06.03.11
Posted in Cyberterrorism, War On Terror at 12:46 pm by George Smith
UPDATED
What do you do when people don’t notice your cyberspace offensive against al Qaeda?
You leak it to the US press a long time after it amounted to very little.
From Reuters today:
Spies hacked into an al Qaeda website to replace instructions on how to build a bomb with recipes for making cupcakes, newspapers reported on Friday.
The cyber offensive took place last year when the English language magazine called Inspire, aimed at Muslims in the West, was launched by supporters of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).
British intelligence officers based at the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the state eavesdropping service, attacked the 67-page magazine, leaving most of it garbled, British newspapers said.
Instead of being able to read how to “Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom,” readers were greeted with computer code which actually contained recipes from The Best Cupcakes in America, published by U.S. chat show host Ellen DeGeneres.
The Washington Post reported that the British action followed a dispute between the CIA and the newly formed U.S. Cyber Command.
The cyber unit had wanted to block the al Qaeda magazine but the CIA, which had countered such an attack would expose sources and intelligence methods, won the debate and declined to allow an attack on Inspire.
In this case, the CIA would seem to have been the wisest in the group.
As a matter of fact, the leaked intelligence is misleading.
British intelligence effectively botched portions of the attack. Or, are misleading journalists now with an angle on it that made no difference at the time.
For most people who downloaded Inspire’s initial offering, all of it except its initial teaser pages were gibberish.
There was no visible recipe for cupcakes. DD had a copy. A number of colleagues had copies. All were the same.
One initial suspicion was that there had been an attempt to make the archive into a malicious download, which would have been counterproductive for al Qaeda but immediately obvious as western intelligence work. The download was not, however, malicious.
In the time since, western intelligence — most notably the US, though contractors (see here), has actually moved into the business of making old jihadi electronic documents into malicious downloads.
These actions have come very late in the game. The potential is now patently obvious and, because of that, only effective against suckers.
Which is not to say al Qaeda is sucker free.
From this blog, on the first issue of Inspire, last year:
If the purpose is to get the maximum number of readers, the insertion of digital gobble into the .pdf as padding — as this commenter details here – is astonishingly counterproductive.
It essentially creates impressions that the publication is either unfinished, a fake or that its creator greatly overestimated his own cleverness.
“[I] have no idea why it would occur to anyone to try it in the first place,??? commented one of DD’s colleagues in e-mail. [Hat tip to SA.]
And the publication’s relatively small number of downloads, in proportion to the news of it, would seem to be proof of fail.
“The language of the magazine, such as ‘Make a bomb in the kitchen of your mom,’ reflects either a poor command of English or a light-hearted sense of self-parody,??? writes someone — not very perceptively — at the Atlantic.
“Since I am not completely certain that the clean PDF doesn’t contain a hidden virus, I’ve elected not to post it just yet,??? adds Marc Ambinder.
Armbinder’s presumption is silly. The file [was] harmless.
Looking at today’s news, the British meddling, rather than being some great victory, accomplished very little, if anything, other than cause mystification in the western press.
The publishers of Inspire subsequently upped their game.
Clean copies of the magazine were published and subsequent issues have not been subject to noticeable interference.
Unless it’s western intelligence making them look stupid by published articles on Ford F-150 truck terror.
And al Qaeda comic book, number four.
The measure of the Washington Post story on cupcake recipes and British intelligence can be seen today by its pass-along value with chumps.
Dylan Ratigan of MSNBC just spent thirty seconds going on about it.
Ratigan can be counted on to be notoriously uninformed when he dives into brief news items concerning things with which he has no real
experience.
Therefore, the fact that Inspire was not noticeably hindered, in the long run, is overlooked. Or that cupcake recipes from Ellen DeGeneris just weren’t visible in the original corrupted pdf that most people had a look at.
Now, the real value of the intelligence operation is in today’s action resulting in the subtle misinforming of people who read English-language news in the US. For the vain benefit of a cyber-spying operation.
From the standpoint of observing the mainstream media’s reaction to this story, common-sense is beggared. But not if you’re someone who is baiting journalists with a silly and irresistible piece of misinformation.
Any actually visible cupcake recipe from Ellen Degeneris would, again, have been obvious as a plant. For the corrupt filler to work in raising doubt, it would have of necessity needed to appear just as simple garbage.
And this is because it has been the practice of Inspire to publish in readable English so as to not only “inspire” potential jihadis, but also to jab the US and “inspire” consternation and apprehension in the enemy’s camp.
In any case, there was a short span of time before a clean copy was issued and in this period some people wondered about the nature of what appeared to be stumble in the art and process of al Qaeda’s fancy new publication. One possibility, discussed briefly, was that it had been interfered with.
Or that it was an example of incompetence on the part of al Qaeda.
Which, if that was the sole aim, was only very briefly successful.
As an effort to jam or deter actual publication of Inspire, eventually it had little effect.
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06.01.11
Posted in Crazy Weapons, War On Terror at 9:27 am by George Smith
From the WaTimes:
Military operations in Afghanistan rely too much on intelligence gathered by unmanned drones, often exclude important publicly available data and do not focus enough on the recruitment of human agents, a Pentagon report says.
The report by the Defense Science Board, a panel that advises the Pentagon, says that the defense budget does not properly direct funding for open-source intelligence collection – information available to the public and gathered from a wide variety of sources, including academic papers and newspapers.
From Steven Aftergood at the FAS Secrecy blog, last week:
With its overwhelming emphasis on technical collection, U.S. military intelligence is poorly equipped to meet the requirements of the counterinsurgency mission, according to a recent study (pdf) by the Defense Science Board.
A copy of the report is archived at the Secrecy blog.
It is worth a look, if only for the paradoxical list of Defense Science Board members, many of them from the drones and gadgets technical collections agencies, industry and lobby.
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05.27.11
Posted in Permanent Fail, War On Terror at 9:07 am by George Smith
Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution was once ubiquitous in the nation’s newspapers. Along with Ken Pollack, he was instrumental in providing allegedly independent scholarly expert judgment on why Iraq needed to be invaded.
Eventually history had its way with him. As it did with all of the neo-cons who provided sophistry in cover for the war.
Now this Google page aggregation sums O’Hanlon up perfectly.
While you don’t get fired at the nation’s war-pushing think tanks when you screw up royally, the real estate you’re invited to scribble on goes from high rent to slum.
Today, O’hanlon’s on the opinion page of the Washington Times, the newspaper for DC’s extreme right, sharing space with the usual tumbleweeds blowing through that neighborhood — Medicare must be destroyed, Newt Gingrich is a genius, Obama is the greatest enemy Americans have ever known, etc.
What’s the subject?
The Pentagon’s jobs program for Iraq must be preserved.
It reads:
Consider a few examples from Iraq. The task force helped Iraqi banks set up electronic funds transfer capabilities at 233 private banks. About 100,000 jobs were restored in Iraq after the invasion as the direct result of task force interventions. At least $2 billion in investment licenses were issued for new business development by an Iraqi government agency that the [Pentagon’s jobs program task force] helped set up. Dozens of international companies, including Boeing, GE, Case New Holland, Google and Microsoft, have begun work in Iraq as a result.
Then he makes the pitch for the same in Afghanistan because it is a mineral goldmine, a story flogged in 2010 to keep up enthusiasm for involvement in the place.
“Do we really want to concede the foreign role in developing mineral interests in Afghanistan, estimated at more than $1 trillion in value, to Chinese companies because American firms don’t have access to compete themselves?” write O’Hanlon at the WaTimes.
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05.26.11
Posted in War On Terror at 1:15 pm by George Smith
Even though bin Laden is dead, you’d never know it by looking at proposed Pentagon appropriations.
Sure, some Congressman make noise, a trivial bit of legislation on Libya which probably has no chance is passed by the House, and the Associated Press reporter writes like it’s a new tomorrow.
But it means nothing.
War-spending and footing aren’t going anywhere. The national security infrastructure won’t have it, the political leadership is captured or actively complicit, and the American people — as much as they are sick of this endless national export — have been removed from the equation.
AP:
The Republican-controlled House on Thursday overwhelmingly passed a $690 billion defense bill that limits President Barack Obama’s authority on reducing nuclear weapons and deciding the fate of terrorist suspects.
On a 322-96 vote, the House approved the broad defense blueprint that would provide a 1.6 percent increase in military pay, fund an array of aircraft, ships and submarines and increase health care fees slightly for working-age military retirees …
[Here’s one of the more laughable parts of today’s theatrical presentation, elicited after a modest proposal to draw down troops in Afghanistan was defeated.]
“It’s more than people are weary,” Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., sponsor of the amendment, said shortly after the vote. “They’re frustrated and not quite sure what we’re doing there. We got (Osama) bin Laden.”
In another sign of exasperation with war, the House overwhelmingly backed a measure to the bill barring any taxpayer dollars for U.S. ground forces or private security contractors in Libya with the exception of those involved in rescue missions of U.S. service members. The vote was 416-5.
The business of war is, along with Wall Street, America’s most protected business.
But for everyone else:
The latest U.S. growth estimate for the first quarter showed an unrevised 1.8 percent rise, but that was below expectations, and corporate profits unexpectedly shrank while weekly jobless benefit claims rose.
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05.24.11
Posted in War On Terror at 7:58 am by George Smith
Big arms transfer to Pakistan was always an atrocious idea.
Now it looks worse. Here’s the big pitch, somewhere in Washington:
Let’s sell even more American kit to a military with the most sissy reluctant soldiers and corrupt incompetent generals in the world. We launched an attack into the city that was the retirement home for them and, if they saw it coming, had no taste for the fight.
[All the retired generals who are now lobbyists/employees of Northrop, Raytheon, Lockheed, etc — applaud.]
And they have some widdle nuclear weapons. It’s so sweeet.
Yet another example of a protected social jobs program for US arms manufacturing, serving only mostly insane ends.
From the wires:
Pakistani commandos have regained control of a naval base after more than 17 hours of fighting with Taliban gunmen, in an attack that raised questions about Pakistan’s ability to defend itself from militants.
Pakistan’s Interior Minister Rehman Malik said Monday that 10 security personnel and 14 others were wounded in the brazen attack on the base in the southern port city of Karachi.
Pakistan’s military was ridiculed and accused of complicity in the media on Tuesday after a small group of militants laid siege to a naval air base, holding out for 16 hours against about 100 commandos and rangers.
As few as six militants infiltrated the PNS Mehran naval base in Karachi, the headquarters of Pakistan’s naval air wing …
It’s now fairly obvious what would have happened if the US military had engaged the Pakistani military in the raid to get bin Laden. It would have destroyed a good chunk of the kit the US government has sold them in the last ten years.
Although the western press hasn’t picked this up, the Pakistani military is so poor it has resorted to planting stories in that country’s press that we used non-existent electromagnetic pulse weapons on them.
How else to explain, except through techno-magic in the hands of the foe, your glaring weakness?
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05.20.11
Posted in War On Terror at 12:19 pm by George Smith
It’s to laugh. And at least US anonymoids admit it was “little more than a fantasy”:
Osama bin Laden’s personal files revealed a brazen idea to hijack oil tankers and blow them up at sea last summer, creating explosions he hoped would rattle the world’s economy and send oil prices skyrocketing, the U.S. said Friday.
The newly disclosed plot showed that while bin Laden was always scheming for the next big strike that would kill thousands of Americans, he also believed a relatively simpler attack on the oil industry could create a worldwide panic that would hurt Westerners every time they gassed up their cars.
“Hurt westerners every time they gassed up their cars.”
Didn’t get out of his mansion much.
Me, I’m waiting for the journal entry on an electromagnetic pulse attack plot to drop.
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05.17.11
Posted in War On Terror at 9:44 am by George Smith
Over the weekend the exploitation of bin Laden’s pathetic wordly possessions and idiot notes degenerated into comment on his porn habit.
But not before but the Ford F-150 of death back in the news. As a cover story for Inspire, critical thinkers saw it as an example of the chaff that’s passed off as wheat among the current terror legion.
However, that doesn’t include the counter-terror industry and its attached media fuglemen. They always wind up telling the clueless how it demonstrates the growing ingenuity of al Qaeda.
Thoreau at UO had this post on bin Laden worrying about whether or not the people putting together Inspire were lamers, not quite doing the cause a solid, instead just scaring people witless.
Here’s the conclusion: If you’re in your crumbling secret mansion mulling over whether a stupid vanity-published magazine is portraying the right image of the organization, you’ve become the lamer. Maybe still a bit dangerous but not what you once were. Not by a long shot.
And UO makes sport of it, too.
The revival of this clap-trap came courtesy of ProPublica. PP was a grand plan to offer an alternative to crumbling newspaper journalism. In practice, it’s just turned into an outlet where journalists from the big newspapers can go to die.
Less harshly, think of it as a kinda cheap but pleasant pasture for once great but now retired race horses.
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Posted in War On Terror at 8:48 am by George Smith
Killing Osama bin Laden won’t have much effect on the way business is conducted by the US. The war on terror is too valuable to the national security infrastructure and its attached media.
This wire article, which is long, just repeats the same cant about the nature of the threat.
There are always new enemies. People don’t know what they don’t know. al Qaeda is out there. And we’ll never be rid of Michael Isikoff.
One thing to note. Since it’s a forever war, people have now gone through it into retirement. And the names are changing in the counter-terrorism industry.
Now we have someone named Ricky “Ozzie” Nelson — no joke — as a “terror expert” at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. (Click the link.)
Here, from AP, the nut graf:
But two weeks after the world’s most infamous terrorist was buried in the North Arabian Sea, there’s a central, lingering question in the sanctums of intelligence and military planning: Who are the new terrorist leaders causing U.S. counterterrorism officials to lose sleep?
Depressing.
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05.13.11
Posted in War On Terror at 7:45 am by George Smith
Here.
A pair of Taliban suicide bombers attacked paramilitary police recruits eagerly heading home for a break after months of training, killing 80 people Friday in the first act of retaliation for the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
It underscores the inadequacy of Pakistan.
It was possible to be complicit in hiding him and incompetent elsewhere in alleged pursuit at the same time.
The President had to pull the trigger. No one there would have ever done so.
In Pakistan you have a country with an idiotically large defense budget and military.
Even more swollen by US arms deals, it’s an aggravating suck on the masses. It provides little security — jobs programs and grift for the privileged. And it was something there was the possibility we would have had to destroy if things had gone wrong in the raid.
If, for instance, the US were like Pakistan, you could imagine it as a place still with the largest military in the world. But Montana and the Dakotas would be hideouts for a small semi-professional insurgent army fond of killing the neighbors in fits of pique, with an occasional trip to the port of Seattle thrown in on the side.
The idea of shooting down F-16’s we’d just sold them should have turned stomachs and brought about some rational action. It hasn’t.
“The bombers blew themselves up in Shabqadar at the main gate of the facility for the Frontier Constabulary, a poorly equipped but front-line force in the battle against al-Qaida and allied Islamist groups like the Pakistani Taliban close to the Afghan border,” the story reads.
“Like other branches of Pakistan’s security forces, it has received U.S. funding to try to sharpen its skills.”
After almost ten years, a truly independent oversight committee would have to firmly say: Good example of entrenched failure.
And so bin Laden has had a measure of his revenge, in a place where,
a couple months from now, it will be hard to separate from all the other subsequent miseries. The al Qaeda men will continue, if they can, a campaign in futility, taking it out on the locals and diminishing their numbers further, turning more people against them.
But they won’t be here.
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05.12.11
Posted in Phlogiston, War On Terror at 6:29 pm by George Smith
More nose gold from the fall of Osama bin Laden, jihadis are angry. In slow motion, apparently, because it takes awhile for the private sector industry devoted to translating their chat boards to deliver the goods.
It is said:
From Morocco to the foothills of the Himalayas, the call for revenge echoes across the internet. Online forums associated with al Qaeda overflow with eulogies for Osama bin Laden, and with declarations that global jihad will continue. Even Facebook groups have emerged to mourn the demise of the world’s most wanted man.
There have also been calls in jihadist forums for al Qaeda to revive its experiments with weapons of mass destruction. The SITE Institute translated one such appeal on the Shumukh al-Islam forum: “We want to manufacture soman, ricin, mustard gas and VX nerve gas,” it declared. But there have also been calls for more basic attacks. “Go out at night in a targeted infidel compound with thirty canisters and a phone,” read one.
Old news. Wishing for ricin and poison gases doesn’t make it so. Neither do Internet recipes.
SITE Institute, in case you have forgotten, has been translating no account jihadi texts for a decade. Unlike the price of barrels of oil, the value has depreciated quite a bit, only enough to finance a small office now, maybe.
Readers note: “Treasure trove” used once in connection with the worldly refuse of Osama bin Laden.
What can jihadis do — right away — now that the ol’ man is dead? What’s suitable for the next chapter, The Revenge of Osama bin Laden.
Hmmm.
A few months ago Inspire recommended running over Americans with pickup trucks.
Random shootings are always an option.
Further down the scale in terms of violence but easier to do if you’re really strapped for resources:
Keying nice-looking automobiles.
Urinating in stairwells. With summer coming on, that gets distasteful fast.
Putting fifty cents in the newspaper kiosk and taking all of them out, instead of just one. Do it when people are looking, too!
Shouting “Fire! Die infidels!” in the theatre during the showing of a summer blockbuster.
And last but not least, there’s the most excellent trick of defecating in a paper bag and setting it on fire on somebody’s porch. Be sure to videotape and upload to YouTube.
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