By Rita Katz, Motherboard.vice.com
Dated: July 14, 2016
On July 1, five Islamic State fighters stormed the Holey Artisan Bakery in Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka, ultimately claiming 28 lives in a 12-hour siege. Before IS (ISIS, or Daesh) officially released the claim, the group's 'Amaq News Agency released ongoing updates from inside the restaurant through its Telegram channel.
The first message stated that IS "commandos" attacked the restaurant, which was "frequented by foreigners," and an update minutes later reported that over "20 people of different nationalities [were] killed." 'Amaq then increased the number of casualties to 24 with 40 wounded, and followed up with photos of the bloody scene inside the restaurant.
It was clear that this direct, uninterrupted communication the attackers had with 'Amaq was facilitated by a smartphone app. Five days later, The Times of Indiareported that the app was Threema, an end-to-end encrypted messaging service.
This reported confirmation of yet another messaging app used in a terror attack echoed other reports from this past year. The Paris attackers are known to havecommunicated with WhatsApp and Telegram apps prior to their operations on November 13, 2015. Najim Laachraoui, the bomb maker and co-attacker in the March 22, 2016 Brussels attacks, reportedly used Telegram, while fugitives connected to the aforementioned Paris attacks used WhatsApp, the mobile app Viber, and even Skype to talk to IS leaders in Syria before authorities located them.
As IS fighters and recruiters hunt for new followers on social media, they move their discussions to messaging apps, which are often promoted on their social media accounts. These apps, used or promoted by top IS recruiters Neil Prakash ("Abu Khalid al-Cambodi"), Mohamed Abdullahi Hassan ("Mujahid Miski"), and Farah Mohamed Shirdon ("Abu Usamah as-Somali"), include Wickr, Kik, SureSpot, ChatSecure, Telegram, and WhatsApp, among others.
Despite the group's strict enforcement of uniform activity on social media, there is a starkly contrasting lack of consistency in its choices regarding apps. Why?
Since the catastrophic expansion of IS in 2014, the terrorist group has been a complex but organized machine on social media—from its long stay on Twitter, temporary stays on lesser-known platforms like Friendica and Diaspora, and its recent exploitation of Telegram. And on these platforms, users demonstrate simultaneous "blackouts," responses, and use of talking points. But when it comes to IS attackers and coordinators' use of encrypted messaging programs, things suddenly get chaotic.
The use of apps by IS fighters, recruiters, and followers has been the group's main method of private communication and coordination in recent years. With an ever-growing menu of encrypted chat programs to choose from, IS-supporting recruiters, tech experts, and fighters have used, endorsed, and warned against almost any messaging app you can think of. However, in this array of messages and activity are contradictions. Though tech-savvy IS supporters have voiced privacy concerns with many of these apps, IS fighters, attackers, recruits, and migrants continue using them.
Consider the Facebook-owned instant messaging program WhatsApp, which is one of the more popular apps among IS members and recruiters. It was not surprising that even the Paris and Brussels attackers used this app. (Of note is that the aforementioned Paris attack fugitives used the app before it was encrypted—i.e. their communications could have been intercepted.)
Though many such individuals have used and shared their WhatsApp usernames as points of communication in recent years, there has always been a push against the program from within the IS community online. In January, the Twitter account of "Al-Khabir al-Taqni," a jihadi supporter and self-described security expert, ranked 33 mobile messaging applications from unsafe, moderately safe, safe, and safest. WhatsApp landed in the lowest of these tiers along with 15 other programs, all of which Al-Khabir advised against using: "We warn everyone to be cautious to even install these applications on phones…for they pose too great a risk."
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