Terrorism | Kashif Ali

Category: terrorism

Jan 30 2013

Mali Jihadists Support Their Struggle Online

Yesterday in Lille, the 5th CyberSecurity International Forum (FIC2013) ended with a speech by Manuel Valls, the French Minister of the Interior. Among the subjects, the Minister informed the audience about the increasing dangers of cyberjihad.

Since January 11, France has been engaged in Mali. The Africans had appealed for urgent military aid to halt the jihadist rebels advance in the northern part of the country. The conflict is taking place both on the ground as well as online, and terrorists are intensifying their activities in the latter area.

The jihadists are using the Internet for propaganda. Lots of pictures like the following are available for download and redistribution.

Terrorists have also threatened France and its inhabitants. Their leaders–or people who say they represent them–have created videos like the one below that I discovered during my searches. (This is a “Message to France from a mujahideen.”)

Like cybercriminals and many law-abiding people, jihadists use forums to communicate. In the past, these were publicly available. Today they are closed, and new members are now accepted only by invitation.

The terrorists do not hesitate to spread offensive photographs. Some were distributed not so long ago via a Twitter account driven by Somali militants with links to al Qaeda. They showed a dead white man wearing military pants and a blood-soaked shirt surrounded by three guns, ammunition clips, and protective gear. The message claimed it was a French soldier killed in the failed January 12 rescue mission of a fellow countryman held hostage. (Out of respect for the families and at the request of French authorities, we will not post these pictures.)

Defacing websites is another frequent activity. On January 16, cyberjihadists attacked the sites of some French socialist deputies, modifying the welcome pages with propaganda images. The jihadists claimed responsibility on their websites.

They have also threatened distributed denial of service attacks. A DDoS attack on the French Defense Ministry website was announced on a private forum on January 17.

The Internet is also a popular tool for collecting money and recruiting volunteers. The promise of entering paradise as a martyr appears to inspire recruits.

These examples demonstrate that terrorists can use the Internet in their struggles. These efforts are not truly cyberterrorism, but they are apparently effective.

Tags: Cybersecurity, France

french, jihad, Mali, McAfee Labs, Naked Security, Security, terrorism | francois page | Comments (0)

May 03 2011

Osama Shoot down video scam spreads on Facebook

Facebook users are being tempted to click on links to what purports to be a video of Osama bin Laden being shot, in the latest scam to exploit the hot news story of the Al Qaeda leader’s death.

The messages appear as follows:

Osama shoot down video

Watch the Osama Shoot down video

Osama Dead - Censored Video Leaked
on.fb.me
Osama is dead, watch this exclusive CNN video which was censored by Obama Administration due to level of violence, a must watch. Leaked by Wikileaks.

Clicking on the link, however, will not instantly show you some sensational footage of US Navy Seals attacking Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan.

Instead, you’re told you will have to take an online survey.

Osama shoot down video scam

That should be enough to set your alarm bells ringing – as survey scams are a persisting problem on Facebook, earning scammers commission with every survey they manage to trick users into completing.

What’s most interesting about this scam is that they trick you into cutting-and-pasting a line of JavaScript into your web browser’s address bar.

Not that you’ll realise that you’re doing that, of course. As far as you know all you’re doing is following a sequence of instructions and keyboard presses before you watch the video.

Osama shoot down video scam

But any time you paste a script into your browser’s address bar, you’re effectively running code written by the scammers without the safety net of protection.

Script

Before you know it, you’ll be sharing the news of the “Osama Shoot down video” with all of your Facebook friends, and the scam will be spreading virally.

My guess is that you don’t want to make it so easy for the scammers to run their scripts on your browser – so don’t fall for scams like this.

Be very careful not to be fooled by scams related to Osama Bin Laden’s death, not just on Facebook but on other parts of the internet too. Such a big news story always seems to attract the interest of fraudsters and malware authors.

If you want to keep up-to-date on the latest scams, and are a member of Facebook, don’t forget to join the Sophos Facebook page to keep informed about the latest security news.

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Tags: Facebook, Scam, Social networks, Spam

Naked Security, osama bin laden, Security, terrorism | Sophos | Comments (0)

May 02 2011

Osama bin Laden death video scam spreads virally on Facebook

A link which claims to point to a video of the death of Osama bin Laden has been spread virally across Facebook today, just hours after the death of the Al Qaeda leader.

The messages, posed as updates on Facebook users’ walls, claim to point to banned video footage of Osama bin Laden’s death:

SHOCKING NEW video of OSAMA BIN LADENS DEATH!! Exclusive BANNED VDEIO footage of Osama Bin Laden being killed!!!

(In the screenshots used throughout this article we have obscured the image as some may find it disturbing).

Clicking on the link takes you to a Facebook page which urges you to like and share the link with your Facebook friends, before you can watch the “shocking” footage:

However, sharing the link with others just helps spread it further across the social network, and instead of a shocking video you are instead presented with an all-too-familiar survey which you are told you must complete before you can go any further.

The scammers earn money every time a survey is completed, and that’s why they want you to share the link with others.

Sophos is advising computer users to watch out for scams related to Osama bin Laden’s death, not just on Facebook but on other parts of the internet too. Such a big news story always seems to attract the interest of fraudsters and malware authors.

If you want to keep up-to-date on the latest scams, and are a member of Facebook, don’t forget to join the Sophos Facebook page to keep informed about the latest security news.

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Tags: Facebook, Featured, Scam, Social networks, Spam, Survey Scam

Naked Security, osama bin laden, Security, terrorism | Sophos | Comments (0)

May 02 2011

Osama bin Laden dead – so watch for the spams and scams

Google’s top-trending Anglophone search term right now is, understandably, “osama bin laden dead”.

Google officially describes its hotness (you couldn’t make this stuff up) as volcanic.

The short version, according to the LA Times, is that bin Laden was tracked to a “comfortable mansion surrounded by a high wall in a small town near Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital.”

For bin Laden, it seems, the comfort is no more. “On Sunday, a ‘small team’ of Americans raided the compound. After a firefight, [President Obama said], they killed Bin Laden.” Apparently, DNA tests have confirmed Bin Laden’s identity.

And there you have it.

Now you know the basics – but watch out for the links you’re likely to come across in email or on social networking sites offering you additional coverage of this newsworthy event.

Many of the links you see will be perfectly legitimate links. But at least some are almost certain to be dodgy links, deliberately distributed to trick you into hostile internet territory.

If in doubt, leave it out!

Sometimes, poisoned content is rather obvious. The links in this spam captured by SophosLabs, for example, give the impression of going to a news site:

The links don’t go anywhere of the sort, of course. Wherever you click, you end up finding out how to replace your tired old windows:

But even well-meant searches using your favourite search engine might end in tears.

What’s commonly called “Black-Hat Search Engine Optimisation” (BH-SEO) means that cybercrooks can often trick the secret search-ranking algorithms of popular search engines by feeding them fake pages to make their rotten content seem legitimate, and to trick you into visiting pages which have your worst interests at heart.

Well-known topics that have been widely written about for years are hard to poison via BH-SEO. The search engines have a good historical sense of which sites are likely to be genuinely relevant if your interest is searches like “Commonwealth of Australia”, “Canadian Pacific Railway” or “Early history of spam”.

But a search term which is incredibly popular but by its very nature brand new – “Japanese tsunami”, “William and Kate engagement”, “Kate Middleton wedding dress” or, of course, “Osama bin Laden dead” – doesn’t give the search engines much historical evidence to go on.

The search engines want to be known for being highly responsive to new trends – that means more advertising revenue for them, after all – and that means, loosely speaking, that they have to take more of a chance on accuracy.

What can you do to keep safe?

* Don’t blindly trust links you see online, whether in emails, on social networking sites, or from searches. If the URL and the subject matter don’t tie up in some obvious way, give it a miss.

* Use an endpoint security product which offers some sort of web filtering so you get early warning of poisoned content. (Sophos Endpoint Security and Control and the Sophos Web Appliance are two examples.)

* If you go to a site expecting to see information on a specific topic but get redirected somewhere unexpected – to a “click here for a free security scan” page, for instance, or to a survey site, or to a “download this codec program to view the video” dialog – then get out of there at once. Don’t click further. You’re being scammed.