Infocult: Uncanny Informatics

Sentenced for eQaeda

eQaeda leads to jail: a British court sentenced three men to prison for crimes conducted solely online.

The e-Qaeda, or online jihad theme, is one aspect of the fearsome internet we've followed for a while.  It's been connected to online gaming, modding, municipal WiFi, online learning, online training camps, the Orkut social networking platform, radicalized Canadian youth, blog hosting services, al-Zarqawi's tactics, Google Video and data security, and a "virtual caliphate." 

The term "eQaeda" seems to have been coined in a 2005 Washington Post article.  Other terms, like online jihad and iJihad haven't had as much use.

Cyberwar in the Baltic

Stories are circulating about Estonian cyberwarfare.  It seems that a botnet attack took down some Estonian sites, with incidental damage to local routers and backbone, and lasting nearly a month.

Considering Estonia is more advanced than most of us (they even held the last elections online) the impact of the attack was significant with some down-time for the banks, government sites, etc. It could
have been more serious, but while their Internet infrastructure as a quiet country was not prepared for such an attack, the response and mitigation worked for them. They stood the risk of losing their ability to buy gas, for example, and for a short time, they did.

It was serious enough that Talinn is asking Moscow for help.

Hysteria followed, reaching as far as invoking NATO intervention.  Bruce Sterling catches this fine example of fear rhetoric, hurled parodically quite high:

Cyber-Terrorism!

Havoc!

We're ready with an official info-war flack jacket (it's made of tin foil and old cat-5 cable) for the first news outlet to use our term: Cybarmageddon! 

It's also worth noting the odd echoes of Soviet-era Baltic occupation in this.  Unless the Russian government wasn't involved, and it was some sort of terrorism.  Shadows upon shadows, memories piled above mysteries.

(via Siberian Light, Sara Hebert)

National filtering

I ran into a national filtering example last week, while composing a post about the Livejournal deletion fracas.  While finding posts about the story was easy, every LJ and LJ post was 404'd as I clicked from central Morocco.  Turns out Morocco's leading ISP, Maroc Telecom, has been blocking LJ for months.  Google Earth has also gotten the filtering treatment.

Morocco also blocked YouTube, off and on.

Cryptome vs ISP

Cryptome has been asked to leave by its ISP, Verio.  Given what Cryptome has published over the years, one wonders what pushed Verio over the edge this time.

(via /.)

Rumsfeld on information operations: declassified doc

Just found this declassified doc on information operations, authored by Donald Rumsfeld.  I'm not sure if there are many surprises, but it's a very useful document for information warfare.

(Thanks to Charles Cameron for pointing this to me, who received it from the Raelians.  Yes, my friend the reflective game designer caught this American information warfare treatise from a meta-human UFO religion.  I've been waiting all month to write something like that.)

Chertoff on iQaeda

US Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff returned to the e-Qaeda idea this week, arguing that jihadists use the web to organize.  It's like telecommuting for terror:

"They can train themselves over the Internet. They never have to necessarily go to the training camp or speak with anybody else and that diffusion of a combination of hatred and technical skills in things like bomb-making is a dangerous combination," Chertoff said. "Those are the kind of terrorists that we may not be able to detect with spies and satellites."

I like the hint of the echo chamber meme in "or speak with anybody else".

Ars Technica, where I found this, links to a useful 2004 survey of the many information operations options the Web affords canny jihadists.

Information ops: the limits of propaganda

John Robb has a fine post on how propaganda now fails information operations.  He suggests open source intel as a preferable alternative.

It's a sort of mirror image of the anti-war "Second Superpower" argument (back in 2003).  Distributed media content and usage helps organizing.

Electronic Jihad Program 1.5 (Silver Edition)

e-Qaeda continued: Electronic Jihad (http://www.al-jinan.org/), according to the Jamestown Foundation.  Jamestown describes the site (which I can't read, alas) as a social networking tool for jihadists.  It offers two handy downloads, a set of hack apps, along with an operations toolbar.

Hacking the opposition's radio: Lebanon 2006

Information warfare: Hezbollah hacked into the Israel army's radio net during this summer's fighting.  Just how extensively the IDA's communications were compromised is impossible to say from the outside, especially this close to the battles, but it definitely does sound like classic hacking bragging. 

It's also a good example of assymetrical warfare, a low-cost approach to exploiting the opponent's weaknesses, what John Robb describes as a hybrid method, combining human interception with signals warfare and modern rockets.  Result: a series of destroyed Israeli tanks.  Question: how far did Israel get into Hezbollah's net?

"The information collected by signals intercepts was being used to help direct fighters on the battlefield," [Nizar Qader, a retired Lebanese army general] said. "These are tactics of a modern army."

This war has demonstrated several aspecs of information operations.  We noted Hezbollah's media narrative strategy during the conflict.

US information warfare exercise: CyberStorm

The US Homeland Security Department held an information warfare exercise earlier this year.  Wired notes that it involved an alliance of left-wing groups, who launched network attacks.  All softs of data services were targeted, or faults within claimed.

(via MetaFilter; image via Cryptome)