ISIS: Social networking sites and games in service of terrorism (Part 3)

Recent years have witnessed an evolution in the methods of ISIS in communicating with its supporters and followers, using all the means of modern technology, which is a fertile field in which the terrorist organization flourishes as it pleases following the defeats it suffered recently on all fronts and areas of engagement, as technology was used in propaganda and recruiting followers, fundraising and planning new terrorist attacks.

ISIS was able to use video games to communicate with its supporters as a safe means of communication, especially PlayStation, and this is confirmed by reports from the US National Security Agency (NSA) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which formed anti-terrorism teams inside some electronic games to monitor the possibilities and ways of ISIS and other terrorist groups infiltrating through it.

The terrorist organization planned and carried out the Paris attacks on November 13, 2015, which resulted in the death of more than 127 people and more than 300 wounded, taking advantage of PlayStation 4, which is something that Belgian Interior Minister Jan Jambon had warned about three days before the Paris attacks, as he said that terrorists prefer to use PlayStation 4 because it is more secure than WhatsApp.

Cybersecurity experts confirmed that these games are used to spy on users and communicate between terrorist elements because they provide secure means of communication through which reciprocal messages can be sent that are less likely to be tracked or their source accurately known, as well as voice chat and direct communication through specific games.

ISIS also used new applications on the internet that allow users to transmit their messages to an unlimited number of members through encrypted mobile phone applications such as Telegram, an application to send text messages with encryption from one end to the other, which means it is impossible to know the identity of its users, increasing its attractiveness to terrorists. Indeed, terrorist organizations have switched from social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter to Telegram.

ISIS and other terrorist organizations have also used the dark web to recruit fighters, exchange views, and plan future attacks, as it provides security for terrorist elements because their communications are secure and difficult to penetrate.

An official statistic prepared by the US Department of Justice in 2017 showed that a large number of firearms were sold using the dark web via encrypted messages and pseudonyms. The British Science and Technology Laboratory also warned in 2018 of the increasing capabilities of terrorist organizations to use the encrypted dark web to recruit extremists, achieve material gains, and conceal their identities and contacts. The United Nations also warned against terrorist organizations using the dark web in order to search for tools to create and distribute weapons of mass destruction.

ISIS also uses modern means to train its supporters on cyber technology, including how to take advantage of virtual networks to protect their personal digital safety on social media and avoid surveillance, as well as urging its supporters to learn how to wage moral jihad through video lessons on advanced piracy tools such as Linux and Metasploit, electronic deception and open source intelligence tools, despite the attempts of Google, Facebook and Twitter to obstruct and prevent their suspicious plans, but the terrorist organization is still one step ahead of them, so they benefit from their new cross-platform skills, grabbing attention on large platforms and coding interested followers before deleting their posts.

ISIS's strategies include infiltrating app monitoring loopholes to maintain its long-term presence, especially on Telegram, by using names with keywords and long random names for public channels to evade detection by search engines, as well as constantly changing links to private groups so that it is difficult to keep up with any attempts to remove them and form backup channels for each new group, in addition to keeping two separate channels (one public and one private) with the same name. This is the perfect choice for them because it allows the deployment of multimedia besides providing countless communication options of open channels, private groups and highly encrypted confidential chats, as well as media archiving and options to save large files, which makes the application a pivotal link in the larger framework of ISIS’s digital communications strategy.