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  • #2172963

    The IT capabilities of Bin Laden

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    by robo_dev ·

    It has been reported that ‘hundreds’ of specialists are digging through the dozens of computer hard drives recovered from Bin Laden’s compound.

    I assume he ran Windows? What version?

    Did he use project management software or perhaps a DBMS to track and manage his various tasks and projects?

    What video surveillance system did he use? I would think the video footage of two blackhawk helicopters landing and a Navy Seal team deploying in your front yard would be neat to watch. I would assume they grabbed the DVR with that footage on it.

    Whole disk encryption?

    Anti-virus software?

    Of course his house did not have voice or broadband service, but perhaps he was tethering a laptop to a satellite phone? Slow as molasses, but secure from surveillance.

    A random thought would be if you’re the world’s most wanted bad guy, you would perhaps install some sort of thermite-drive-melter on all your data, and put it in a room where it all goes boom unless you enter the correct code in 15 seconds or so? It does not seem like he had a good BCP plan if all his data was captured.

    Does Al Qaeda have an IT staff? A help desk?

    I would suppose if an IT guy were to screw something up, the punishment would involve much more than a bad performance review?

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    • #2894357

      Just pure conjecture

      by jamesrl ·

      In reply to The IT capabilities of Bin Laden

      I would bet that Al Qaeda distrusts computers and use them as little as possible.

      I would think they probably never connected to the internet from the compound, even from satellite phones, for fear that NSA pattern matching might flag a large amount of encrypted traffic originating in one place.

      Instead, I think they do things on laptops, and USB keys. Couriers take the USB keys and go to internet cafes in bigger cities many miles away, and send messages and files, probably encrypted with PGP. They would also use code words for operations and operatives, assuming that eventually some of the files would be intercepted. Dates would only be referred to obliquely.

      I do recall that some Al Qaeda laptops were captured during the initial invasion of Afghanistan.

      • #2894351

        They did find ‘hundreds’ of USB flash drives

        by robo_dev ·

        In reply to Just pure conjecture

        Therefore a way to track terrorists is not to follow the money, but to see who buys a lot of flash drives. 🙂

        “The US assault force that killed bin Laden hauled away about five computers, 10 hard drives and more than 100 storage devices from his hideout in Pakistan, a US official said.”

        • #2894336

          You can bet they didn’t just boot those laptops…

          by ansugisalas ·

          In reply to They did find ‘hundreds’ of USB flash drives

          I think a demolitions expert disassembled them, just in case there’d be thermite surprises.

          Draconic security measures are hard to deal with… laptops are hard to lock up in a self-destruct vault – if you want to actually use them 😉
          He should’ve gone for the Private Cloud 😀 – kept the data on a server in a self-destruct vault, and pull the data in and out of there using dumb terminals. Just have to make sure the dumb terminals flush their cache well enough.

          Good for the world he didn’t, though.

        • #2894326

          Thats not so different

          by jamesrl ·

          In reply to You can bet they didn’t just boot those laptops…

          From some organizations I know….

          At one place I dealt with, you turned in your laptops HD every day. If you had to take work home you got a special work away HD. All important files were on the server only, and the server was in a very secure location. The laptops were still encrypted, just because they could, and I guess in case someone wanted to comb the cache for cookies and other info. If you took work home it had to be loaded onto a secure portable device.

          And this wasn’t a spy agency….

        • #2894324

          Don’t tell me…

          by ansugisalas ·

          In reply to Thats not so different

          a Tax agency? Who else could be so draconic? 😉
          But government agencies are often relatively inept, so maybe a company with a hardcore R&D component is more likely.
          After all, the secrets they keep ARE their bottom line.

        • #2892869

          Intriguing

          by nexs ·

          In reply to They did find ‘hundreds’ of USB flash drives

          That it is. 5 computers AND 10 hard drives, or does each computer have two hard drives? Maybe they were gettign their RAID on! Nothing worse than losing your terror gantt charts due to file corruption!

          What throws me is why they’d keep hundreds of ‘storage devices’ in one place…

        • #2892861

          Two possibilities… or a combination of the two.

          by ansugisalas ·

          In reply to Intriguing

          Either they had external HDs, or someone in the SEALs has a very dept hand at removing HDs from desktops and servers. That’s one IT guy you don’t want to mess with 😉

          As for all the memory sticks, they probably had a logistics bottleneck problem – one of the drawbacks of being hunted by half the world’s intelligence agencies.
          So, on one hand they had to keep a stockpile, in case they have a few months of delivery failure, and on the other hand they might have had a pileup due to lack of outgoing couriers.

          Last thing is, they might have sent out the things in multiply redundant sets, each courier carrying the identical sets of sticks, so that if one guy drops, the package still gets there.
          The couriers probably carried the sticks inside their suicide charges, that way the evidence doesn’t fall into enemy hands so easily – especially if it’s booby trapped and has a dead man button or vitals monitor.

        • #2892797
        • #2892671

          You’ve got all the answers

          by nexs ·

          In reply to Two possibilities… or a combination of the two.

          …Should we be worried?

        • #2892665

          Only if the bad guys offer me more money than the good…

          by ansugisalas ·

          In reply to You’ve got all the answers

          😀

        • #2892617

          you would…

          by jck ·

          In reply to Only if the bad guys offer me more money than the good…

          buy more flash drives? 😀 lol

        • #2892584

          Don’t forget

          by nexs ·

          In reply to Only if the bad guys offer me more money than the good…

          To build a secret underground lair!

        • #2893132

          Oh no, no underground lairs…

          by ansugisalas ·

          In reply to Only if the bad guys offer me more money than the good…

          I plan to run my operation out of a shoe-shine stand right in front of the Pentagon.
          Or the presidential palace of Iran, depending on who pays my bills 😉

      • #2894337

        Sounds about right.

        by ansugisalas ·

        In reply to Just pure conjecture

        I also don’t think Al Qaeda is a Top-Down organization.
        They could never pull off what they did if they had to send specific orders to individual cells.
        I may be wrong, but since 9/11 I’ve been pretty sure that Al Qaeda is a cell breeder network – arranging training, providing intel sharing.
        Like a cancer tumor sending out metastasis nodules; the nodules are fire-and-forget (sort of… you still send them christmas cards, money, inspirational tapes on terrorist best practices, etc.) and are not controlled by the mother tumor.
        Dangerous.

    • #2892884

      He sucked.

      by seanferd ·

      In reply to The IT capabilities of Bin Laden

      But management just wouldn’t let him go. He was supposed to be monitoring the database servers and doing backups mostly, but he would hang around the help desk department annoying this one woman. She filed a harassment report with HR, but that never went anywhere. A couple of others at the help desk took to peeing in his coffee, but he didn’t seem to notice.

      Ask him to properly terminate an Ethernet cable (because they were never right the first time) or organize, label, and tie up the patch cables on a new piece of equipment, and he’d just give you this funny sideways look. And don’t get me started on the time he was supposed to help with moving one of our datacenters to a new physical location.

      Overtime? Never missed it, but he still wouldn’t do a damn thing.

      • #2892862

        But gotta hand it to him…

        by ansugisalas ·

        In reply to He sucked.

        He’s managing to do an even better job from under three miles of ocean water – since he’s done harassing…

        • #2892793

          Noes!

          by seanferd ·

          In reply to But gotta hand it to him…

          Zombie bin Laden with mad IT skillz! Do not want!

        • #2892641

          sounds like a punk-band name

          by robo_dev ·

          In reply to Noes!

          ‘Zombie bin laden’.

          Had never considered idea of terrorist-zombies before. I would suppose at least they would be easy to spot.

          Based on the amount of data that has been captured from the raid, it would appear that an effective business continuity plan was not in place. It would be logical to plan for the possibility of an armed assault on your residence if you are the most wanted man in the world.

        • #2892640

          Nothing ‘logical’

          by boxfiddler ·

          In reply to sounds like a punk-band name

          about extreme zealotry…

        • #2892606

          Who needs a business plan,

          by seanferd ·

          In reply to sounds like a punk-band name

          when one is simply waiting for the will of god to provide it?

          (Not intended to be a factual statement.)

        • #2892552

          But probably closer to fact

          by nicknielsen ·

          In reply to Who needs a business plan,

          than we’d like to consider…

    • #2892875

      I imagine..

      by rayfoxxe ·

      In reply to The IT capabilities of Bin Laden

      I imagine that the IT office of Bin Laden’s organization would go something like how the show The IT Crowd show the IT guys what sorts of hell and stupidity they put through! xD

    • #2893164

      Evidently…

      by jck ·

      In reply to The IT capabilities of Bin Laden

      ole Osama had enough tech to get a vast array of pron in his compound.

      Just saw a Fox News headline saying they found tons of it.

      Such a devout Muslim…wasn’t he? B-)

      • #2893160

        Fox News? Really?

        by jamesrl ·

        In reply to Evidently…

        Do you recall the story a few years back about embedding messages into .jpgs? I wonder if thats what they really found.

        • #2893150

          I don’t remember that story…

          by jck ·

          In reply to Fox News? Really?

          And, I technically can’t confirm or deny any personal knowledge on the subject. I was told not to. B-)

        • #2893117

          I remember that

          by av . ·

          In reply to Fox News? Really?

          Steganography. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography

          Probably _porn would be the perfect vehicle for that. It might be written off by most Western people as just a little something to kick start the engine.

          AV

        • #2893037

          And what a tough job that would be:

          by robo_dev ·

          In reply to Fox News? Really?

          “Umm, agent Jones, here’s a stack of porn. Go any study it for a week and tell us if you see any embedded data in it…. :)”

        • #2893029

          It may get hard, for some…

          by ansugisalas ·

          In reply to And what a tough job that would be:

          So to speak.

        • #2893018

          Or… even more amazingly

          by nexs ·

          In reply to Fox News? Really?

          Embedding IMAGES into .jpegs….

          Now, THAT is a skill.

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