12.09.13

US Cyberspies infiltrate online games, inflate threat

Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Cyberterrorism at 6:23 pm by George Smith

Why did/does this blog provide a service? Because back in 2007, I labeled claiming terrorists were using on-line games to train national security threat inflation and quack work.

But the US cyberwar machine has always overdone things. Enemies are always everywhere. And even though they’ve been wrong about everything in the last decade, nothing impedes their manias.

From the New York Times, again courtesy of Edward Snowden:

Not limiting their activities to the earthly realm, American and British spies have infiltrated the fantasy worlds of World of Warcraft and Second Life, conducting surveillance and scooping up data in the online games played by millions of people across the globe, according to newly disclosed classified documents.

Fearing that terrorist or criminal networks could use the games to communicate secretly, move money or plot attacks, the documents show, intelligence operatives have entered terrain populated by digital avatars that include elves, gnomes and supermodels.

The spies have created make-believe characters to snoop and to try to recruit informers, while also collecting data and contents of communications between players, according to the documents, disclosed by the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden. Because militants often rely on features common to video games — fake identities, voice and text chats, a way to conduct financial transactions — American and British intelligence agencies worried that they might be operating there, according to the papers.

Online games might seem innocuous, a top-secret 2008 N.S.A. document warned, but they had the potential to be a “target-rich communication network??? allowing intelligence suspects “a way to hide in plain sight.??? Virtual games “are an opportunity!??? another 2008 N.S.A. document declared.

But for all their enthusiasm — so many C.I.A., F.B.I. and Pentagon spies were hunting around in Second Life, the document noted, that a “deconfliction??? group was needed to avoid collisions — the intelligence agencies may have inflated the threat.

May have inflated the threat. Get rewrite and go for historical accuracy. They always inflated the threat.

Why where so many “hunting around” in Second Life?

Cue Internet and dog joke, paraphrased: “In cyberspace nobody knows you’re just another asshole from the US national security megaplex.”

Anyway, from 2007 — why, here, of course:

“One radical group, called Second Life Liberation Army, has been responsible for some computer-coded atomic bombings of virtual world stores [in the on-line fantasy game called Second Life] in the past six months,” wrote a reporter for the Australian, today.

“On screen these blasts look like an explosion of hazy white balls as buildings explode, landscapes are razed and residents are wounded or killed.

“With the game taking such a sinister turn, terrorism experts are warning that [Second Life] attacks have ramifications for the real world. Just as September 11 terrorists practised flying planes on simulators in preparation for their deadly assault on US buildings, law enforcement agencies believe some of those behind the Second Life attacks are home-grown Australian jihadists who are rehearsing for strikes against real targets…”

Entitled “Virtual Terrorists,” alert reader Cubic Archon tipped your friendly neighborhood GlobalSecurity.Org Senior Fellow to this bit of titillating terror infotainment dressed up as real news.

Of course, it is not good scary terror infotainment unless experts are on hand to inform you that it has been a subject of quiet concern for some time. But now the danger has become too great, the threat impending, and they must speak!

“Terrorist organisations al-Qa’ida and Jemaah Islamiah traditionally sent potential jihadists to train in military camps in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Southeast Asia,” continues the Australian. “But due to increased surveillance and intelligence-gathering, they are swapping some military training to online camps to evade detection and avoid prosecution.”

“Rohan Gunaratna, author of Inside al-Qa’ida, says it is a new phenomena that, until now, has not been openly discussed outside the intelligence community.

“But he says security agencies are extremely concerned about what home-grown terrorists are up to in cyberspace. He believes the dismantling and disruption of military training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan after September 11 forced terrorists to turn to the virtual world.”

” ‘They are rehearsing their operations in Second Life because they don’t have the opportunity to rehearse in the real world.'”

“Intelligence and law enforcement agencies in the US and Australia are so concerned they have established their own reality world games in a bid to gain the same experiences as the virtual terrorists.

“Monash University academic and former Office of National Assessments intelligence officer David Wright-Neville agrees that online games and virtual worlds are being used by potential terrorists to hone their knowledge base … Intelligence analyst Roderick Jones, who is investigating the potential use of the games by terrorists, says [Second Life] could easily become a terror classroom.”

Are you ready to your local anti-terror forces stamp out the on-line game? Or are your eyes rolling over yet another ad hoc squad of experts ready to say anything to a news organization in the process of concocting another exciting fraud from the terror wars?

“Basically, we have a succession of inaccuracies about Second Life in the first place (e.g. you can’t leave ‘a trail of dead and injured’ there, even virtually, given that there’s no permanent death or injury built in; the ‘Second Life Liberation Army’ was a media publicity stunt,” writes Cubic Archon in e-mail.

He added that the news piece offers “ridiculous sourceless commentary.”

Archon finds the next claim laughable.

“Kevin Zuccato, head of the Australian High Tech Crime Centre in Canberra, says terrorists can gain training in games such as World of Warcraft in a simulated environment, using weapons that are identical to real-world armaments.”

“World of Warcraft is a fantasy game,” the e-mailer points out. “So, in the real world, terrorists are going to be attacking with magic swords and fireball spells?”

Since Archon makes good points about the meretriciousness of claims that terrorists can use Second Life as a way to plan attacks, DD turns the real estate over to him:

“I am a fairly long-term user of Second Life and, while it has some great potential for certain types of teaching and real-world modeling – it’s used increasingly by architects, for instance – this is about as credible a threat as the one about school shooters building models of their school in Counterstrike and using them to rehearse attacks. Bouncing about in an online simulation isn’t combat training.

“And the idea that it is being used by al Qaeda to recruit, any more than, say, Myspace, is sourceless nonsense. There are all sorts of ‘comedy’ names and groups in Second Life, and it would surprise me immensely if people hadn’t started up al Qaeda type groups, perhaps with virtual explosive belts, to satirise the media obsession with them. To be honest, this sort of article almost makes me want to do that myself – or maybe build a replica of Pearl Harbour and start bombing it from virtual aeroplanes.

“You know, it would be terrific if Second Life was really as good and realistic as it is portrayed here, that you could actually learn how to do something as complex as build explosives or field-strip a rifle from the comfort of your own bedroom, but unfortunately it isn’t.”

Supplying related URL’s, Archon writes: “Another past example came from Threatswatch.org here. [This] was quite roundly panned by Second Life users in comments and on various blogs.”

Continues the Australian: “US terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman, from think tank RAND Corporation, says … ‘We have to contest this virtual battle space in much the same manner as we are very successfully doing in other traditional forms.'”

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The item on terrorists and Second Life, from Threatswatch, back in 2007:

A Daily Brief item today pointed out some disturbing developments in the virtual world of Second Life. While at first glance one might be dismissive of developments in the “fake??? world, a closer look indicates that Second Life has the potential to enhance the terrorist threat.

The FBI and others recently began pointing out their shift in thinking that terrorist threats to the homeland will come from al-Qaeda sleeper cells such as the 9/11 hijackers and instead will come from self-radicalized individuals and groups. The so-called “Ft. Dix Six??? are such a group, having allegedly used (at least in part) various terrorist resources online for motivation and training. Anti-terror raids in the UK and elsewhere note that those arrested are often in possession of computers that contain radical Islamic literature as well as information on how to perform pre-operational planning, use small arms, and conduct small unit tactics.

There are those who dismiss self-radicalized, self-trained groups as amateurs who are unlikely to ever conduct a successful terrorist operation, though events of so-called “sudden Jihad syndrome??? over the past five years suggest that even self-taught sad-sacks can kill or maim. Still, there is a big difference between someone who has actually trained to fight an armed conflict or conduct intelligence operations and someone who has merely read about how it is done.

Second Life bridges that gap.

In Second Life you can practice intelligence tradecraft; you can test your elicitation skills, pass off (hopefully unnoticed) notes and packages, and meet in private with co-conspirators. You can sit down in a classroom and learn how to field-strip a rifle or pistol, conduct fire-and-maneuver drills, or run through an urban combat scenario. You can send and receive money to help fund your operation and you can conduct “legitimate??? business that ends up funding terrorism. Static online training materials or even interactive-but-text-based Jihadist discussion forums cannot match the rich and substantial – if one may be excused for adopting a marketer’s language – content.

Second Life has the potential to elevate the professionalism of terrorism training. It is not real-life, but it isn’t reading comic books either.

Bottom line: You could have predicted US cyberwarriors and terrorist hunters were going to charge into on-line gaming undercover. Seeing threats everywhere, even when virtually none exist, has always been their business.

What many people didn’t realize, or refused to recognize at the time, was that the national threat assessment apparatus, from the private sector to the intelligence agencies, feeds on itself.

It recites its little stories and has always actively worked to put them into the news. And when their rumors, half-baked suppositions and crazed paranoid mutterings are published and made respectable they become a citation in someone’s pitch to start terrorist-hunting operations, in this case in on-line gaming.

From 2007 to Edward Snowden’s papers in 2013.

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