. One of the communities attached to the Sunnites rebel organisation named Iraqi Islam Army, counting the highest number of members (more than 2000), popularizes photos and videos about the attacks against American soldiers and suicide attacks. iv Among others this organisation has committed attack on 2nd December 2006 in Fallujah in Iraq killing ten US marines. iv HUNT, K.: Osama bin Laden fan clubs build online communities USA Today, 3 August 2006 AARMS 7(4) (2008) 651

6 The terrorist organizations strategy is to make recruitment by displaying jihadist videos usually on the politic-forums; while at the popular non-politic American forums (for example music forums) try to foster anti-war sentiment among the Americans. In the past few months on the Islamist websites (for example on Al-Mohajroon Islamist website) appeared instructions for Mujahidin how to infiltrate popular American forums and use them to distribute jihad films and spread disinformation about the up to date situation of the war, how to make Americans afraid of about losing of Iraqi war or the preponderance of the Mujahidin, how to make them distrust their government, and make them feel they must vote on bring the troops back from Iraq as soon as possible. In the virtual study such instructions are mentioned as having registered in the forum using a purely American name, choosing a typical American icon and placing it next to the nickname. The appendix of users should include films of the Mujahidin in Iraq, Mujahidin publications in English, and images and films of the Americans' crimes, such as killing unarmed civilians in Iraq, but should post their comment as an American (without taking sides for Arabs, Muslims). Among the instructions it also take place inventing stories about American soldiers, personally knowing (as classmates or baseball/tennis partner) who were drafted to Iraq and then committed suicide while in service by hanging or shooting themselves. v YouTube and its fellows at the service of the terrorists It is enough an internet connection and anybody can watch videos presenting attacks against US army in Iraq or terrorist trainings on the most popular video sharing portals, for example Google Video Service 8 and YouTube. 10 After the registration nobody verify the real identity the users are permitted to upload and share video clips on these sites, maybe they can upload unlimited number of propaganda videos against USA, Western countries. For a long time the terrorist organizations uploaded videos propagating their organisation on their online forums, websites, so particularly having found them who were informed where to search them. However in past time the organizations targeted the video sharing portals to propagate themselves, for example YouTube, hosting millions of visitors every day and the security services are unable to keep step with the growing number of content. According to the statistic about 65 thousand new video v MEMRI, Islamist Website Instructs Mujahideen in Using Popular U.S. Web Forums to Foster Anti-War Sentiment among Americans No., March, AARMS 7(4) (2008)

7 clips are added on YouTube every day and more than 100 millions videos are watched day by day. On these video sharing portals theoretically anybody can upload his own video which is available for everybody. The visitors can find these 2 6 minutes long video clips via the searching engine of YouTube, or by forums or s, because the link of the video clip could be mentioned at any forum or it is also possible attaching it to an . However it is forbidden for the user s to disclose any video having offensive or atrocity subject but in reality practically nobody check it and the terrorist organisations profit from this. The operators only take off any video from the site if they get a complaint from the users as the extremist video unsuitable for the site. Figure 4. Iraqi jihad recruitment video from YouTube The video clips inviting to the jihad concentrate on the violence as presenting blowing up a military convoy, shooting down the American warriors, suicide bomber attacks, or blowing up the Twin Towers accompanying inspiriting Islamist religious song (so-called Nasheed song). 10 Moreover there are examples we can listen melodious rap music during the film montage, for example in the video clip called Dirty Kuffar, 11 uploaded to YouTube in 2004 and it still presents. In the montage it could be seen American warriors killed in Iraq, the attempt of September 11th 2001, while a AARMS 7(4) (2008) 653

8 masked terrorist menace with gun and Quran rapping in English and Arabic language inviting the young Muslims to jihad. The song made by a London-based Islamic radical group sympathizing with al-qaida. The music video first appeared in February 2004 on the British website run by the Islamic extremist Mohammed al-massari, the UK-based Saudi Arabian dissident (came to Britain in 1994 after being imprisoned by the Saudi regime). From there it was taken over by various video-hosting websites such as YouTube, Google Videos. Dirty Kuffar has been rather popular amongst young Muslims in the UK: the video has been selling in large quantities at mosques to the younger generation who has been attracted by this style of music. vi On the other hand the terrorist organisations try to recruit brothers by ideological motivation: call their attention to the community by film montage having Islamist music. On the film it could be seen speeches of emblematic persons (Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-zawahiri), brutalized Iraqis by American and British solders and brutalized Palestinians by Israelis (demonstration of killed children and women) and the presentation of shooting scenes (interview, training) in the terrorist camps. Figure 5. Recruiting video from YouTube vi Al-Qaeda sympathisers battle infidels with rap Accessed from Sydney Morning Herald, 11 February AARMS 7(4) (2008)

9 Sleeping mailbox The terrorist groups use the internet in public places (mostly at internet café) and for the communication use free web-based accounts opening at free service (for example Hotmail or Yahoo!) for having anonymity, as the extension.com of the account is safer then which is referring to the country (for example sa. in case of Saudi- Arabia, co.uk in the case of Great Britain). The terrorists also use a method known as a virtual dead drop (sleeping mailbox) to relay on some of their most sensitive information regarding of planning and coordination. This include the opening of an account on a free, public service (for example Hotmail or Yahoo!), where the a message is written and saved in a draft form, while the name and the password of the account is transmitted in a code or in chatter on a secure message board. Having getting this the recipient can enter to the account and read the draft message. vii Instructions in the form of interactive maps, detailed photographs, directions and technical details are known to be disguised by means of stenography 12 (which involves the careful concealment of files, documents /for example the al-quaeda handbook 13 /or messages in graphic files). The virtual dead drop has many advantages over a face-to-face meeting. First, the two parties can not be seen together never ever. Second, the two parties do not have to coordinate a rendezvous. Third and most importantly, the persons even do not have to know who the other one (which is an advantage if one of them is arrested). Dead drops can be used to facilitate completely anonymous, asynchronous communications. The effect is that the sender can transmit a message without ever communicating directly with the receiver. There is no between them, no remote logins, no instant messages. The only one is a picture posted to a public forum, and then downloaded by anyone sufficiently enticed by the subject line (both third parties and the intended receiver of the secret message). The al-qaeda operatives used the internet in public places and communicated via free web-based accounts to preserve anonymity. Similarly other groups like Hamas use chat rooms and virtual dead drop to discuss and plan operations, while operatives use to coordinate actions across Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Israel. Instructions are delivered electronically through code, usually in difficult-todecipher dialects of which Western intelligence and security services have only limited number or even do not have any trained linguist. viii vii Use of the Internet, written by the Canadian Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies Volume viii WEIMANN, G.: How modern terrorism uses the Internet March 2004 AARMS 7(4) (2008) 655

10 The real world isn t enough for the terrorists The experiences demonstrated that the terrorist groups after the real world also in Second Life settled down: it may have been infiltrated by extremists to communicate, recruit, transfer money to one another, collect data for attacks or use it as a training camp (commit virtual terrorist attacks). The Second Life (abbreviated as SL) is an Internet-based virtual world launched in 2003 by Linden Lab. The download of the program is free, the Second Life Viewer enables its users, called Residents interacting with each other through avatars. (The residents are the users of Second Life, and they appear in the virtual world in the form of avatars.) The basic avatar is a human one, whose gender can be chosen, as well as its physical attributes, and clothes, or there is a possibility of choosing the look of the avatar from a wide rage of humanoid and other forms. The player's identity is generally less anonymous in Second Life than in other virtual worlds. Second Life uses threedimensional graphics technology to create a virtual world. Anyone can become a member or resident for free and roam the virtual world after creating an avatar. Then they can meet and interact with other users avatars, visiting shops, theatres and sports events, trading with goods and services and having sex. Some governments, including the Sweden one, have opened virtual embassies in Second Life. Some companies such as Sony, BMW and Reebok have bought land and opened branches there. ix Second Life has a global membership of more than 8,5 millions; 70% of Second Life s active users are from outside the USA, for example from Germany, Japan, the UK, France, and Italy. Jihadist may also use the virtual reality world to master skills such as reconnaissance and surveillance. Intelligence sources said although the communication via Second Life in theory could be monitored, the only way tracking an individual is by tracing the user s IP address 14 the physical location of the computer in the real world but even this can be faked. According to some terrorist experts all Islamists had any intention of carrying out terrorist attacks in real life, but it is said that they were using Second Life to build up a community of extremists. Terrorist organisations al-qaeda and Jemaah Islamiah traditionally sent potential jihadists to train in military camps in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Southeast Asia. But due to the increased number of surveillance and intelligence-gathering, they are swapping some military training to online camps to evade detection and avoid prosecution. x ix GOURLAY, CH., TAHER, A.: Virtual jihad hits Second Life website The Sunday Times, August x O BRIEN, N.: Virtual terrorist Accessed from The Australian, 31 July AARMS 7(4) (2008)

11 Conclusions The Internet is becoming more and more the hotbed of the terrorist activities. However there are military operations running in Iraq or in Afghanistan against the fundamentalist terrorist group, the cyberspace has become the most active front. The terrorists took advantages of the Internet much earlier that the security firms discovered it as they did not take enough attention of the common functions of the Internet serving the aim of terrorism. It is already impossible to defeat the virtual power of the terrorist groups, so nowadays the task of the security firms have to be focusing and developing capabilities more and more on the terrorist activities in the cyberspace. After the real world and the cyberspace the counterterrorism services have to map the possible dangers of the Internet-based virtual games as the terrorist groups always use new instruments to propagate, recruit, communicate between each other, and collect data in order to commit more successful attacks in the real world. Notes 1. PalTalk is a software program, can be downloaded free from the Internet, is an online chat service for text, voice and video chatting, similar to Skype. PalTalk provides an uncontrolled registration system for users with absolutely no proof of identity. 2. The blog is an online diary. This website is usually maintained by an individual with continuous commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. 3. The chat-room is an online service providing a venue for communities of users with a common interest communicating in real time. Chat room users register for the chat room of their choice, choose their user name (nickname) and password. The speciality of the virtual chatting is the anonymity, the users identified by nickname. 4. The link is a reference in a hypertext document to another document or other resource. 5. Orkut is a social networking service run by Google and named after its creator. The service states that it was designed to help users meet new friends and maintain existing relationships. Anyone with an Orkut account can create a user` s community. One can post topics, inform users about an event, ask them questions or just play games. There are more than one million communities on Orkut. Its membership is by invitation. 6. Friendster is a privately owned internet social networking website and the first online social network. Friendster has over 90 million registered users and over 61 million unique visitors a month globally. 7. Facebook is a popular, free-access social networking website with more than 140 million active users. Facebook is the most popular social networking site in several English-speaking countries, including Canada and the United Kingdom. 8. Google Video Service is a free video sharing and video search engine service from Google that allows anyone to upload video clips to Google s web servers as well as make their own media available free of charge. 9. YouTube.com is a video sharing website where users can upload, view and share video clips. YouTube was created in mid-february Unregistered users can watch most videos on the site, while registered users are permitted to upload an unlimited number of videos. 10. Nasheed is Islamic-oriented song. Traditionally, it is sung a cappella, accompanied only by a daff. AARMS 7(4) (2008) 657

12 11. Kuffar or kaffir apparently being Arabic for nonbelievers (atheist). The video is available from: The video consists of two individuals rapping in turn while dressed as mujahideen. In the background, news reports of Western actions in Muslim countries, along with pictures of notable political figures which morph briefly into animals and then back, (for example Bush turns into an ape, Osama Bin Laden morphs into a roaring lion). At the end of the video, it features shots of the hijacked planes flying into the Twin Towers with sounds of the rappers laughing. 12. Steganography is the science of hiding messages in messages. Typically, a message (either plaintext or, more cleverly, ciphertext) is hidden in the low-order bits of a digital photograph. To the uninitiated observer, it s just a picture. But to the sender and receiver, there's a message hiding there. A steganographic message can appear in pictures (jpg files), textes (html, txt), audio files (mp3). The terrorists used steganographic softwares before 9/11 to change and send messages and forward photos and maps of the targets. 13. The al-qaeda manual, namely the Terrorist s handbook. The extremists are using an al-qaeda training manual to give them instructions for taking over the state's toughest jails, prison authorities have alleged. 14. The IP-address (Internet Protocol address) is a numerical identification that is assigned to devices participating in a computer network utilizing the Internet Protocol for communication between its nodes. The source of the pictures from the Internet Picture 1: Picture 2: Picture 3: Picture 4: Picture 5: References (printed and Internet sources) FARKAS, C.: Halál a katonai blogokra. FigyelNet, 30 May GOURLAY, CH., TAHER, A.: Virtual jihad hits Second Life website. The Sunday Times, August 5, HAIG, ZSOLT: A terrorizmus újszer módszerei és eszközei. Felderít Szemle, január V. évf. HAIG, ZSOLT, KOVÁCS, L., VÁNYA, L.: Információs hadviselés információs terrorizmus kiberterrorizmus, Az informatikai biztonság kézikönyve, 3.6. fejezet, HUNT, K.: Osama bin Laden fan clubs build online communities, USA Today, 3 August ITAC Presents Trends in Terrorism Series. A Framework for Understanding Terrorist. Use of the Internet, written by the Canadian Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, Volume KENEDLI, TAMÁS, BÉRES, JÁNOS: Is the cyberterror threat exaggerated? AARMS, Vol. 7, No. 1 (2008) KOVÁCS, LÁSZLÓ: Az információs terrorizmus eszköztára. Hadmérnök, 2006 LATHEM, N.: Al Qaeda Trolls Net. New York Post, 15 September, 2003 MEMRI (The Middle East Media Research Institute): Islamist Website Instructs Mujahideen in Using Popular U.S. Web Forums to Foster Anti-War Sentiment among Americans. Special Dispatch Series, No., March, AARMS 7(4) (2008)

13 NAGY, István: A számítógépes terrorizmus. Felderít Szemle, március V. évf. 1. sz. O BRIEN, Natalie: Virtual terrorist. The Australian, 31 July, Reuters, Al-Qaeda sympathisers battle infidels with rap. Sydney Morning Herald, 11 February THOMAS, TIMOTHY L.: Al Qaeda and the Internet: The Danger of Cyberplanning. Parameters, XXXIII/1. (Spring 2003) US: Army War College Quarterly. WEIMANN, Gabriel.: How modern terrorism uses the Internet. Special Report of United States Institute of Peace, March AARMS 7(4) (2008) 659