Posted on 10/05/2001 5:02:12 PM PDT by Pokey78
A SCRIBBLED notebook belonging to a suspected master bomber is thought to contain secret codes that could help intelligence agencies to decipher messages sent by Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network. FBI and French computer experts are studying the Arabic script found hidden in the Paris apartment of Kamel Daoudi, a gifted computer student who was allegedly plotting suicide bomb attacks on the US Embassy in the city and Nato headquarters. A security expert said that if it proved to be an al-Qaeda codebook then its value could be compared with the discovery of the Germans’ Enigma code in the Second World War. FBI chiefs think terrorists cells have been using codes to disguise their electronic mail and to hide maps and instructions on sports chat rooms, pornographic websites and photographs sent over the Internet. Intelligence agencies have no doubt that al-Qaeda uses electronic camouflage to keep in touch with its network of agents. Pornographic websites were used to send messages because there are so many and that is the last place Islamic fundamentalists would visit. Al-Qaeda uses what is known as steganography to bury secret information inside other messages. Several of the September 11 hijackers were frequent visitors to libraries and Internet cafés in Florida where it is believed they were sent their coded final orders. They bought tickets online for the aircraft they seized, used the Internet to study whether crop-dusting aircraft could be used to deliver a chemical attack and sent hundreds of e-mails. One woman remembers Mohammed Atta, the hijack leader, spending a long time at a computer terminal in a public library downloading what looked like holiday photographs but which are now suspected of containing hidden messages. Alexis Debat, a former French Defence Ministry official who disclosed the book’s discovery yesterday, said that intelligence teams “may be able to go back to the messages that they may have intercepted already but couldn’t do anything with”. British security agencies are understood to be investigating whether Mr Daoudi had access to computers while he was in hiding in Leicester for a week. He fled there from Paris hours after the US attacks when he was tipped off that he faced imminent arrest. The electronic traffic used by terrorists was already troubling the FBI in the months leading up to September 11. Militant groups have been using websites for recruitment and fundraising. More worrying is the suspicion that they are using message-scrambling techniques to plan and communicate in relative anonymity. Subpoenas and search warrants have been handed to major Internet companies such as AOL, Microsoft, Earthlink, Yahoo!, Google, NetZero, Travelocity and many smaller providers. Dan Greenfield, vice-president of Earthlink, said a warrant issued under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act allowed authorities to monitor e-mail, chatrooms and websites of one of their users. The most solid evidence may lie buried in the Internet providers’ log files. These can be used to track the dates and times of log-ins for each account and may be able to help the FBI to locate the computers used. So many “digital clues” have been sent to the FBI that its computer forensic team working on the 11th floor of their headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue have had to draft in an extra 50 experts from other government agencies. Their role is to uncover on-line clues as to how al-Qaeda operates and who its remaining “sleepers” might be in the West, but also to guard against electronic mail being used to launch another suicide attack. Al-Qaeda’s agents are believed to use encrypted e-mails where the person receiving the message alone has the electronic key to open it. That agent would pass on that electronic key only to those he wanted to contact through encrypted e-mail. During the past three weeks federal officials have visited libraries from Florida to Virginia, culling log-in sheets and seizing computer equipment on which the hijackers and their associates logged time. Mr Daoudi, 27, who has been deported to France from England, is thought to have spent time in training camps in Afghanistan before returning to France this summer. Police searching his apartment where the codebook was hidden are said to have found the frames of cellular phones and dismantled alarm clocks, leading them to believe that someone there was working on a detonation mechanism. His apartment in Essonne was previously occupied by Djamel Beghal, a suspect arrested in Dubai, whom French investigators say revealed the names of Mr Daoudi and other accomplices.
On a lighter note, I'll never view porn in the same way again...
This may scare people more then a potential biological attack!
This is a hot, steaming load of bovine excrement.
Sorry, but the value of the Enigma code came not only from being able to break it, but also from them NOT KNOWING we were able to break their code.
Now I can tell my spouse I am scanning the (porno) for codes...if we all hooked up using our computers on the network (rather like we do now searching for the ultimate porno image) we can crack the code....
Like the SETI program....
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