The Widely Reported ISIS Encrypted Messaging App Is Not Real 113
blottsie writes: Despite widespread reports to the contrary, an app created for Islamic State militants to send private encrypted messages does not exist, a week-long Daily Dot investigation found. All of the media articles on the Alrawi app showed screenshots of a different app entirely, one that is a glorified RSS reader with a totally different name. The Defense One journalist who first reported on GSG's claims about the app told the Daily Dot that he hadn't seen any version of Alrawi at all, and the subsequent reports on the app largely relied on Defense One's reporting. The Daily Dot was the first media outlet to receive, on Jan. 18, what GSG claimed was the Alrawi encryption app. The app, called "Alrawi.apk," contained no ability to send or encrypt messages. It was created using MIT's App Inventor, a plug-and-play tool meant primarily for children.
Suuure (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Suuure (Score:5, Funny)
I bet it uses state of the art undetectable ROT26 encryption.
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Why bother at all.
It's not like we've bothered to learn to read Arabic.
They can just send it in clear-text and we'll write it off as completely useless gibberish.
Re: Suuure (Score:3)
The problem is google will auto translate it whether you want it to or not.
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They also use encrypted phrases such as "Go now"
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They also use encrypted phrases such as "Go now"
Highly advanced trickery using Google "I feel lucky" search:
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Mosul+201... [lmgtfy.com]
How on earth will the CIA ever figure that one out?!
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I bet it uses state of the art undetectable ROT26 encryption.
To stay consistent with level of security ROT 28 or 29 may be more appropriate for like minded individuals who prefer to speak Arabic. Based on the correctness of religious and political views when applied to linguistics, one should work as intended.
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ROT26 is just like ROT13 but twice as secure!
http://rot26.org/ [rot26.org]
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They want you to think that's what they want you to think, but that's not what they want you to think.
Think, McFly, think!
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If a secret application were found, it would be a failure - but if a secret application remains undetectable to a week long investigation by the Daily Dot, doesn't that just rate it as minimally competent?
Re: Suuure (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not a fan of the racial slurs so i'm not commenting or supporting that part of the comments.
But i will say that they did not
destroy America from the inside by engineering a culture of fear among American public and moral panic that lead them to discard the constitution and become a police state...
America did it to it's self, the slide down the hill had been going on for a long time. Rather than "engineering" this scenario, they became the excuse for the government to start driving downhill rather than sliding. And sadly we the people haven't done anything real about it.
(that last bit will get me on someones watch list, yaeee, job creation)
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News flash, we're still here. Not destroyed.
Way back when, Don McLean wrote a song called American Pie that he recently admitted was about the death of American culture because of hippies. People declare us dead and gone over and over, but it hasn't stopped us yet.
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In the country I grew up in you could walk through the airport and just show the flight attendant your boarding pass and walk right on the plane. There was a metal detector but it was so insensitive that nothing smaller than Crocodile Dundee's knife would raise an alarm. If anyone wanted to grope someone in line, they'd get a punch in the nose for the suggestion. Sporting events didn't dare search bags because they wanted people to come back. Even a President could get in trouble for domestic spying (and I
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Yeah, yeah, the country I grew up in had 5 cent phone booths and 25 cent newspapers. Waaaaaa, waaaaa, waaaaaa, get over it. This country was never perfect, and neither are other countries. Nor were things that made the country what it is the things that stood out to a particular person. People who make that mistake, who think it is all about them... for them the country dies every 15 years. It is not rational, and it isn't even America. We're still here. We'll still be here after you decide it was about you
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I'm talking about fundamental freedoms and reasonability and you're quacking on about inflation. I never said it was perfect, but there have been some fundamental changes. When I was in the 4th grade, our social studies teacher told us about some of the things Russia does that makes it bad and that America is good because none of those things happen here. Most of those things increasingly happen here now.
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No, you're quacking the same old "death of culture, kids these days" idiocy that is well known. I recommend to read up on the phenomenon.
"Oh woe is me, the world isn't the way I was told in 4th grade. Therefore my teacher wasn't wrong, my teacher wasn't an idiot, no, the whole COUNTRY is just dead, it died for not being what I once thought. WAAAAAAAAA"
It's pretty pathetic, man. You can't find your freedoms because you don't know what they are, so you can imagine they were taken away even while you're using
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No, it's not the kids these days that are the problem for me. Yeah, I question some of their taste in music and fashion, but I accept that it's hardly the end of the world and indeed, it's just part of the natural order.
My problem is with people who are old enough to know better but are substantially reducing freedom and spreading fear in a country that supposedly values freedom and bravery. They didn't just "sell out to the man", they became worse than the man in many ways.
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You just wave your hands and instead of, "make different policy choices through the process of representative democracy than I wanted," you make conclusory statements that imply 1) that everybody agrees with you what freedom means exactly 2) that bravery[sic] was a national value of importance (laughable) and 3) that not using your policy ideas is the death of the nation.
Rather pathetic analysis you give in every single dimension. But the worst is that you don't consider how it negatively affects freedom fo
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What is the last line in the National Anthem?
I don't remember anyone voting to alter the Constitution to permit the things now being done that are directly against it. I don't remember anyone voting to allow the NSA to spy domestically. I do remember multiple elections where people are dissapointed by the results. I do remember a lot of agencies directly ignoring the courts and perjuring themselves before Congress.
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death of American culture
I'm only quoting the key relevant portion of your comment so we don't confuse issues here.
Culture is one thing - and yes every social evolution is the death of a previous "culture". Hippies where significantly different than their parents and brought on a completely new way of thinking, just as the white/blue collar workers before them and the industrial revolution before that, and many many new ones to come (right not it's the millennials).
The one constant throughout all of the culture changes in America
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The one constant throughout all of the culture changes in America is the government. The group which is supposed to lay down and enforce the laws of the land so that anyone of any culture can live and thrive.
What we have here, and what i was pointing to is that our Government is taking on a different role, not one of of setting down the laws and frame work which allow for cultural freedom and evolution but rather a Government which is laying down laws in order to influence and Control said culture to make it what it wants.
It is just hand-wavy assertion though. The Government is still there, when did the NSA dismiss congress? Oh, didn't happen. If you read more history, you'll find out that there were worse transgressions of rights in the past, and yet the country was still here, the Government hadn't changed it was still a bunch of representative jerks most of whom were legitimately elected, and the Courts are still there are still actively balancing the legit concerns of different branches of government. The process is stil
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The nation didn't die from hippies, and it didn't die from signals intelligence.
I still think there is a miss communication going on here. Your correct that the nation didn't die for hippies or from signals intelligence, i never said it did. My last comment which you quoted was about the separation between "culture" and government. The governing body of a nation is not the "culture" and should not be driving the "culture".
My original post which you also quoted and responded to was plainly stating that the actions of terrorists where not successful in turning the US into a state of f
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The governing body of a nation is not the "culture" and should not be driving the "culture".
Nor is it trying to. It is all a bunch of hand-waving. Peruse archive.org if you want to view all the old videos the government paid to produce in the golden age of the 1950s. It is some pretty funny stuff, not just Duck and Cover. They don't even try anymore, it is progress.
Any other fake boogeymen?
Waaa, waaa, the current government isn't entirely to my liking, therefore, "death of America." No, America was never just you. I do agree there is a lack of comprehension, but it is impossible for to misundersta
BAH... (Score:3)
and how does this help get backdoor to encryption?
Impossible (Score:5, Funny)
Please reply by messenger pigeon to my prepper bunker in the woods because the batteries are about to run out on our laptops and satcom gear down here...
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Don't waste your enriched uranium on the bunker power, you won't get much and you need that for armor plating on the blast door.
What you need is 14,000 smoke alarms to make a real reactor out of non-depleted fuel. 20k if you want to be able to run LED hydroponics.
Unfortunately, the shielding requires a fortune in aluminum foil.
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You mistaken believe him that his right wing isn't the ones pushing it. LOL
Pop quiz, EFF and ACLU are considered right wing, or left wing?
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Re: Impossible (Score:2)
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That's easy, just check the opinions of those of us who don't watch television!
Also... the internet DID precede Fox News! The fall of the Soviet Union was live-streamed on IRC. (true story)
You could also find old BBS archives and check the complaint threads. Tinfoil has always been a major driving force of communication technology. They may not always understand the science behind their postings, but they were always able and willing to find money for long distance calls to the FIDO gateway...
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Both are wrong
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Gej03%8 gun rtf"cgd%g 3$ fhb6cf% #hk556g fjtj5 qmd6u&46:!%&'kp((
Acknowledged. Extraction team deployed.
Fake news, gee imagine that (Score:1)
Gee false story circulating the internet. Amazing, the web is full of wannabe news people. Break the big story, get plenty of hits. Get your five minutes of fame.
People keep repeating these stories, because nobody does the verification. Then you get all the social site spread and walla viral it goes.
Re:Fake news, gee imagine that (Score:4, Insightful)
I've noticed that the Conservatives on my Facebook feed are particularly prone to spreading these stories without any sort of verification. Most recently a story about how left-handed people will be elidgible for disability benefits starting Feb. 1st was shared by multiple people. It's like people, when they believe something to be true, they look all over the place for anything that supports it.
I'm guilty of this, too, but I do wonder why after the miracle of Google we don't aim to verify more.
But there were WMD... (Score:2)
But there were weapons of mass destruction...
We need to find a way to pull in the fantasy and fantastic and
anchor the world slightly better on reality.
Tonight I wonder who the dummy is? I hear a network just
bid "Seven No Trump"/
It is too late. (Score:5, Insightful)
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WebRTC is easy to disable though. In Firefox there is an about:config option, and in Chrome the uBlock Origin add-on has a tick box to disable it.
Yet more cyber-terror-hacker BS .. (Score:5, Insightful)
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I knew it! (Score:4, Funny)
It was created using MIT's App Inventor, a plug-and-play tool meant primarily for children.
I've always said children were little terrors and people said was "exaggerating" but now I'VE BEEN VINDICATED! ;)
We're blowing it. (Score:3)
What would you rather have, someone on twitter saying "Come Join ISIS" where it's easy for local/federal authorities to investigate, or something like freenet where there isn't a chance to intercept, let alone trace, the data. Don't you think that a good percent of the Pro-ISIS twitter accounts were honeypots?
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ISIS already knows that their communications are not private. That's why they're creating an RSS reader using the MIT App Inventor and trying to pass it off as an encrypted communication tool in the media.
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why they're creating an RSS reader using the MIT App Inventor
At least they are not using Visual Basic to create the app, so It cannot really do any harm.....
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I thought Scotland was still part of the UK because they voted No...
The depravity of the lowland lords is not limited to selling out the highlands in every war. They refused to admit they're not English even when they were asked politely.
In any case, I say we airdrop Mel Gibson into Syria with a body cam and just see how he does it. No spoilers needed!
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ISIS terrorists do not need to encrypt thier communication, they either speak in person, or communicate on open channels knowing they could be intercepted (but probably won't be)
The twitter accounts, youtube, etc .. are advertising to potential recruits not a way of organising themselves
Note the FBI have a website, they don't use it to communicate with their agents in the field, and agents oftne use unsecured communication known it could be intercepted ...
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Do not just assume that religious nuts demand secrecy and are willing to hide their words.
It is like encryption in WWII. We had to hide from the Germans that we had cracked their code, but the Japanese would never have noticed because their command structure didn't push known bugs upwards. A whistleblower would be seen as lacking faith in the emperor's judgement; insulting him even.
How can those who proclaim they are doing God's work then hide in the shadows? These nutcases regularly blow themselves up with
We've been goosed (Score:2)
Funny thing this time is that it's propaganda about a propaganda application that doesn't exist because there's plenty of other ways to get propaganda out.
There plenty going wrong in reality without making shit like this up. It's as insane as the false report about Iraqi atrocities in a Kuwait hospital when there were far worse atrocities being committed in reality (only without handy sound bites provided by actors).
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re: Kuwait, it wasn't actors, they went with the lie because they had a female member of the ruling family who had escaped to the US and was pushing convenient propaganda. Another more forgiving perspective is that she was phrasing in the first person things she had been told but didn't actually see. Maybe, but it appears it was just propaganda premised on being spoken by a known semi-public figure. Did Congress know? Some of them probably did. Did they care about the details of that event? No, they cared i
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And she read out a script, which is of course acting.
It was pretty stupid because the secret was going to get out and make people question the real stuff.
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And she read out a script, which is of course acting.
It was pretty stupid because the secret was going to get out and make people question the real stuff.
You're trying to save the story, but that is pure conjecture.
If you actually look into the details of it, there wasn't a script at all. She knew what propaganda to give, and gave it.
It doesn't make any sense why you want there to be a script involved, or "actors." History certainly doesn't require the revision in order to compile. When the principles tell the lies themselves, it would be silly to hire actors or use a script.
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No. I heard it at the time and the story behind it. An utterly stupid idea and it did have blowback at the time resulting in an immediate loss of trust.
WTF? If you had actually "looked into the details" you would be aware that it was all scripted. It must be on wikipedia or something FFS so LOOK IT UP instead of MAKING IT UP - what is it with idiots that want to bluff with
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Right, you haven't looked it up, you're too busy repeating a narrative to comprehend if what I am saying is consistent with the public details.
It doesn't occur to you that I might have looked into it in substantial detail far beyond what anybody would discuss on slashdot. You throw a "you're bluffing" bluff from the dark, it is not impressive at all. Show you understood whatever you read by identifying the specific parts that contradict specific things I said, and say them. LOL that is how a discussion work
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Since I know the story and you do not it is very clear that you did not.
You are not only pointlessly arguing about an analogy, you are also getting it wrong.
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If I already told you I know the story, and you want to claim I don't, how would that cause me to consider what you have to say? You lack even basic theory of mind.
It is not too late to look it up. And no, don't come back and tell me. Just enrich yourself and learn some history.
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Then you would know it was a person pretending to be a person she was not (a nurse) and reading from a script about something that never happened - ie. ACTING.
I really do not understand why you wish to pretend that this example was something else and why you want to argue about the example instead of the actual issue at hand.
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Right, you're intentionally misrepresenting who it was. By saying "a person" in a general way, as if you don't know she is an involved party in their government, you make it sound like she must have been a paid actor.
Principles who lie about what they saw in order to enhance or restore their power are not "actors."
You're playing word games to make it sound like a different thing than it was, and then oddly you keep trying to do it even after I make it clear to anybody who has ever read the details that I al
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An actor is someone who does acting. She acted. She was an actor for the duration of that act.
Is there some language barrier here? Your English is quite good otherwise but your lack of a grasp of simple definitions in a textbook simple example, plus your strange insult "You lack even basic th
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Right, the non-actor acted but was not an actor, so now you can stop trying to correct me and shut up and go read about it.
In the phrase "paid actor" that is not the same word as just, "oh, a person was lying so that is acting so they are an actor." No, "paid actor" implies something different. It isn't even more or less bad, that's the stupid part of your argument. You want to be right because what happened was immoral and you were shocked and scandalized, but the problem is that instead of arguing for you
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How ridiculous.
What an utterly pointless discussion this has been based entirely on your decision that your overly narrow personal definition trumps what the English language has to say.
It's even more pointless because your redefinition changes nothing about the example of a fake story of less of an atrocity than the real events and backfiring because it made people question the real events.
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The woman who was acting did not write the script that she read.
NO WAY! (Score:3)
I don't see your point. (Score:1)
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well theres plenty of apps for doing it on the play market.
the news was that it was specifically made for them and that they had "intel" on it..
basically it was trolling media for a little bit of money. pretty shitty. at the point when they send them an apk they would need to have known what was on the apk..
Turns out they were just using (Score:3)
AIM and ICQ. No one uses that shit anymore so it's as good as encrypted to the feds.
"What the dang hill is this traffic?"
"OMG.. IT's.. ENCRYPTED."
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I'm still using ICQ to talk to my Bulgarian pen pal. It is still popular there, I hear. I can confirm that I stopped getting unsolicited friend requests over 10 years ago though...
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says the AC who knows all of this high speed stuff, but somehow needs help from others to do anything. Gotcha.
It's probably not in Google Play (Score:1)
You can't prove something doesn't exist because you didn't find it when you looked.
i.e. Aliens
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So, wait, did you just claim that MIT released a tool to create fake apps out of screenshots of other apps? Or am I reading too much into your statement?