Al-Qaida’s Secret Weapon: Computers

Communication by terrorists relies on laptops and broadband


by Robert Windrem
NBC News
April 19, 2001
http://www.intellnet.org/news/2002/04/19/9006-1.html


NEW YORK, April 18 - Al-Qaida's apparent use of computers and inexpensive editing software to put together videotapes that emerged this week came as no surprise to U.S. intelligence officials, who told NBC News that laptops and high-speed Internet access had become terrorists' primary tools for communicating over the past several years.

"You don't need a production studio to make a video like this," a senior U.S. official said. "All you need is the mind of a 15-year-old kid. The software is all out there, ready to buy."

Al-Qaida has used a variety of methods to communicate, most of them relying on easy access provided by combining new technologies like Internet-based e-mail with satellite telephones.

U.S. officials said there were indications that al-Qaida was still able to communicate, through most of those methods, not just for planning attacks but also for tactical communications during the most heated battles.

Some officials see an irony in al-Qaida's exploitation of Internet and security technology developed by U.S. and other Western companies, all of it relying on laptop computers.

For example, al-Qaida couriers deliver floppy disks or Zip disks with encrypted data to third parties, who in turn take it to a cell planning a attack. The data are scrambled by common commercial encryption programs like PGP (Pretty Good Privacy), which can be downloaded for free, and then transferred to the disks.

Operatives also use free Internet-based e-mail services to communicate anywhere there is a connection to the World Wide Web, often using Internet cafes and public libraries to log in.

U.S. officials confirmed that the hijackers who carried out the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States used both Yahoo! Mail and MSN's Hotmail to communicate with one another and with higher-level commanders. The only suspect in custody, Zacarias Moussaoui, used a Hotmail account -pilotz123@hotmail.com - to set up his flight school training, U.S. officials said.

Internet-based e-mail is particularly useful for groups that wish to remain clandestine:

Accounts are free and easy to set up, requiring users to divulge little personal information.

Storage of materials on the Web means messages do not even have to be sent - one person can simply store a draft of the message to be read by a second person using the same password.

Most providers of Internet-based e-mail do not keep extensive backups, dumping archived messages within weeks.

Al-Qaida has also used Internet-based instant messaging programs, which permit real-time text communications as well as file transfers. Yahoo!, MSN and other services, both domestic and foreign, provide such service, which was pioneered by ICQ - an Israeli company.

Al-Qaida has even used chat rooms - specifically sports chat rooms - to communicate with people who were told in advance to watch for coded messages. Members would then talk back and forth in code.

SATELLITE COMMUNICATIONS

Especially helpful to al-Qaida are encrypted satellite telephones, which it uses for both voice and data traffic, according to testimony in the trial of four men who were convicted of conspiracy in the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.

Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden's own telephone, a Compact M model, was bought from O'Gara Satellite Networks in Deer Park, N.Y., according to testimony in the trial. At one point, al-Qaida added encryption.

Al-Qaida commanders used Internet-based e-mail like Hotmail to communicate with one other during Operation Anaconda, the U.S.-led coalition's assault last month on Taliban and al-Qaida forces in eastern Afghanistan. They simply hooked up their laptops to their satellite phones and sent messages back and forth.

In addition, both the embassy bombers and the Sept. 11 hijackers used a "terrorist switchboard" in Yemen to relay satellite phone messages to and from al-Qaida commanders.

Another Al-Qaida tool is steganography, the science of hiding messages inside audio, video and picture files. Using software that costs as little as $40, a person can encrypt a message and hide it in unused or insignificant areas of data in another file. A simple password is all that is needed to unlock the hidden file at the other end.

U.S. HAD INDICATIONS

Much of what the United States knew about al-Qaida's operations before Sept. 11 came from laptop computers seized by law enforcement and intelligence agencies overseas. Little of those efforts have become public, but NBC News has obtained a transcript of an e-mail message sent a year before the August 1998 embassy bombings.

In the message, Fazul Mohammed, believed to be the communications chief of the al-Qaida cell in Nairobi, Kenya, and possibly the mastermind of the bombings, describes security problems.

At one point, Mohammed apologizes for printing out documents and sending hard copies. "I know we had agreed to correspond with each other by discs," he writes.

At another point, Mohammed asks that his contact use either e-mail or fax to communicate and notes how critical electronic communications are to decision-making.

"We ask you to keep in touch with us through the Internet from Pakistan, as we get a lot of information now about the Shayk [bin Laden] from that network. ... Or you can follow Abd al-Sabburk's example such as when he faxed his family from the border village next to you.

"We need to hear your good words and we are afraid to be in the dark and from taking any unapproved plans domestically since we do not have the necessary expertise regarding such difficult decisions; decisions which only you can undertake."

MAJOR NETWORK IN AFRICA

Bin Laden had a more robust infrastructure before the embassy bombings in East Africa. Kenyan authorities found a communications center at a villa rented by Mohammed in a wealthy Nairobi suburb called Runda. There, officials said, was a satellite telephone hook-up.

A few days after the embassy bombings, U.S. officials heard bin Laden lieutenants talking about the success of their efforts over satellite phones from Pakistan, a discovery later reported by The Washington Post. That apparently spooked bin Laden. Bin Laden has been quoted as saying he no longer used his phone out of fear that the National Security Agency would be able to track the signal and target him.

However, much of the gear was taken out of Kenya in the days before the bombing and moved to Afghanistan, according to Kenyan authorities quoted in the Nairobi Daily Nation.

The United States first learned the value of the laptop to al-Qaida in 1995, when a Toshiba Tecra belonging to Ramzi Yousef, convicted in the first World Trade Center bombing, in 1993, was seized in Manila after a fire alerted police to a bomb factory.

In little-noticed congressional testimony in 1998, Dale Watson, chief of the FBI's international terrorism section at the time, described just how important Yousef's laptop was to uncovering a planned attack that, if successful, would have killed as many people as were killed Sept. 11.

"By decrypting Yousef's computer files, investigators uncovered the details of a plot to destroy numerous U.S. air carriers in a simultaneous operation," Watson said.

"Code-named 'BOJINKA,' the plot involved using a timing device made from an altered Databank watch. Flight schedules and a decrypted letter found on the computer indicated that five participants were to simultaneously plant devices on flights to the United States. After the bombings, four of the participants were to return to Karachi, Pakistan. The fifth was to return to Doha, Qatar."

Robert Windrem is an NBC News investigative producer based in New York.

 

© 2002 MSNBC

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