Patterico's Pontifications

9/9/2012

See If You Can Identify the Problem Here

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 12:44 pm



How to be a surreptitious hacktivist — and tell the world about it:

Working from a beige house at the end of a dirt road, Jeff Bardin switches on a laptop, boots up a program that obscures his location, and pecks in a passkey to an Internet forum run by an Iraqi branch of Al Qaeda.

Soon the screen displays battle flags and AK-47 rifles, plus palm-lined beaches to conjure up a martyr’s paradise.

“I do believe we are in,” says Bardin, a stout, 54-year-old computer security consultant.

Barefoot in his bedroom, Bardin pretends to be a 20-something Canadian who wants to train in a militant camp in Pakistan. With a few keystrokes, he begins uploading an Arabic-language manual for hand-to-hand combat to the site.

“You have to look and smell like them,” he explains. “You have to contribute to the cause so there’s trust built.”

Then you have to tell all the details to a newspaper reporter.

WTF? (Why the face?)

P.S. This somehow reminds me of the post from yesterday, about the dad who wrote a NYT op-ed about how his daughters don’t see him eating pot brownies. I just can’t quite make the connection, man.

4 Responses to “See If You Can Identify the Problem Here”

  1. Gimme another brownie.

    Patterico (83033d) — 9/9/2012 @ 12:46 pm

  2. “Why the face?”

    I love Modern Family, and not just because of this:
    http://youtu.be/ept-5kVrZAE

    Xmas (5482c7) — 9/9/2012 @ 12:55 pm

  3. Is this an attempt to sabotage a few of the FBI/DHS anti-terrorist arrests that are based on Internet activity?

    AD-Restore the Republic/Obama Sucks! (2bb434) — 9/9/2012 @ 1:31 pm

  4. Years ago I read about some stay at home mom in South Dakota or somewhere that was doing this as her part in the war against terrorism, and passing info on to the FBI, but I think the story was a bit discreet about details ans ID- could be wrong.

    I would think if a person was really accomplishing something, they wouldn’t want to advertise, complete with picture and ID.

    Unless they like being bait. I would think it would be too uncontrolled to really be a trap set by some anti-terror agency.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 9/9/2012 @ 1:33 pm


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