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Home » About Norwich » SGS Today »
News Article
Mobile Secrets, a mobile phone encryption tool, is just one of many hi-tech tools being used by Islamic extremists [Image courtesy of Jeff Bardin].
Information assurance graduate exposes the dark side of the web
by Dirk Van Susteren, correspondent
© Oct. 16, 2009 Norwich University Office of Communications
Facebook, the website that was once the sole province of gossipy college kids, is now used by tens of millions of people around the world.
Among them are Islamic extremists. Across cyber space, jihadists also use Twitter, iPhones and Blackberries, YouTube, e-books, PDFs, word documents and podcasts to spread their messages of violence.
"They use the Internet to help build a worldwide community and to spread their own perverted style of Islam," said Jeff Bardin, a graduate of Norwich University's Master of Science in Information Assurance (MSIA) program who spoke on the topic of cyber terrorism in a September 2009 "webinar" for Norwich's School of Graduate Studies website.
Bardin has worked for the U.S. Army, Air Force, the National Security Agency and several corporations, including Lockheed Corp. and Investors Bank & Trust. He is currently chief security officer at ITSolutions, based out of Silver Spring, Md., and also has his own business, Treadstone 71, through which he conducts research.
Islamic extremists are becoming increasingly creative at using the Web to promote their cause, said Bardin, who understands Arabic and several other languages.
"They use standard software packages available off the Internet," he said. "They dress up their sites with logos, and they offer links to a variety of high-end videos. They have formats available to pretty much any media out there, including video phones."
Bardin said jihadists produce an array of online training manuals that teach how to manufacture poisons, fly aircraft, devise improvised explosive devices, communicate in code and conduct kidnappings. The sites sometimes include simple lists of instructions and warnings. The kidnapping site, for example, reminds potential kidnappers never to look at women hostages and not to be affected by their victims' suffering.
One website for would-be assassins offers a "pecking order of whom to attack and when," said Bardin. It places Jews and Christians at the top of the list and further prioritizes them according to their occupations—for example, whether they are businessmen, politicians or in the military. "It's a targeting of humans that is meant to spread fear."
According to Bardin, the sites are becoming more sophisticated, with messages increasingly delivered in English in an attempt at recruiting disaffected Western Muslims.
Bardin said many of the jihadists involved in Internet activities studied in Western universities, where they learned the fundamentals of encryption and how to hack into computer systems to obtain the programs needed to secure and fund their own operations.
Jihadist messages and information move freely and instantaneously across cyber space. "A message goes up, and it immediately goes viral," he said. "It is amazing how fast [information] goes out–blogs, wikis … This stuff takes off in many formats in a life of its own."
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"Between November 2008 and June 2009, the number of Hezbollah-related groups on Facebook jumped from 118 to 311."
— MDY graduate Danielle Kiedaisch |
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The U.S. could shut down many jihadist Web sites and disrupt other forms of cyber communications, Bardin said, but generally the policy has been to "mine them from an intelligence perspective."
"If you shut them down, how can you learn?" he asked.
Bardin grew up in New York, studied at Trinity and Middlebury colleges, both in Vermont, and at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, Calif. He received his MSIA in June 2009. He said he sought the degree because it will help him achieve the goal of teaching information assurance someday.
Bardin said the program broadened his understanding of Internet security, providing him with an ability "to maintain perseverance in the face of difficulties associated with normal research [and] with the difficulty multiplier of most of it being in a foreign language."
Bardin declined to comment on his methodology, saying any discussion of the subject might compromise his current efforts.
Information assurance is not the only field where students study terrorism. Danielle Kiedaisch of Charlotte, N.C., graduated in June 2009 from Norwich's Master of Arts in Diplomacy program with a concentration in international terrorism. For her capstone project, Kiedaisch studied how the terrorist group Hezbollah uses the Internet.
"Between November 2008 and June 2009, the number of Hezbollah-related groups on Facebook jumped from 118 to 311," said Kiedaisch.
The group also created its own video game, Special Force, in which players assume the role of Hezbollah fighters targeting Israeli troops and are presented with opportunities to assassinate Israeli political and military leaders, she said.
The game serves as just one example of the ways terrorists attempt to shape young minds and recruit new followers.
Bardin emphasized that extremists are probably not capable of waging all-out cyber attacks aimed at crippling U.S. military networks, utility or transportation systems or financial networks.
Even so, he cautioned, "This is definitely a very serious business. … This is not jihad for dummies. They are effectively using the tools we created for training, recruitment and propaganda."
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