ISIS Has 24 Hour Tech Savvy Jihad Help Desk

Using the Darkweb is not a new weapon for jihad cells, DARPA has been working the ISIS hidden internet world for quite some time, to what success is undetermined.

ISIS Has Help Desk for Terrorists Staffed Around the Clock

NBC News has learned that ISIS is using a web-savvy new tactic to expand its global operational footprint — a 24-hour Jihadi Help Desk to help its foot soldiers spread its message worldwide, recruit followers and launch more attacks on foreign soil.

Counterterrorism analysts affiliated with the U.S. Army tell NBC News that the ISIS help desk, manned by a half-dozen senior operatives around the clock, was established with the express purpose of helping would-be jihadists use encryption and other secure communications in order to evade detection by law enforcement and intelligence authorities.

The relatively new development — which law enforcement and intel officials say has ramped up over the past year — is alarming because it allows potentially thousands of ISIS followers to move about and plan operations without any hint of activity showing up in their massive collection of signals intelligence.

Authorities are now homing in on the terror group’s growing cyber capabilities after attacks in Paris, Egypt and elsewhere for which ISIS has claimed credit.

“They’ve developed a series of different platforms in which they can train one another on digital security to avoid intelligence and law enforcement agencies for the explicit purpose of recruitment, propaganda and operational planning,” said Aaron F. Brantly, a counterterrorism analyst at the Combating Terrorism Center, an independent research organization at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Brantly was the lead author of a CTC report on the Islamic State’s use of secure communications, based on hundreds of hours of observation of how the Jihadi Help Desk operates.

“They answer questions from the technically mundane to the technically savvy to elevate the entire jihadi community to engage in global terror,” Brantly said in an interview Monday. “Clearly this enables them to communicate and engage in operations beyond what used to happen, and in a much more expeditious manner. They are now operating at the speed of cyberspace rather than the speed of person-to-person communications.”

The existence of the Jihadi Help Desk has raised alarm bells in Washington and within the global counterterrorism community because it appears to be allowing a far wider web of militants to network with each other and plot attacks. A senior European counterterrorism official said that concerns about the recent development are especially serious in Europe, where ISIS operatives are believed to be plotting major attacks, some of them with direct assistance from ISIS headquarters in Syria.

At a congressional hearing in October, FBI Director James Comey said the FBI is extremely concerned about ISIS’ increasing ability to “go dark.” Comey told the House Judiciary Committee that the U.S. is ” confronting the explosion of terrorist propaganda and training on the Internet.”

“While some of the contacts between groups like ISIL and potential recruits occur in publicly accessible social networking sites,” said Comey, “others take place via encrypted private messaging platforms. As a result, the FBI and all law enforcement organizations must understand the latest communication tools and position ourselves to identify and prevent terror attacks in the homeland.”

Nick Rasmussen, director of the U.S. government’s multiagency National Counterterrorism Center, said in an interview with the Combating Terrorism Center’s in-house publication that the “agile use of new means of communicating, including ways which they understand are beyond our ability to collect,” is one of his greatest concerns when it comes to ISIS and other terrorist groups.

Brantly described the Jihadi Help Desk as “a fairly large, robust community” that is anchored by at least five or six core members who are technical experts with at least collegiate or masters level training in information technology. There are layers of other associates, living all around the world, who allow the service to operate — and respond to questions — at any time of the day or night. CTC researchers have spent a year or so monitoring the help desk — and its senior operatives — via online forums, social media and other means.

“You can kind of get a sense of where they are by when they say they are signing off to participate in the [Muslim] call to prayer,” which traditionally occurs at five specific times a day, Brantly said. “They are very decentralized. They are operating in virtually every region of the world.”

The help desk workers closely track all of the many new kinds of security software and encryption as they come online, and produce materials to train others in how to use them. The CTC has obtained more than 300 pages of documents showing the help desk is training everyone from novice militants to the most experienced jihadists in digital operational security.

ISIS also distributes the tutorials through Twitter and other social media, taking pains to link to versions of it that can be downloaded even after their social media sites are shut down.

And once the help desk operatives develop personal connections with people, ISIS then contacts them to engage them in actual operational planning — including recruiting, fundraising and potentially attacks.

“They will engage in encrypted person-to-person communications, and these are extremely hard to break into from a cryptographic perspective,” Brantly said.

“They also post YouTube Videos, going step by step over how to use these technologies,” Brantly said. “Imagine you have a problem and need to solve it and go to YouTube; they have essentially established the same mechanism [for terrorism].”

 

 

Revenue Source for ISIS, a New Target Oil

MarketPlace: France bombed ISIS targets in Syria on Sunday —in retaliation for Friday’s terror attacks in Paris —including a training camp and an ammunition depot, according to the French Defense Ministry. The next day, the United States targeted 116 trucks ISIS had been using to transport oil. The latter strike, reportedly planned before the Paris attacks, is an attempt to stymie a source of funding for the extremist group.

ISIS derives most of its funds from activities inside the territories it now controls, said Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a senior fellow with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. That’s different from, say, Al Qaeda, which has historically relied on donations from outside sources.

“When they control a territory that’s approximately the size of Great Britain, that creates a great deal of ability to get internal sources of revenue, ranging from natural resources, to antiquities they control, to taxation on their population,” he said.

It’s hard to say just how much funding ISIS gets from each source. Gartenstein-Ross estimates that the largest piece of the pie comes from taxing the people in its territories.

The group also benefits from the sale of antiquities from sites it loots.

“We’re really talking about small items, so tablets or seals,” said Howard Shatz, a senior economist at the Rand Corporation. “You can put those in your pocket, you can put them in a suitcase.”

Shatz said middlemen can get the goods to private buyers or lower-tier auction houses.

Meanwhile, oil is often transported across long-standing smuggling routes and mixed with oil from other sources so it can’t be traced, said Matthew Levitt, director of the Stein Program on Counterterrorism & Intelligence at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

The group makes use of hidden compartments in trucks as well as hoses to transport oil across borders, often into southern Turkey.

Still, other funding comes from ransoms demanded for kidnap victims.

“The vast majority of this money is going to run their state, because that’s their biggest expense by far,” said Levitt. “But they have a lot of money. If they want to be able to peel off a little bit for terrorism, they can do a tremendous amount of damage.”

While funding sources for the Paris attack are not yet clear, Levitt said similar attacks typically cost in the thousands or tens of thousands of dollars and are often funded by criminal activity near the target.

Targeting revenue sources is but one method to ‘contain’ Islamic State.

MilitaryTimes: In the first wave of U.S. airstrikes since the Paris attacks, A-10 Thunderbolt ground attack aircraft and AC-130 gunships raked a convoy of more than 100 ISIS oil tanker trucks in Syria in a stepped-up effort to cut off a main source of terror funding, the Pentagon said Monday.

The Navy also announced that the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman and its battle group had departed Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia on a seven-month deployment to the Mideast to plug a gap in the U.S. air arm that has existed since the carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt left the region in September.

Pentagon officials also said that the French carrier Charles de Gaulle was also expected to leave port soon and head to the region to bolster coalition air assets with the 11 Rafale and 9 Super Étendard fighters aboard.

The oil convoy attack and the carrier deployment signaled the U.S. intent to intensify airstrikes while increasing efforts to share intelligence with allies in the aftermath of the Paris carnage last Friday that killed at least 129, but President Obama insisted that there would be no fundamental changes in strategy.

“We have the right strategy and we’re going to see it through,” Obama said at a news conference at an economic summit in Turkey before heading to the Philippines and Malaysia for summit meetings there.

The president announced an agreement between the United States and France to share more intelligence information to prevent future terror attacks and refine airstrike targeting in Iraq and Syria.

The agreement would “allow our personnel to pass threat information, including on ISIL, to our French partners even more quickly and more often,” Obama said.

The U.S. will increase airstrikes and boost support for local forces fighting ISIS in Iraq and Syria but would continue to avoid “boots on the ground” combat, he said.

“What I do not do is take actions either because it is going to work politically or it is going to somehow, in the abstract, make America look tough or make me look tough,” Obama said.

Sending U.S. ground troop into Syria and Iraq “would be a mistake, not because our military could not march into Mosul or Raqqa or Ramadi and temporarily clear out ISIL, but because we would see a repetition of what we’ve seen before” in the invasion of Iraq in 2003, he said, referring to another term for ISIS.

Lasting victory over terrorists and insurgents requires local forces and populations to take control with U.S. support, Obama said — “unless we’re prepared to have a permanent occupation of these countries,” he said.

Obama was adamant in rejecting the calls by Republican presidential candidates and congressional leaders to scrap plans to admit at least 10,000 Syrian refugees to the U.S. for fear that terrorists would slip in among them.

“The people who are fleeing Syria are the most harmed by terrorism — they are the most vulnerable as a consequence of civil war and strife,” he said. “We do not close our hearts to these victims of such violence and somehow start equating the issue of refugees with the issue of terrorism.”

In response, Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, said Obama’s remarks at a news conference were defeatist.  “Never before have I seen an American president project such weakness on the global stage,” Preibus said.

With the exceptions of Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, and former Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pennsylvania, the Republican presidential candidates have also stopped short of recommending U.S. “boots on the ground” to counter the Islamic State.

At a Pentagon briefing, Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, said the force posture of the U.S. had not altered since the Paris attacks but “clearly, we are very interested in doing everything we can” to stop ISIS.

Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said that Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper had approved plans to “bolster our intelligence sharing” with France to include specifics on “operational planning.”

Carter and Clapper “provided new instructions that will enable the U.S. military to more easily share operational planning information and intelligence with our French counterparts on a range of shared challenges.”

The first fruits of the intelligence sharing were seen Saturday when French warplanes, using airbases in Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, conducted airstrikes on the self-proclaimed ISIS capital of Raqqa in northwestern Syria.

Davis said that the French “nominated” the targets from intelligence supplied by the U.S. “This was something they were very interested in doing” following what happened in Parks, he said.

The attack on the tanker truck convoy at Abu Kamal was part of a “broader operation specifically to target ISIL oil revenues,” Davis said.

“ISIL is stealing oil from the people of Iraq and Syria” at a rate estimated by the Treasury Department at $1 million daily, Davis said. By hitting ISIS-controlled oil facilities and distribution networks, “We’re disrupting a significant source of funding” for terror activities, he said.

Davis said the warplanes dropped leaflets warning of the convoy attack before the strike commenced to allow truck drivers who may not have been allied with ISIS to escape.

“It is a balancing act,” he said of the strikes on oil facilities. The U.S. wanted to cut off the funding the al-Qaeda-inspired group gets from oil sales while leaving behind the basic infrastructure for a future democratic Syria.

Davis echoed the remarks last week at a Pentagon briefing from Baghdad by Army Col. Steve Warren, a spokesman for Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve.

Warren said that two-thirds of the ISIS oil revenues come from the eastern Syrian region near the city of Deir ez-Zor, which has been a main focus of U.S. airstrikes.

“Our intent is to shut those oil facilities down completely,” he said. “We’ve done a very comprehensive analysis of these facilities to determine which pieces of the facility we can strike that will shut that facility down for a fairly extended period of time.

“Again, we have to be cognizant that there will be a time after the war — the war will end,” he added. “So we don’t want to completely and utterly destroy these facilities to where they’re irreparable.”

The campaign against ISIS oil facilities has been named “Operation Tidal Wave II.” The original Operation Tidal Wave was the disastrous raid in August of 1943 by B-24 Liberator bombers on the Ploiești, Romania, oil facilities that were supplying Nazi Germany.

Fifty-three aircraft and 660 crew members were lost, and the U.S. military later concluded that the raid had little or no effect on oil production.

Lisbon Treaty and Confirmed Bomb on Russian Plane

BBC: France has mobilised 115,000 security personnel in the wake of Friday’s Paris attacks by Islamist militants, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve has said.

Mr Cazeneuve said 128 more raids on suspected militants were carried out. French air strikes also hit Islamic State in Syria overnight.

IS has said it carried out the attacks on bars, restaurants, a concert hall and a stadium in which 129 people died.

A huge manhunt is under way for one of the suspects, Salah Abdeslam.

He is believed to have fled across the border to his native Belgium. Belgian police have released more pictures of the wanted man. More here including recent facts, timeline and target locations.

***

John Kerry is in Europe working as a mediator and is guiding discussions on Europe’s offensive measures. Belgium is on high alert as is the UK but Germany appears to be passive. France has deployed a carrier group and has launched a second night of sorties, striking 19 targets and provided by U.S. intel sources. Meanwhile, officials have confirmed there was a bomb on board the Russian commercial aircraft that was brought down over the Sinai by the Islamic State faction in that province. The bomb was 1.5 kilos of TNT, which is more than what brought down PanAm flight 103 over Lockerbie. Russia has offered a $50 million dollar reward and the Egyptian security services have detained 2 airport suspects.

Meanwhile, what is on tap with Europe is a new security discussion not under NATO but rather the European Union Lisbon Treaty which John Kerry is participating.

BRUSSELS—Defense ministers gathered in Brussels Tuesday to discuss a French decision to invoke the mutual defense clause of the European Union’s Lisbon treaty.

The clause of the Lisbon Treaty has never been invoked, pushing the European Union into new territory.

French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian declined to speak as he entered the European Union Council building Tuesday.

Two French officials said that the EU treaty provision, 42-7, was being invoked to try to prod the union to move forward on border control issues and increased intelligence sharing.

French officials said there needs to be agreement on stronger background and passenger name record checks on the European Union’s external borders — something that EU member states have been pressing for well over a year. The French also want more cooperation on illegal arms sales within Europe.

“Cooperation has not moved forward for years,” said a French official. “We are asking the EU to move forward on a number of issues that have been stuck for years,” said a French official..

Another French official said the use of the EU treaty could also help prompt better, and faster, intelligence sharing within the union.

French officials don’t want to invoke the NATO treaty, arguing the current coalition is a more nimble organization with which to strike at Islamic State targets.

While French requests carry great weight within the European Union, it isn’t clear whether the move will be able to resolve the disagreements over border control or other issues.

Measures to increase passenger name record screening have so far been blocked because of resistance to the measures in the European Parliament, forcing rounds of negotiations between capitals, lawmakers and the EU’s executive, the European Commission.

There have also been frequent calls since the migrant crisis began to tighten external border controls but apart from Hungary’s move to build fences on its border and a greater effort to register people entering the bloc in Italy and Greece there has been limited progress.

In a news conference late afternoon Monday, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said it was too early to react to the French request, which she said she would discuss Tuesday morning with Mr. Le Drian.

“Obviously we will take a careful look at that politically with the French authorities first of all, with the rest of the European institutions including the legal services and obviously we’ll come up with a follow up to that,” Ms. Mogherini said. “Obviously we have started to work on this.”

On Tuesday, most defense ministers declined to comment on the proposal in advance of the French presentation, but expressed support for France in the wake of the terrorist attacks.

“We will defend our security, our freedom, our way of living and we will not be intimidated,” said Jeanine Hennis- Plasschaert, the minister of defense for the Netherlands.

 

 

 

POTUS at G20 Presser, an Iranian Willing Accomplice

Barack Obama missed several moments that could and should have been Reagan moments directly after the Paris attacks. Rather than get on Air Force 1 and fly to Turkey for the G20 Summit, Obama should have publically and via telephone to the world leaders, forget Turkey, we are all going to Paris to stand with France in the face of Islamic State. He should have said we have no fear, we don’t need security detail, as a global coalition against evil, we stand with Paris to defeat a common enemy….imagine the head that would have turned if they heard that. Well one can dream eh? Rather, Obama gave what is probably his worst presser during his entire presidency. Instead of standing with France, he called the attacks a ‘setback’.

The media asked Barack Obama questions, which were themselves begging him to lead the world, to use our power, our military to equalize the world again, but Obama replied his strategy was best. He insulted those who asked the questions and those who challenged his posture. He even referred to them as ‘popping off’. The media remains shocked at Obama’s responses.

Obama stressed that going after ISIS in Iraq and Syria will help reduce the threat from foreign fighters, while acknowledging it “will not be enough to defeat ISIL in Syria and Iraq alone.”

Obama also defended the current strategy — which involves airstrikes and a limited number of military advisers on the ground.

“There will be an intensification of the strategy that we’ve put forward,” he said. “But the strategy that we are putting forward is the strategy that ultimately is going to work.”

He said, “It will take time.” And he insisted that the U.S. has not “underestimated” the ISIS threat.

“ISIL leaders will have no safe haven anywhere,” Obama vowed.

 

 

Obama is a willing accomplice of Iran and is trapped by Iran. Obama has set the table for Iran and the Shiites to control all Sunni territory.

ForeignAffairs: The choice seems simple. On one side are regally attired mullahs, the type that have protected Persia’s pre-Islamic treasures and even tweet in English. On the other side is the Islamic State (ISIS), with its conquest, rape, and pillage. Muhammad-Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, has made the pitch better than anyone. “The menace we’re facing—and I say we, because no one is spared—is embodied by the hooded men who are ravaging the cradle of civilization,” he warned, dangling out the possibility of rapprochement between Washington and Tehran against ISIS.

Beneath such expressions of concern, however, is a more cynical strategy. Iran is using ISIS’ ascendance in the Middle East to consolidate its power. The country is now the key ally keeping Iraq’s Shiites and the Alawite Bashar al-Assad regime standing against well-armed and tenacious Sunni jihadists. In those battles, Tehran will likely do just enough to make sure the Sunnis don’t conquer the Shia portions of Iraq and Assad’s enclave in Syria, but no more. Meanwhile, in ISIS’ wake, Tehran will strengthen its own radical Shia militias.

The result could be a permanent destabilization of the Arab heartland. That would be a major victory for the Islamic Republic, which has seen its fortunes rise as Egypt and Turkey have become mired in crises and as Saudi Arabia, Iran’s one remaining serious Sunni rival, has gotten bogged down in a war in Yemen.

 

Dabiq, Paris and Attackers Identified

 

Embedded image permalink
Dabiq #7  PJMedia: On February 12, 2015, the Islamic State (ISIS) released the seventh issue of its English-language magazine Dabiq. The 83-page issue celebrates the recent attacks in Paris, justifies the burning of the Jordanian pilot, and calls for Muslims in the West to join ISIS, among other topics discussed. It also includes interviews with Hayat Boumeddiene, the wife of Paris kosher supermarket attacker Amedy Coulibaly, and with Belgian ISIS fighter Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the leader of the Verviers cell that planned major attacks in Belgium. Much more here.
Embedded image permalink Images of the moment suspect in Paris attacks was captured.

MiddleEastEye: French prosecutors said seven people carried out the attacks in Paris on Friday, all of whom were either killed by police or killed themselves with suicide vests. Meanwhile, French police are hunting with Belgian police for a suspected “sleeper cell” linked to the attacks.

Authorities have released the identities – or assumed identifies – of five thought to be directly involved in the Paris attacks, and two others believed to have either planned or aided them. Here are the details and backgrounds of those known so far:

Alleged mastermind – Abdelhamid Abaaoud

A French official told the AP news agency on Monday that Abaaoud is a Belgian and the suspected mastermind of the Paris attacks. They released few details, but also linked him to an an attempted gun attack on a Amsterdam-Brussels-Paris train on 21 August, which was thwarted by passengers. RTL radio in France reported that the 27-year-old is of Moroccan origin and “one of the most active Isis executioners” in Syria. He was interviewed in the Islamic State (IS) English-language propaganda magazine Dabiq under the nom de guerre, Abu Umar al-Baljiki.

Bataclan attacker – Samy Amimour

Described by prosecutors as a 28-year-old Frenchman. Amimour was one of three people who attacked the Bataclan concert venue, with 89 people confirmed dead. Prosecutors said Amimour had been charged in a terrorism investigation in 2012, was placed under judicial supervision and was the subject of an international arrest warrant.

Amimour was reported as having lived in the north-eastern suburb of Drancy.

Prosecutors said Amimour was “known to anti-terrorist investigators for being charged on October 19, 2012 for conspiracy to commit terrorism” over a foiled attack in Yemen. He violated his judicial supervision in 2013, prompting judges to issue an international arrest warrant. His family told AFP, in an interview before Friday’s attacks in Paris took place, that he had gone to Syria in 2013.

Bataclan attacker – Ismael Omar Mostefai

The 29-year-old French national was identified by French officials by DNA from a severed fingertip. Mostefi had a record of petty crime in France and had been identified by police as “radicalised”. Turkey on Monday said that they had warned France on two occasions about Mostefi’s activities.

He was reported to have been raised in Courcouronnes in Essonne, 25km south of Paris. His parents, or at least his father, is believed to have been of Algerian descent and his family now lives in the small town of Romilly-sur-Seine, a small town 130km east of Paris.

Mostefi’s 34-year-old brother contacted police on his own initiative before being taken into custody, along with his father. The father’s home in Romilly was searched, along with his brother’s home in nearby Bondoufle.

Stade de France bomber – Ahmad al-Mohammad

A suicide bomber, who blew himself up outside the Stade de France stadium, was found with a Syrian passport with the name Ahmad al-Mohammad, a 25-year-old born in Idlib. The prosecutor’s office says fingerprints from the attacker match the passport, which passed through Greece in October. Greece says he was one of two attackers who passed through their territory in the months before the attack. Serbia yesterday said the passport was also registered at the Presevo border crossing on 7 October, where he formally sought asylum.

Whether Mohammad is the real name of the attacker remains in doubt, however. The passport had been reported fake in the days after the attacks in Paris, and there is a thriving trade in the Middle East for such items. Prosecutors in France on Monday said the name “remained to be verified”.

Stade de France bomber – Bilal Hadfi 

Identified by investigation insiders as a 20-year-old French national who had been living in Belgium. He is reported to have fought for the Islamic State (IS) in Syria.

Restaurant attacker – Brahim Abdeslam

Officials identified Abdelslam as an attacker who blew himself up near a cafe on the Boulevard Voltaire. He was described as a French national and the brother of Salah Abdelslam, who is the subject of an arrest warrant over the Paris attacks.

Alleged fixer – Salah Abdelslam

Abdelslam, a 26-year-old born in Brussels, was arrested late Monday morning. Authorities said Abdeslam rented a Volkswagen Polo that carried attackers to the Bataclan concert venue. French officials told the AP news agency on Saturday that police had questioned and released him early in the day after stopping a car carrying three men near the Belgian border. An arrest warrant, describing Abdelslam as armed and dangerous, had been issued hours before.