Hacker’s mother says Anonymous and her son were trying to start “Islamic Takeover”

If ever you wondered if there good enough reason for Op Sabu, remember that there are plenty of bad people out there that would take advantage of misguided young people in a heartbeat.

While in the end I think it will surface that Jeremy Hammond had actually been in contact with FBI agents, as opposed to Louis Farrakhan, there is still something to be taken from this. If you haven’t read John Ransom’s article and the open letter that Ruth Collins (Jeremy Hammond’s mother) published in it, I highly suggest it.  http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/johnransom/2012/03/16/hacktivists_mom_has_a_few_questions_for_anonymous/page/full/

Regardless of if it was an agent or not, it underscores the threat that Anonymous poses. “Have talent (some more than others) insert cause here.” Young highly intelligent twenty somethings that are still so impressionable that you would have a young white hacker wanting to work for a black supremacy group.

An army of hackers willing to take up any cause, with such a radically left of center position, presents a far larger danger than anyone seems to want to acknowledge. As sad as it is, a kid like this could probably be convinced that he was working with Bin Laden and that the whole death thing was a massive disinformation campaign. They want to have an impact but lack the discipline or temperament to direct that desire.

LulzSec and AntiSec were both shown to be opportunity based attackers. While Op Sabu sparks a few questions about the sources of those opportunities, it has no impact on the others willingness to participate in anything. What’s worse is that their willingness is not always exclusively limited to cyber space. Sooner or later, someone will do something stupid.

Op Sabu wasn’t only a case study in information operations. It was also a proof of concept attack  that exposes the weakness of the Anonymous collective. Instead of the once majestic and mysterious collective, now it is being shown to be an army of mindless morons. Creative enough to find exploits and write the occasional piece of code, but not rich enough in character to oppose being used. In the end it’s about ego. Anything to get famous in the Social Media era.

Hopefully some of the members have had enough. It is time to jump ship and disassociate with Anonymous. The collective is broken beyond repair. It is so infiltrated and inundated with law enforcement, bad guys, teenage wanna-be’s, freaks, kids, skids, and dorks, that it has lost both its identity and value to anyone of skill, discipline, honor, or integrity.  As available as the internet is in these days, you’d think that a group that prides itself on security consciousness, would have already figured out the problem.

The unsolvable problem with Anonymous is that it is anonymous. Zero authentication.  I would think that a collective of hackers wouldn’t pride itself on size. One skilled hacker is worth a thousand moron skiddies.  I would think that a collective like that would find it wiser to go the exact opposite direction. Keep the circles small, and eliminate all anonymity completely within the circles. With the security technology available today, from biometrics to OSINT, it is quite possible to verify with a high degree of confidence who the fuck you are talking to. I recommend taking advantage of that.  The idea of one massive collective is reminiscent of the origins of computers. Like a mainframe that everyone connects to. Think more like a cloud structure.

Either way, Anonymous has shown an unstoppable pattern of being easily influenced, manipulated, humiliated, and basically molested.  You can’t trust anyone you’re talking to, and every thing that’s said is on the FBI’s record books.

The system is archaic and compromised. It’s time for those in Anonymous that considers them self to be worth a shit to let the wreckage go. Sometimes you gotta scrap the whole thing and start over based on the things you learned along the way.

Let it go. It’s FUBAR.

Op Sabu: A case study in information warfare : A look at Beast 1333

Tactics flow from a superior position.  –  Bobby Fischer

There are so many unanswered questions surrounding Op Sabu that it is like the endless puzzle. There’s definitely ethical questions about the length of the leash, but that’s not my department. My department is more a subgroup of the WHY department.  Why did this person or organization do this or that? What was the intended gain for each action.

y= (Method + Gain) – deception

Why allow Stratfor?  Why SOCA? Why OpCartel? Why Arizona Law enforcement, or 90k military emails?

High prices to pay, but nothing is exactly as it appears to be, and from the information I have been able to gather so far, these were not reckless expenditures. These decisions were based on a calculated algorithm designed to either achieve a desired result or establish credibility with a targeted individual, group, or organization. Each individual action will need to be analyzed for it’s potential value and it’s sensitivity to other actions.  So far, it looks like the FBI got a great deal.

For today’s exercise we will be asking the question: Why Beast1333?

Agent Sabu tweeeted endlessly about all kinds of things. Almost like there were more than one of him taking shifts. One that has always caught my eye was his fevered promotion of the rapper Beast 1333. At first I though it was purely because Beast 1333’s lyrics are controversial anti-government, anti-establishment, and have an intended audience outside the mainstream. What really got me interested, however, was when he began to promote free downloadable music files left and right.

What was obvious at the time is that Sabu had begun to try to use his influence on a larger scale. For all their bluster the LulzBoat was rowboat, and there were ocean liners to be had. Like the USS AntiSec.

I believe that the strategy used by the FBI was pretty complex. Like using law enforcement data dumps to draw in others who were trying to breach US law enforcement systems. Beast 1333 was the bridge in to the domestic social radical side of things. People within the U.S. that are anti-government, anti-capitalist, and are on the streets using their music as a vehicle to deliver their message. Classic vendor style information warfare back in the old days. During the 1960’s and early 70’s using music to send social or political messages was a normal occurrence.

At this point I have no real reason to doubt his credibility or suspect that he is a another FBI run entity. He is a self described Emcee, Activist who when asked what he thought about the FBI promoting him so heavily said “Thanks for the fans”. Running back through his timeline he’s too long in the game to be an FBI creation, and the odds of his willing cooperation are next to zero. However that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have the same value.

Beast 1333 also told me “I’m a rapper, not a hacker”, which is a statement that I firmly believe him on. However, he does have a few websites and a couple of social media accounts that could be of value. First, Monitoring his sites and accounts against the number and frequency of @AnonymouSabu promotions would allow you to be able to gauge the impact of your asset’s influence. There is a tremendous amount of value in that. Second it gets you a way in. Beast 1333 was an easy choice. Social media literate, and far enough out on the popularity bubble to dive on the opportunity for Anonymous’s support. Immortal Technique, who probably has the most credibility in that particular scene, would never have gone for it. Beast 1333 starts to incorporate Anonymous and their phrases into his music, and Anonymous (primarily Sabu, but there are a few others) began to promote and distribute his music.

Freeze frame right there. I love this part.

In exchange for corporate style advertising, the FBI would take care of distribution of all the radical digital media. (The social radical is doing a jingle for the FBI agent on welfare in exchange for FBI server storage space  and an advertisement quota) Wouldn’t be too difficult to mirror the audio files and include an exploit (like a pdf of band pictures, album covers, or maybe even a message from Beast 1333 or even Agent Sabu himself), breaches the computer it is opened on. I know, it sounds crazy.

Almost as crazy as the idea of Anonymous releasing an secure Operating System  that turns out to have been deliberately made less secure.

Which is like wearing a mask screaming that they’ll never take you down, but standing out in front of the police station naked with your drivers license hanging around your neck.

Would it have been possible for the FBI to have mirrored a payload enhanced version of the music (or any other type of file) that could have exploited the users machine? Absolutely. Would they do it? I’ll leave that decision up to you. Did they do it? I honestly don’t know. Beast 1333 was not willing to answer any questions about how the music was distributed, or provide the original source files or their corresponding file hashes. We don’t know if Beast 1333 knew Sabu was hosting his songs and linking to the mirrors, or if he didn’t. Even if he didn’t, would he care? It appears that he trusted Sabu at the time, and had more than just minimal contact with him. However I do not believe that Beast 1333 ever suspected that Sabu was working for the FBI. I think Beast 1333 was just an unwitting tool, like many others were, for Agent Sabu.

I don’t know if the FBI is monitoring Beast 1333’s social media accounts, website, or downloads. I don’t know if they’ve even interviewed him. What I do know is that they are most definitely interested in him. What their interest is could be many different things or a mixture of several. What stands out is the type of audience that is selected and the possible different scenarios involved with media distribution. The amount and frequency of original tweets (not retweets) from Sabu’s account is far too many and often not to be for a specific purpose. Looking over the logs a a whole it’s frequency leads me to believe that it was third or fourth on the priority list. This was also right around the time that the @AnonymouSabu twitter logo changed to a Hamas flag. It is possible that the association was built and promoted to establish credibility as being sympathetic to anti- US government, radical, social movements in the hopes he might be approached by a few of them. That is where I suspect the value truly lies. Put Agent Sabu out there like chum and see if any big sharks bite. There are already allegations by Jeremy Hammond’s mother that her son claimed to be “working with Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam, a black supremacist group in Chicago, as a part of his work with Anonymous, to promote an Islamic takeover of the United States”, so the idea of the FBI needing to heavily infiltrate Anonymous and the extremist groups that attempt to use them seems to be a good one. That and more, like an open letter to Anonymous from Jeremy Hammon’s mother, as part of an excellent article by John Ransom that can be viewed here: http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/johnransom/2012/03/16/hacktivists_mom_has_a_few_questions_for_anonymous/page/full/

Either way, the FBI was adamant about it. They wanted the two names associated with each other. When you hear Beast 1333, you think of Sabu. While I don’t expect Beast 1333 to come out and say that it worries him, it definitely should. If I was Beast 1333 (or even Immortal Technique by proximity) I would take a good look at my digital surroundings. The FBI has considerable ability to leverage both information and information technologies to their advantage. How many people are following you on Twitter and how many are really FBI associated people tailing you? I’d look. How many of the other Anonymous members that have been helping Sabu promote you are compromised? Did Sabu ever send you a file or get you to download something? If he did I’d DBAN the machine on the spot. The possibilities are endless. The only certainty is that the FBI was extremely interested in Beast 1333 and wanted others to be too.

Something to ponder:

Is there more than a passing random link between the FBI promoting an anti-US government radical and their almost numerically equal fervent promotion of the Occupy protests?

Op Sabu: A case study in Information Warfare: Initial thoughts

I gotta ask. Is bitch slapping Anonymous considered child abuse?

 

Kick ass. There is really no other way to describe it. The FBI bitch slapped Anonymous in a way that they will not soon forget. That is, if they could ever forget it at all. It’s a story fit for a novel with twists, irony, betrayal, and suspense. Better than anything currently on TV. Unfortunately, at this point I must disregard my total hatred for Sabu. It’s not that I like the dude. I don’t particularly give a shit about Hector either way. Still, I must face that everything that fueled my feelings of disgust toward him was in reality an operational entity that was at odds with everything I am not by nature but by design.

This was a complex, high level, operation that was very well managed. Operational security was efficient, the value of the target was sufficiently exploited, and ol’ Hector seems to have been a handlers dream who almost seems to have enjoyed the irony. He also seems to have had multiple areas in which he had value.

Sabu’s image and following made him the highest value target with regards to infiltrating and manipulating Anonymous. He was popular, had successfully protected his identity, and was both infamous and influential. “All right people, we got the green light on ‘Operation Bitch Slap’. We get to pick one of the LulzSec bunch. Which one will we get the most mileage out of?” In the first half of last year, that would’ve been a stupid question. If you wanted to shatter LulzSec, Sabu was the guy.

Once he agreed to cooperate, bitch slapping LulzSec became almost no fun. Why open hand slap LulzSec when you can backhand to the hacker community as a whole in a way that will have all the little hackers and skiddies shitting their pants as long as Anonymous exists? I would suspect that this revelation has ratcheted up the paranoia and suspicion levels around the IRC channels a touch. If Sabu was an informant, with everything he did, anyone could be an informant. At it’s core Anonymous was an organization that consisted of people who talk about their exploits and knowledge. Now it’s the “not so Anonymous FBI tip line“. Sinking the Lulz boat and reversing the magnetic polarity in a way that will inevitably kill Anonymous in the end is only lulzy, it doesn’t qualify as kick ass.

Kick ass was pumping out an endless fountain of anti government, anti law enforcement, anti Israel, pro Palestinian rhetoric. His handlers made him a shining beacon to everyone that they would like to infiltrate and /or destroy. Hamas, Hezbollah, al Qaeda, the Chinese government, drug cartels, identity thieves, disgruntled insiders, classified information leaks… you name it, they put the word out: @AnonymouSabu is your guy. What criminal, drug trafficking, or terrorist organization wouldn’t want the worlds most notoriously wanted hacker? To put it into terms that legitimate security professionals can understand: Imagine having Kevin Mitnick jumping up and down, waving his arms, and screaming “Pick me! Pick me!” in front of your recruiting booth.

The FBI kicks ass at catching terrorists, internet criminals, and bad guys as a general species. Really though, there was a little something for everyone in Op Sabu. There probably a small army in multiple law enforcement agencies dedicated to going through all the intelligence they managed to put together during that nine month period. Maybe that’s why they let Stratfor get hit. Who needs Stratfor if you can get all the bad guys  calling you?

Op Sabu: A case study in Information Warfare

In my line of work this whole Sabu affair is an analytical gold mine. It’s very rare in Information Operations (IO) to have such a detailed record available that can be so easily be reverse engineered. I mean, really, how often does an opportunity like this really come along?  Has it ever happened before in an unclassified form?

This is how something like this works: The first thing that happens is that he has to give them all his different identities, passwords, encryption keys, and every other shred of anything useful he may have. That comes before anything else is even discussed. That kind of debriefing would take a week. DUring that time every piece of equipment in his possession is either compromised at the hardware level, or replaced entirely with compromised equipment. Surveillance is put into place, usually, both electronic and human. Then, with a figurative(ish) shotgun pressed firmly against the asset’s temple, you put them back into place.

What that means is that at that point, Sabu couldn’t wipe his own ass without the FBI giving him approved toilet paper (although, being unemployed and on welfare, he hasn’t wiped his ass with anything other than government issued toilet paper since…. well…. since he had a fucking job). I’ll get into all the irony that is associated with Sabu’s welfare life later. The point is, after his arrest it became impossible for Sabu to make two decisions in a row without FBI approval. When I consider that, I keep coming back to the same question: Who approved all the shit he did after that, and why? I’m not saying it was a bad idea. I don’t know yet. I’m just curious as to what level of authority is required to make decisions like that. What I do know is that it is way above the handler, or regional field office, level.

I will come back to this after I’ve had a chance to collect and analyze the available data. Right now, anyone who pretends to have a full handle on this is totally full of shit. It will take weeks (if not more) to analyze the logs, actions, and consequences, of this operation. What is a reality is that this is fascinating to anyone skilled or working in IO. Honestly, reverse engineering this will be more fun and challenging than tracking Sabu ever was.

Detailed analysis to follow….

OpCartel

Ok. Anyone who knows me can tell you I am no fan of certain Anons. I feel like the movement has lost its way and now will go in any direction that has the word Op in front of it. Truthfully, I think a lot of the current “legion” are dumbasses, manipulators, or kids with no clue what they are getting into. OpCartel, however, is quite different than DDoS attacks or dumping a bunch of peoples personal data to make a point.

Anons you are declaring war on a group that you do not understand. Los Zetas are comprised of ex-soldiers with extenstive paramilitary training. Many of them were trained by the U.S. military. The F.B.I. has rules. The United States justice system is humane. You will never come home to find that U.S. law enforcement has beheaded your mother and father after cutting out your 8 year old sisters tongue and leaving her to bleed out on the floor.

I understand you feel powerful. I understand you feel prepared. I understand that you think you can make a difference. You are mistaken. They will not target those involved. They will target every one of you, everyone you know and everyone you love. They do not need to find those that “participated”. They will pile up the bodies of everyone who they can find who has ever even claimed to be associated with Anonymous. They don’t even have to be right. Because you are anonymous, how will you know if the people they start to slaughter in every internet cafe are your members or not? They don’t care about killing the innocent. They do it every day. The question is: Can you live with it? Unfortunately, we are going to find out.

You cannot hold this group hostage with information. They are not dependant on it like what you are used to. So you out their contacts, sympathizers, and whoever else you can. Half of those people are only involved because they, and their families, would be dead if they didn’t. Do you really think the taxi driver is living like a king, or waking up every day terrified for their families lives.

I understand that you want to use your skills to help your brother. That is both admirable and commendable, and I feel for your cause in that respect. However it will only make a bad situation worse. The first thing they will do is kill every one of the people they took from that site and make their bodies as public as possible. Can you live with that? If they wipe out some poor Anons family, will you still feel powerful? You shouldn’t. It’s called murder by proxy. Once you have no more information to dump, and they’re still standing, do you think it will be over or just beginning? Are you sure you are prepared for the long haul? These people are in the business of killing people and now so are you. Are you prepared for that? People will die violently because of OpCartel, and it is too late to stop that now. Just the threat is enough that they cannot afford to show weakness. Is that really what you signed up for when you took on the Anonymous mantle? Is this the difference you really want to make? You will hack and you will dox. These people will hack you up and put you in a box.

OpClorox is too little too late, and Anons should know that better than anyone. You can’t scrub it all. Every one of you already know that.

The only thing left to do here is learn. Stop letting the few endanger the collective as a whole. People like those who are advocating this insanity are not the ones you need pulling your strings. They are fucking idiots. You have your people openly deployed around the world involved in protests and now a target has been painted on every one of their backs. Please tell me someone thought of that. Please tell me that someone is out there right now collecting all the Guy Fawkes masks in New York, and all the other places you are so proud to be. I kept my mouth shut about Occupy Wall Street because protesting is your right and it didn’t put anyone in danger. That said, if you’re still out in the streets, you may want to go home. That is unless you you don’t believe that the Los Zetas can get to you, out in the open, wearing your mask, in the middle of New York City. Pray that the government you are out there protesting can protect you.

Just know, as you are out there (in way over your head), that all those law enforcement officers who you declared war on not too long ago, have been up for days trying to prevent your wholesale slaughter. Next time, you may probably want to send the brave men and women in Arizona a thank you note. They’re the ones trying to save your dumb asses.

Good luck. You’ll need it.

UPDATE:

Look at how this is playing out. Mexican Anons want NOTHING to do with this. Do the manipulators care? No. They think they’re safely tucked away, and are going to let their Mexican brothers take the heat under the guise of trying to help them. This isn’t about helping anyone. This is about control.

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This has been talked about since the old days. This isn’t new. Are you a personal army or not? Are you leaderless or not? Are you a group of like minded individuals or someone’s bitch?

You know how to stop this. Start with Sabu. Are you “past the point of no return” or “At War” with the fucking Los Zeta cartel? He is making those choices for you.

Dox his ass. So far you’ve sat by and let him take over. So far you’ve watched while he brought heat from the suits. Now he’s endangering your own people and nobody seems to have the stones to do anything about it. Put HIS ass on the line and he’ll shut up right quick. He has no problem putting yours on the line and his little teenage minions are just going to keep going. Cut the head of of the snake. He is a cancer among your ranks. He is using you. Do you really want a guy who is still worried about promoting his little buddies bands leading you into a war with the FUCKING CARTEL? Start there. If he promotes it, tweets it, or runs his unending mouth about it, dump everything you can find on it. He thinks he’s an expert on information but Qiao Liang he is not. If you, Anonymous, out @AnonymouSabu you will have taken the first step in making Anonymous a collective again. If you don’t he will continue to volunteer you as his own personal army. Without you to support him, he is nothing. Impede his ability to manipulate you, endanger his interests and identity and THEN and only then will you have a chance to stop opCartel. The quicker this is over, the less people will suffer because of it. The Cartel doesn’t care if you want to cancel. They have been publicly threatened and that will demand a response. They are already tracking you. Sabu thinks he’s safe. Are you? Are you untracable? They want to send a message. Let them send it to the right person. You put it out there and someone will make sure it finds its way into the open.

It won’t be over with Sabu. There are a few others. It will be just beginning. But that will be a fight you’re used to, one you understand, and one you can win. That will be a fight for the anonymity of Anonymous and the battlefield will be the IRC channels, public opinion, momentum, and information. Not the streets, people with their heads cut off, kidnappings, and innocent casualties.

The reclaiming of Anonymous must come from within. Stop the infection that is spreading through your ranks. Your system has a virus. Take care of it before it can do the type of damage that can never be undone.

Out @AnonymouSabu.

The Anonymous Rip Off

Like many others, I have my own thing and I look forward to getting back to it. Before I do, however, I wanted to point a few things out regarding Anonymous. Back in the old days, it was never like it is now. Just because you put the letters Op in front of someone you hated, or were pissed off at, didn’t mean shit. Anonymous used to be made up of thinkers. People who made up their own minds. People I could, and from time to time did, relate to. I have to ask. What the fuck happened?

I was sitting watching one of my absolute favorite movies of all time last night with my kids. V for Vendetta. It ranks up there with Braveheart and several others as movies I believe are actually worth watching. Not for the special effects, the adrenaline rush, or gore, but for the message that it conveys.

Let me just knock out a few points. Anonymous, as it stands today, has no relation to the concepts in that movie, Guy Fawkes mask or not. V stood to inspire the oppressed. He stood to bring back something his nation had lost. Something it needed. V was a man of honor, grace, philosophy, and skill. He was a man that had been imprisoned, tortured, stripped of his dignity, and pushed to his limits. A man of courage.

Anonymous today is none of those things. The members who hold those qualities have been silenced. Drowned out by louder voices who seek to take what was once something to be respected and turn it into something to be feared. Fear and respect are not the same thing after you grow up. It is an absolute travesty that the Guy Fawkes mask has been defiled by people like that. Those were the people that V sought to rid his world of.

Ideas are truly bulletproof. Especially when people are willing to give up everything in their lives to defend them. Read through the chat logs for LulzSec. These people never sat around talking about ideas. They sat around talking about messing with people, manipulating people, and themselves and the press they were getting. They got their exploits not from coding genius, but from putting out signs that said “Bad apples wanted”. The majority of the exploits they used came from outside their own group, given to them by those either carrying a grudge or just in possession of the knowledge of security holes in their company’s infrastructure. These were hits because they could, not because they served any greater cause. Really, the only one who ever seemed to have a sense of direction in the LulzSec group was Sabu. Yet, he was never on the front lines was he? He was always in the background saying “Do this” “Do that” “Whats my Bitcoin total” “Turn you boxes on this” and letting the others know how “lucky” they were they never had to see him work. And when the shit hit the fan…. just like that, he was gone.

So tell me Jake, do you feel lucky? You shouldn’t. You should feel like the rest of Anonymous. Used and thrown away. You are going to prison, and a Kevin Mitnick you are not. You have no great story to tell, no great skills to reveal, and no real future anymore. Imagine: If the courts issue an order that you cannot profit from your story for five years from the day anyone first heard of you, do you think anyone will even remember you? Ghost in the wires? Not for you. More like “Bitch in the jail cell”, and there are tons of those. Forgive me if I save my seven bucks, I’ve already read that story.

People, Anonymous or otherwise, should think for themselves. Chaos and anarchy are not causes. They are effects. There is no honor in releasing credit card numbers, passwords, or other information belonging to innocent people. There is no courage in what has been done by the Anonymous of late and LulzSec. Do you think Sabu will show up to speak for Topiary when he has his day in court? I wouldn’t hold my breath for that.

My point is a picture of a sword does not make you William Wallace. A picture of a Roman helmet will not make you Maximus. Nor does a picture of a Guy Fawkes mask make you V. Following Anonymous, AntiSec, or OpWhoDoWeFuckWithToday, will not make you a freedom fighter or revolutionary. It will likely make you more like Kenny from Half Baked.  

al-Qaeda 2.0 : Change log

Al-Qaeda
Version 2.0
Change log

Am I serious? Uhhh.. Yeah.

What is al-Qaeda 2.0? First, let’s start with what it isn’t. It’s not some long bearded dude blowing himself up in a toga, a 1970’s army vest, and combat boots. It isn’t twenty foreign nationals spending years training infiltrating our borders before all coming together in a single orchestrated event.  It isn’t some kid that was indoctrinated at age four to hate Christians, Jews, and westerners in general.

What al-Qaeda 2.0 is, is an idea. You can’t arrest an idea, right? Well, luckily, ideas are not the problem. It’s when the idea element becomes unstable and forms a bond with an idiot in an excited state that you have the problem. If this whole LulzSec + Anonymous = AntiSec situation (I was more inclined to say manipulation) has shown us anything it’s that idiots in an excited state are not hard to come by on the Internet. Go into a chat room, play an online game, or create a social networking profile, you’ll find them. They’re not hard to spot. They’re part of the terrain. The al-Qaeda 2.0 system isn’t designed to run on proprietary systems. It’s a multi-platform system designed to be installed after production.

Here’s what I mean. The four main challenges al-Qaeda, or any other organization, faces are: personnel, position, equipment, and opportunity. The problem with the al-Qaeda 1.0 system is that the personnel had to be moved to the position of opportunity with the equipment for it to work. Someone willing had to infiltrate the United States, buy/ create the materials they need, and execute at a predetermined point of estimated greatest impact.

The al-Qaeda 2.0 platform strives to overcome these challenges by implementing an entirely new architecture. Instead of programming it into a proprietary system (an overseas radical willing to cross the globe to blow himself up) the new platform allows itself to be downloaded and run multi-platform on existing systems (internet and self radicalization gone ape shit like Fort Hood or Denmark). Also in installing itself like a p2p platform, the 2.0 platform utilizes a decentralized architecture rather than a few massive servers (Incidents like Fort Hood and Denmark tend to inspire terror in people just as much as a 9/11 incident, it just doesn’t inspire terror in as many people. However, if you have massive numbers of small events, eventually you reach the same total coverage).

This is where the idiot in the excited state comes into play. Terrorist organizations today use a mass marketing strategy much different than the ones we are used to where some misguided moron goes off to some camp in the Bakka valley, or mountains of Tora Bora, and trains for 3 months to go blow himself up in 3 seconds. That had a very low return on marketing investment. Instead, why not put out tutorials on how to blow yourself up and kill people and see how many idiots we can get to try it? “We’ll expand our target market out of the religiously devout and can then market the psychologically ill, the impressionable, the socially depressed, the anarchist… I’m telling you Habib, I’ve been running the numbers all night and I think we’re killing ourselves trying to import when we’re sitting on a goldmine right here!”

Rather than investing 20 or 30 years, millions of dollars, training, and risk to create a willing radical the next generation will take between 5 and ten years to create. The new idea is to forego training for timing. Get the radical while they’re radical. The willing aspect is much more important to the model than the training aspect. They make the information available all the time, so that when some crazy idiot comes along looking for a reason to do something stupid, there it is. He doesn’t need to be a bomb-maker, they’ll include instructions a sixth grader could follow. Don’t know, or don’t care what you blow up as long as you make the news and get famous? No problem, they’ll tell you how to select your targets or you can choose from a variety of pre-selected, high value targets at a location near you. The terrorist organization of the next generation is not a bricks and mortar company. They are in the service industry. You, your kids, your neighbors, your neighbor’s kids, and that crazy guy and his crazy kid that live down the street are their target market.

Closing percentage drops way down, but market saturation and massive contacts still produce a net sales gain. Especially if people are ready to buy when they come into contact with the material. Some people will buy anything. Think those two kids at Columbine were really hard core socialist nazi’s with deep fundamental beliefs, and a willingness to die for their cause? Or is it more likely that the cause was more of an afterthought and they were just willing to do something insidious because they were mentally and socially fucked up? I’ll put my money on the latter. Virginia Tech. Did that kid go nuts because he believed in something, or because he didn’t? To a terrorist organization, do you really think they care? They don’t. The version 1.0 needed to care. If they didn’t they’d get caught. That’s because under the old model, if you’re not a devout believer, you’re a security risk. Version 2.0 uses Internet anonymity to eliminate that risk. Think about that for a second. You’re a terrorist bad guy, and some kid pops up on your forum board talking about wanting to blow himself up for the cause. Do you really care if he truly believes in the cause? Do you care if he’s a social misfit or mentally ill perhaps? Nope. All you care about is that he writes your organizations name in either a suicide note or, even better, a couple of internet posts and that he makes enough of an impact to make the news channels in prime time. Never have to meet them, don’t have to supply them, and they are already in position. There is no downside and very little overhead.

Look at the Anonymous/ LulzSec model. These kids were hacking whatever they could long before there was a “cause”. Why? Because it was fun and they could. Along comes the Manning/ Wikileaks incident and you get a spark. What happens next? They drop the skill level needed to operate their weapon of choice to almost zero, and offer you the ability to turn over control of your machine so that somebody else can choose the targets for you. Does Anonymous strike you as the type of people that want to swell their ranks with wannabes and start turning over control of their machines to somebody else? That doesn’t really work for me. This is a group that is formed by a common thread of computer skills. They want to inundate themselves with GUI kiddies? There are people in Anonymous that like other people controlling their machines? Are you kidding me? Here, let’s try this instead: Let’s swell their ranks with morons and elevate a few of these kids with skills into a position where they feel important, by letting the new influx of monkeys kiss their ass, and then we’ll get them to do what we want and perform for the monkeys. Can you say: Topiary?

The Anonymous signature weapon is dumbed down and freely available. Terrorist organizations have dumbed down their materials so that anyone with access to enough chemicals or fire arms can join the cause. A video recently released by al-Qaeda urged that disgruntled holy warriors not wait, but rather go lone wolf and provided tips on how to acquire the weapons needed to achieve the desired impact. That’s not a speech by some cleric in some desert village that you had to be present to have been inspired by. That’s an Internet video that’s mirrored all over the world so that anyone can see it at any time. Anonymous will choose your target for you. How nice of them. So will al-Qaeda. If the van pulls up in front of your house and a bunch of guys in suits jump out and kick in your door, your Anonymous buddies will call you a martyr and use your misfortune to further promote their own cause. Why does that sound familiar? Oh yeah, so will al-Qaeda.

A small faction uses a large group of misguided kids and idiots from a distance to further their agenda.

For two groups, like LulzSec and al-Qaeda, who hate the United States political system so much, they seem to have learned a lot from it.

See you don’t need a lot of the devout believers to cause a big impact. You just need persuasive ones placed in areas of maximum effect. Here’s one for you: The United States prison system. Same model. Self and peer radicalization through the availability of information injected into a field of social misfits. Soon they’ll be handing out flyers outside rehab’s, halfway houses, mental hospitals, and the classrooms of your local junior high school. Why? Uhhhh… because it’ll work. How? Uhhhh…. we’ll let them because we’re not willing to do what it takes to stop them. Much easier to deny that it’s a threat until it happens and then say: How was I supposed to know? Wake up and look! That’s how you’ll know. I’ll even give you a place to start: Do a Google search on Beast1333 and tell me if what you find isn’t an attempt at radicalization. Then look at how it’s being promoted.

You can’t arrest the idea of al-Qaeda 2.0, but you’d better pray they can arrest the idiot that tries to implement it before he comes into that nice cozy McDonald’s and blows your two kids away while you were having a cheeseburger and kickin it on the free wi-fi. Just like Anonymous doesn’t have to be a group of terrorists to have one appear in their midst and start nudging it into a direction that suits their needs, you’re town doesn’t need to be full of idiots for a group like al-Qaeda to find one willing to go Columbine. That is what al-Qaeda 2.0 really is. It’s using timing to catch the idiot, while they are in the excited state, and let them take all the risk. Just like the LulzSec model. Catch the hackers in an excited state, point them at things, and let them take all the risk. As you can see when you look at the stats for what I’ll call the LulzSec beta, you can see it had pretty amazing results. Several targets were successfully attacked and the buffer worked flawlessly sending the kids to jail while the instigator goes free to recruit and “inspire” the next kid that thinks nobody likes them. Effect, but no risk.

There are 307 million people in the United States alone. That doesn’t count the European nations, and frankly, quite often neither do I. If the al-Qaeda 2.0 model is successful at indoctrinating one hundredth of 1% that’s 30,700 idiots in the excited state. If those are provided the instructions, and targets, and only 1% of those do anything with it, over a ten year period, that’s 307 homegrown terrorist attacks on United States soil. Eat your heart out bin-Laden. Forgive the pun, but the creators of al-Qaeda 1.0 would have killed for those numbers.

I saw a comment that said something to the effect of “al-Qaeda 2.0, is he serious?”.  I know,it’s such a crazy idea that terrorist organizations would evolve and begin to use things like psychological warfare and the internet. The idea that a terrorist organization might try to recruit U.S. citizens is just ridiculous.

Are you kidding me??!!

And they wonder if I’m serious. 

LulzSec, Anonymous, and Terrorists

There has been some speculation rolling around that is worth taking a look at. Usually I wouldn’t put too much thought into the rumors that run around the internet about things of this nature, but I think there might be something to this one. I first started looking into this after seeing it speculated on by @th3j35t3r, who I consider to be a fairly reliable source when it comes to jihadist propaganda and the internet.

Let’s start with a question: Is it possible that Anonymous has been infiltrated and influenced by terrorists, their supporters, or sympathizers? While, in such a loose organization (if you can really call Anonymous that) it is extremely tough to really nail down an answer to that with any hard evidence to support it either way. However, there are some rather interesting trends in their activity.

My question was is it possible so I’ll start there. The general structure of terrorist organizations is changing rapidly. The neutralization of UBL (rock on USNSWC) has left al Qaeda, in particular, in unfamiliar territory. Leadership transition is a challenging feat for any organization, but many do not survive the transition from the first leader. While I don’t think there was any real doubt that al-Zawahiri would succeed UBL, it is important to consider that he is not UBL. He does not command the same mythical status among the membership that UBL enjoyed. His methods, ideas, plans, and tactics will be questioned.

Enter what has been called al-Qaeda 2.0, the younger, more technologically familiar generation of jihadist. The next generation will not be so content with hiding in the safety of caves, or isolated areas. The internet, and social media in particular, have become important and useful recruiting tools  for the jihad movement. When al-Qaeda was first formed, these tools were not available. Because of this, while the leadership of al-Qaeda undoubtedly recognized the potential of these assets, they were not familiar with them enough to truly maximize that potential. That cannot stay true forever. There is a newer thought process that can, will, and is developing. One popular misconception about these types of groups is that they are uneducated, cave-dwelling, backwards people that if they only understood the western thought process would see the light and give up the jihad for modern lives and comforts. This is NOT the case anymore. Take, for example, Anwar al-Awlaki. There is a reason many consider this man to be the number one terrorist threat to the United States. Unlike bin-Laden or al-Zawahiri, he understands the western culture. Probably better than most that live in it and take it for granted on a daily basis. He was born in the U.S., lived here until he was in his early thirties. He is educated, and has been known to use modern technology like Facebook and other social media to spread his message. He’s a different animal all together. Can you imagine UBL tweeting about his Farmville? While it’s not really too likely that al-Awlaki would waste his time or energy on something so trivial, there is something to be said just about his knowledge of what Farmville and Twitter are. While Farmville is trivial, Twitter can be much more useful.

Enter Anonymous. If you look at the recent Anonymous/ Lulzsec activity, you can see just how successful something like Twitter can be. The twitter account @anonymouSabu has over eighteen thousand followers. A number that has grown by fifty since I started this paragraph. Having 18000 people hearing everything you choose to say, as soon as you say it is quite a bit of influence. Especially when many of those people are young, impressionable, yet still pretty intelligent, young people in their teens and early twenties. For example, let’s look at the case of Topiary. This guy is 18, bright, and had no prior criminal record. He wasn’t oppressed or disadvantaged. He was impressionable and capable.

Now let’s look at the recent trend that seems to be sweeping Anonymous, primarily at the hands of Lulzsec. I can understand Op Paypal, even if I don’t agree with it. Paypal gets pressured over Wikileaks, capitulates, and cuts off processing their cash. Anonymous gets pissed off and DDoS’s them offline. A lot of people believe what Wikileaks did to be journalism, reporting the information they were given, even if they do feel like it was irresponsible. However, I would wager that out of all the people involved with Op Paypal, half of them could have cared less about Wikileaks, Manning, or anything else involved. I’d also wager that the majority of them were under 18, living with Mommy, and suffered from to much time on their hands combined with the desire to be part of something regardless of what it was. They wanted to be” hackers”, yet the LOIC (Low Orbit Ion Cannon- anonymous DDoS weapon of choice) doesn’t require that they posses any of the knowledge or skill that goes with that tag. As a matter of fact, the most recent version doesn’t even require the user to be able to select their target on their own. The control over their machine could be turned over to the IRC channel so all they had to do to be a big bad “hacker” was be able to double click an icon. So easy a child could do it. Why do you suppose that is? There really is only one reason to make something so that it can be easily used by a child. So that it can be used by a child. Who was the target market for that product? Responsible, free thinking adults, with considerable computer skills, and a firm set of beliefs? Not exactly. Someone went through a considerable amount of effort to deliberately remove each of those qualifications from the list of prerequisites needed for the operation of the LOIC. Another trend, this one far more alarming that the dumbing down of their tools, is more recent and quite definitive. Yet somehow, it has escaped largely under the radar. (Good shit, J for calling peoples attention to this) Anonymous, since the inception of LulzSec, has changed the game. Where there were once undertakings like Op Libya, and Op Egypt, the targets have changed significantly. Under the influence of a select few members the targets have gone from oppressive regimes of dictators to large corporations, law enforcement,and defense contractors of democratic nations.

There is a lot of speculation about anonymouSabu and his intentions. I’m not going into that until I can find out more information. Yes, he uses the Hamas flag as his Twitter icon. Yes, he promotes extreme radicals like Beast1333. However, those are not the subject I set out to address.

Would it be possible for an organization like al-Qaeda to infiltrate a group like Anonymous and bend their actions to suit their purposes? Yes. Anwar al-Awlaki is no cave dwelling idiot, and he’s certainty more intelligent, motivated, and better financed than someone like Sabu. He was studying for his Doctorate in human relations at GWU before he left the U.S. in 2002. He understands the psychological tactics needed to sway the young and impressionable. He is also well versed in the Internet and social media, so even if he wasn’t looking at doing something like this before, he has most definitely seen the potential and vulnerability of a group like Anonymous since watching LulzSec take full advantage of it. Teenagers are prone to doing dumb things they don’t fully understand. Anyone who has raised one can tell you that. So if you’re sitting there saying the thought of a group like Anonymous unwittingly, or otherwise, working with an organization like al-Qaeda is far fetched, maybe you should think again.