Visits to the White House Now Top Secret Information

Informative - White House visitor logs declared top secret :

"The five-page document dated May 17 declares that all entry and exit data on White House visitors belongs to the White House as presidential records rather than to the Secret Service as agency records. Therefore, the agreement states, the material is not subject to public disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.

In the past, Secret Service logs have revealed the comings and goings of various White House visitors, including Monica Lewinsky during the Clinton administration."

I thought that's always been the case anyway, but it closes a loophole that could result in potentially embarrassing future developments -- or less accountability. Time will show. More info.

Sunday's Portion of Hahaha

While patiently waiting for the future adventures of Monica Furious, I came across a nice collection of cartoons. I'm sure you'll find these two very entertaining - "The Disabled Cookies" and "The Spam Prison".

Web Economy Buzz Words Generator

Whether looking for VC cash, or having a quota to meet being a salesman, some of these may come handy or pretty much make someone's morning.

Here are my favorite:
e-enable integrated mindshare
empower impactful infomediaries
architect compelling ROI
productize 24/7 e-services
recontextualize compelling ROI

Doesn't matter how well you project your success, if you don't have an elevator pitch worth someone's attention span, than you don't know what you're doing, but marely relying on the web economy's state of buzziness -- this is another one. Try some copywriting exercises too.

Four Years of Application Pen Testing Statistics

Invaluable :

"The article presents a unique opportunity to take a peek into the usually secluded data regarding the actual risk posed to Web applications. It shows a constant increase in risk level over the four years and an overwhelming overall percentage of applications susceptible to information theft (over 57%), direct financial damage (over 22%), denial of service (11%) and execution of arbitrary code (over 8%). The article analyzes results of first time penetration tests as well as repeat tests (retests) in order to evaluate the evolution of application security within Web applications over time."

Lots of figures respecting your busy schedule, and the authors' data pointing out how the lack of repeated testing, and the "security as a one time purchase" mentality, actually means a false sense of security. Having a secured web application doesn't mean the end user won't be susceptible to a client side attack, and having a secured end user doesn't mean the web application itself will be secured, ironic, isn't it? Perhaps prioritizing the platforms to be audited, namely the major web properties, could protect the always unaware end user to a certain extend -- from himself. Related comments.

Foreign Intelligence Services and U.S Technology Espionage

Talking about globalization, like it or not, perceive it as a threat to national security or a key economic benefit, it's happening and you cannot stop it. Nothing else will add more long-term value to a business or a military force than innovation, and when it comes to the U.S military's self-efficiency in R&D, it's pretty evident they've managed to achieve the balance and still dictate the rhythm.

The methods used aren't nothing new :

"The report says that foreign spies use a wide variety of techniques, ranging from setting up front companies that make phony business proposals to hacking computers containing information on lasers, missiles and other systems. But the most popular methods of attempting to obtain information was a simple “informational request” (34.2%) and attempts to purchase the information (32.2%). Attempts were also made using personal relationships, searching the Internet, making contacts at conferences and seminars, cultural exchanges."

What's new is the actual report in question - "Technology Collection Trends in the U.S. Defense Industry". OSINT is also an important trends gathering factor, and so is corporate espionage through old-fashioned malware approaches or direct intrusions, and it's great the report is considering the ease of execution on these and the possible network vulnerabilities in the contractors :

"DSS also anticipates an increase in suspicious internet activity against cleared defense contractors. The potential gain from even one successful computer intrusion makes it an attractive, relatively lowrisk, option for any country seeking access to sensitive information stored on U.S. computer networks. The risk to sensitive information on U.S. computer systems will increase as more countries develop capabilities to exploit those systems."

Then again, what's produced by the U.S but cannot be obtained from there, will be from other much more insecure third-party purchasers -- how did Hezbollah got hold of night vision gear? Or even worse, by obtaining the leftovers from a battle conflict for further clues.

The bottom line question - is the illegal transfer of U.S technology threat higher than the indirect leakage of U.S educated students taking their IQ back home, while feeling offended by their inability to make an impact were they a U.S citizen?

Technical Analysis of the Skype Trojan

During December yet another trojan started making rounds, this time dubbed the Skype trojan -- SEO conspiracy. Was the trojan exploiting a zero day vulnerability in the Skype protocol? Absolutely not, as it was basically using Skype's messaging service as a propagation vector, thus, the gullible and in a Christmas mood end user was still supposed to interact with the malware by clicking on the link. And with required end user's interaction, the possibilities for major outbreaks were very limited. Perhaps the only development worth mentioning is the malware author's use of commercial anti-cracking software -- NTKrnl Secure Suite -- to make the unpacking harder, or at least theoretically improve the time needed to do so compared to using publicly obtainable, and much more easily detectable packers.

Two days ago, Nicolas Brulez from Websense Security Labs released a technical analysis of the trojan itself, and here's your proof for the logical possiblities of specific copy'n'paste malware modules :

"The main protection scheme I faced was the copy pasted from my Honeynet Scan of The month 33 Challenge. The breakpoint detection was 100% identical, even the numbers I had generated randomly. More importantly, the technique I had written based on SEH + cpuid/rdtsc was also copied. The only difference was that they used the EDX register to compare the timing.

Copy pasting protection code without even changing it a little, provides no security at all and allowed me to unpack it even quicker. (gotta love looking at code you wrote 2 years ago)

It apparently included some other tricks, that made it a little harder to unpack, and the file looked like it was corrupted at some point. In order to debug it and comment my disassembly in a readable way, I opted to use a userland debugger, and thus had to write a little shellcode for injection into the packed malware. Basically, it entailed abusing Windows Exception Handling (using a hook), to get past every check. After that, one could attach his favorite userland debugger to the malware and eventually find the Original Entry Point. Although the imports rebuilding for this protector isn't hard at all, it wasn't mandatory in this executable as it only imported one function: ExitProcess"

And while the average malware coder is using commercial tools to make his releases harder to analyze, the almighty jihadist is still living in the Hacker Defender world.

Were you Tracking Santa's Location?

As usual, NORAD were, but there's one minor issue to keep in mind and that's how during the Christmas and New Year holidays Santa Claus is the most successfully targeted victim of identity theft. Hopefully they were tracking the real Santa through the real Rudolph as the weakest link :

"The satellites have infrared sensors, meaning they can detect heat. When a rocket or missile is launched, a tremendous amount of heat is produced - enough for the satellites to detect. Rudolph's nose gives off an infrared signature similar to a missile launch. The satellites can detect Rudolph's bright red nose with practically no problem. With so many years of experience, NORAD has become good at tracking aircraft entering North America, detecting worldwide missile launches and tracking the progress of Santa, thanks to Rudolph."

All rest is a commodity but attitude.

Phishing Domains Hosting Multiple Phishing Sites

Well, well, well. What do we got here? Couple of interesting domains hosting phishing sites of multiple banks for you to take a look at, or at the cached versions to be precise. What's worth mentioning is the rise of phishing sites using the much more easily and anonymously registered .biz ; .info ; .name domains. However, the first part of these is related to 211.137.13.131 :

baldwindy.name
leqwas.biz
noosfo.biz
rsytarai.biz, another one

Multiple hosting:
201.195.156.13
lugers.biz
loreta.biz
tuker.info

Now, try searching the entire .biz space for "Bank Austria Creditanstalt". The good news is that even the average anti-phishing toolbar is capable of detecting these. The bad news is that customers aren't currently using such toolbars as much as they should. And with phishing toolkits lowering the entry barriers in this space by making it easy for wannabe phishers to "make an impact", we've got an efficient problem to deal with.

Google and Yahoo's Shareholders Against Censorship

Collective bargaining tends to achieve the necessary echo effect :

"The New York City Pension Fund wants shareholders to force Google and Yahoo to refuse Internet censorship requests by governments. The fund, which owns nearly $280 million worth of Google shares and $110 million in Yahoo shares, filed resolutions for shareholders at the two Internet companies to vote on at the next shareholder meetings. The resolution states that U.S.-based technology companies "that operate in countries controlled by authoritarian governments have an obligation to comply with the principles of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights."

Go, go, go, shareholders. So that by the time censorship ends up where it's most aggressive for the time being, we can feel proud of ourselves living in a World 2.0, a world in which we all have universal access to the collective wisdom of everyone. Wait, that used to be part of both, Google's and Yahoo's mission statements once. From another perspective, the companies themselves have their hands tied by the overal Western world's revenues generation greed, and outsourcing inspirations in China's booming economy. But pretending it isn't happening is like ignoring the existence of the thought police these days.

Le Cyber Jihad

It's very nice to see that Marc Olanié is still keeping track of my articles. Here are several more worth Babelfishing.

Top Ten Scams of 2006

ConsumerAffairs.com did a great job in summarizing the top 10 scams of 2006 "from the roughly 50,000 consumer complaints we've processed in the past year". Here's what the gullible consumer complains about :

01. Fake Lottery Scam

ConsumerAffairs.com reported on one case in which an elderly Kansas man lost over $300,000. You should have Asked Merrill to point you to the "tickets" with the highest probability of success, but it's too late for you now. Baby booming gullibility in action.

02. Phishing-Vishing Scams

I'm very surprised it's the second and not the first complain, but how come? Consumers aren't even aware they got scammed at the first place. Do yourself a favour, and don't discuss your financial details with automated systems. Think before you act, it's like deciding whether to enter a singles bar or not.

03. Phony Job Scam

"Any employment offered online without a formal interview, no matter where it originates, should be treated with skepticism," said Arkansas Attorney General Mike Beebe, who investigated one of these scams in 2006. Thank you, you've just ruined the entire virtual telecommuting concept. I'm aware of another type of scam where fake job postings seek to harvest as much personal information from applications as possible. Other practices are also used.

04. Negative Option Scams

Look for the ASTERISKS, it should be somewhere around the FREE proposal.

05. Nigerian 419 Scams

People falling into this one, are the type of people suffering from the "rich-uncle complex". You don't know his exact wealth, but you secretly hope that on a sunny day a handsome, and of course charging by the minute laywer will bring the news you've been subconsciously expecting your entire life. Think for real and forget about the Internet. Would a complete stranger offer you millions of dollars because he has no one else to give the money to, or cannot open up a bank account for themselves?

06. Pump & Dump Scam
Rainer Böhme and Thorsten Holz evaluated the situation.

07. Bogus Fuel Saving Devices
Make an analogy with washing powder/tablets/liquid who's actively advertised as an "energy saver" due to its sophisticated technology that doesn't require hot water, when it happens to be a commodity and if you're going to be saving energy from it, then you've either watched a movie about the Third World, or are very desperate.

08. Grandparents Scam
An elderly person is targeted by the scammer who calls and says something like, "It's me, grandpa." The elderly person will respond, thinking it's one of their grandchildren. Unbelieavable, and perhaps another reason to keep in touch with your grand-parents more often, so they could at least recognize your voice.

09. Oprah Ticket Scam

In case you fall victim into this one, you're not just bored to the bottom of your brain, but a potential guest at Oprah's show with the unique ability to explain how this scam ruined your life, but later on helped your meet the person of your life, where else if not in an online scam discussion group. I feel you.

10. craigslist Scam

It's like the Yellow Pages, some postings are so automatically generated that they happen to be a waste of time, but hopefully not money, so be aware.

Terrorism Cartoon Contest

Why is it that even with my extemely well developed sense of black humour, I'm still not laughting? Here's another contest collection, again hosted by Iran, this time on the denial of the Holocaust. Thankfully, my history teacher taught me otherwise, and the No Such Agency folks have the complete coverage in their indispensable "Eavesdropping on Hell : Historical Guide to Western Communications Intelligence and the Holocaust 1939-1945".

Busy Wednesday

Wednesday, Wednesday, so good to blog.

BuzZzZ Generation

Just a few of the sites/blogs that have recently featured my posts exposing the low lifes :

- Linuxsecurity.com - "Analysis of the Technical Mujahid - Issue One" ; "Current State of Internet Jihad"
- Informit.com - "How do terrorists spell rootkit in Farsi?"
- Defensetech.org - "Rapid fire 1" ; "Rapid fire 2"
- Net-security.org - "Analysis of the Technical Mujahid - Issue One"
- Cyberia.org.il

Interested in knowing how was Al Qaeda using the Internet before 9/11 with all the multimedia released back then? Moreover, have you ever wanted to take a peek at some of the most recent tools-of-the-trade malware authors use on a daily basis? Stay tuned for the Christmas Full Disclosure Series summarizing some of my recent findings, and beyond!

Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality. Dalai Lama

Google Translate Hack

Google seems to have fixed this one already, but trying it the other way around you can still feel what BETA is all about. My guess is that translations of unknown words or combinations better return a clustered result from the Web, than no result at all, which is exactly what is happening in this case.

Analysis of the Technical Mujahid - Issue One

An OSINT conducted, a tax payer's buck saved somewhere.

Last week, the mainstream media was abuzz with the release of the first jihadist e-zine discussing hacking, information hiding, of course in between the lines of radical propaganda, whereas no one was providing more information on the exact nature of the articles, but the SITE institute. So I decided to take a peek at the Technical Mujahid for myself, in order to break through the FUD, or not see the "threat sliced on pieces" by different news sources.

According to the official release, the magazine's download locations seem to be slowly becoming useless, besides the Rapidshare link which seems to be still fully working -- the Internet Haganah reasonably points out that owning a copy of it might get you in trouble in some countries, so don't.

Despite that I don't speak any Arabic languages, and I pressume neither do you, the e-zine is rich on visual materials and you can pretty much grasp the big picture. Namely, that it's practical compared to theoretical source of information, it's targeting mixed audiences, and it's keeping it very simple. So I've decided to compile a summary of the key sections and topics in the articles covered for future references. In one sentence - its simplicity is not to be feared, but its practicality.

The release of the magazine is an indication of the ongoing use of the Internet for mass-education -- economies of scale -- through videos and visual howto's, but much more advanced information related to information security could be obtained from public sources. The cellphone triangulation in Iraq, and the demonstration of Hacker Defender are worth mentioning, but overall, concepts such as information warfare or online PSYOPS remain unstructured and abstract ideas to the average jihadist - for now. Notice the multimedia file used as an example for the alternate data stream as well and draw up the conclusions on your own.

Don't exclude the logical possibility of on purposely disinforming the general public and various intel folks across the world on a relatively primitive inforwar practices such as using PGP and alternate data streams.

Here are the articles themselves :

01. Article One - Alternate Data Streams - steganography example given, rootkits - hacker defender covered, examples provided, abomosab.jpg used as an example

02. Article Two - Satellite Communications and the importance of GPS, handheld GPS, explains triangulation, mentions satellite imagery's power, and satellite transfer speeds, mentions 1575 and 1227 as carrier frequencies and Digital Sequence Spread Specturm - DSSS, mentions handheld GPS receiver, includes photos of 3G data card, laptop. It then discusses a locked device with a "WARNING" sign on it

03. Article Three - Visual HOWTO on Install VMware

04. Article Four - Article on digital media players, the different formats, subtitles, and the NTSC and PAL systems, recording basics as it looks like

05. Article Five - Introduction to PGP - Zimmerman is quoted, explanation of the RSA algorithm, recommending the use of PGP Whole Disk, features warning message that trial versions of PGP Whole Disk will self-decrypt

And SITE Institute's comments on the propaganda side in the introduction and conclusion :

"For future issues, the editors urge members of the jihadist Internet community to submit articles in the field of technology for publishing. They write: “My kind, technical Mujahid brother, the magnitude of responsibility which is placed upon you is equal to what you know in the regard of information. Do not underestimate anything that you know; perhaps a small article that you write and publish can benefit one Mujahid in the Cause of Allah or can protect a brother of yours in Allah. This way you will gain the great reward with the permission of Allah."

If you perceive the Technical Mujahid magazine as a threat to the national security of any country, old issues of Phrack magazine must be giving you the nightmares.

Have a productive week everyone, and stay informed!

Analysis of the Technical Mujahid - Issue One

An OSINT conducted, a tax payer's buck saved somewhere.

Last week, the mainstream media was abuzz with the release of the first jihadist e-zine discussing hacking, information hiding, of course in between the lines of radical propaganda, whereas no one was providing more information on the exact nature of the articles, but the SITE institute. So I decided to take a peek at the Technical Mujahid for myself, in order to break through the FUD, or not see the "threat sliced on pieces" by different news sources.

According to the official release, the magazine's download locations seem to be slowly becoming useless, besides the Rapidshare link which seems to be still fully working -- the Internet Haganah reasonably points out that owning a copy of it might get you in trouble in some countries, so don't.

Despite that I don't speak any Arabic languages, and I pressume neither do you, the e-zine is rich on visual materials and you can pretty much grasp the big picture. Namely, that it's practical compared to theoretical source of information, it's targeting mixed audiences, and it's keeping it very simple. So I've decided to compile a summary of the key sections and topics in the articles covered for future references. In one sentence - its simplicity is not to be feared, but its practicality.

The release of the magazine is an indication of the ongoing use of the Internet for mass-education -- economies of scale -- through videos and visual howto's, but much more advanced information related to information security could be obtained from public sources. The cellphone triangulation in Iraq, and the demonstration of Hacker Defender are worth mentioning, but overall, concepts such as information warfare or online PSYOPS remain unstructured and abstract ideas to the average jihadist - for now. Notice the multimedia file used as an example for the alternate data stream as well and draw up the conclusions on your own.

Don't exclude the logical possibility of on purposely disinforming the general public and various intel folks across the world on a relatively primitive inforwar practices such as using PGP and alternate data streams.

Here are the articles themselves :

01. Article One - Alternate Data Streams - steganography example given, rootkits - hacker defender covered, examples provided, abomosab.jpg used as an example

02. Article Two - Satellite Communications and the importance of GPS, handheld GPS, explains triangulation, mentions satellite imagery's power, and satellite transfer speeds, mentions 1575 and 1227 as carrier frequencies and Digital Sequence Spread Specturm - DSSS, mentions handheld GPS receiver, includes photos of 3G data card, laptop. It then discusses a locked device with a "WARNING" sign on it

03. Article Three - Visual HOWTO on Install VMware

04. Article Four - Article on digital media players, the different formats, subtitles, and the NTSC and PAL systems, recording basics as it looks like

05. Article Five - Introduction to PGP - Zimmerman is quoted, explanation of the RSA algorithm, recommending the use of PGP Whole Disk, features warning message that trial versions of PGP Whole Disk will self-decrypt

And SITE Institute's comments on the propaganda side in the introduction and conclusion :

"For future issues, the editors urge members of the jihadist Internet community to submit articles in the field of technology for publishing. They write: “My kind, technical Mujahid brother, the magnitude of responsibility which is placed upon you is equal to what you know in the regard of information. Do not underestimate anything that you know; perhaps a small article that you write and publish can benefit one Mujahid in the Cause of Allah or can protect a brother of yours in Allah. This way you will gain the great reward with the permission of Allah."

If you perceive the Technical Mujahid magazine as a threat to the national security of any country, old issues of Phrack magazine must be giving you the nightmares.

Have a productive week everyone, and stay informed!

Full List of Hezbollah's Internet Sites

Some of the propaganda is so catchy it can easily compete with the Soviet propaganda posters during the Cold War visualizing the evil forces from their point of view. Great case studies on Internet psychological operations, and Hezbollah's understanding of Cyberterrorism.

Here's a list of the URLs mentioned :
moqawama.org
moqawama.tv
ghaliboun.net
hizbollah.org
nasrollah.org
hizbollah.tv
moqawama.info
moqawama.net
moqawama.org
moqavemat.com
moqavemat.ir
shiaweb.org
manartv.com.lb
almanar.com.lb
islamicdigest.net
manartv.com.lb
al-nour.net
intiqadonline.com
alintiqad.com
alahed.org
wa3ad.org
islamicdigest.net
somod.org
bintjbeil.com
altaybeh.net
deirqanounalnahr.jeeran.com
alshahid.org
almahdiscouts.org
jihadbinaa.org
samirkuntar.org
groups.msn.com/justiciadivinavenezuela
es.groups.yahoo.com/group/Hezboallah_latino
groups.msn.com/autonomiaislamicawayuu
groups.msn.com/Hezbollahelsalvador
hezboallahpartidoislamico.blogspot.es

And the IPs for your network reconnaissance pleasure :

82.137.205.249
82.137.205.247
202.75.42.155
205.178.189.131
216.21.229.196
202.71.104.241
209.85.5.112
203.121.71.217
82.137.205.249
82.137.205.249
69.10.136.210
207.44.244.117
66.98.225.220
209.172.35.181
209.85.5.113
208.64.28.10
66.199.236.147

Related posts:
Analysis of the Technical Mujahid Magazine - Issue One
Hezbollah's DNS Service Providers from 1998 to 2006
Hezbollah's use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles - UAVs

Digital Terrorism and Hate 2006 CD-ROM

In some of my previous investigative posts "Tracking Down Internet Terrorist Propaganda", "Arabic Extremist Group Forum Messages' Characteristics", "Cyber Terrorism Communications and Propaganda", "Steganography and Cyber Terrorism Communications", "A Cost-Benefit Analysis of Cyber Terrorism", I extensively blogged about Cyberterrorism and emphasized on the defensive use of it, communication channels under the shadow of SCADA devices and critical infrastructure getting attacked. Perspectives like these often ruin someone's self-mythology, but the Pupper Master too made a point when saying that your desire to remain what you're is what limits you, so evolve, or end up on the verge of extinction.

Here's a little something for everyone thinking cyberterrorism is surreal. Considering for a while that even primitive forms of existence such as street gangs utilize the Internet for propaganda, wouldn't a much better financed terrorist organization be compelled to participate? In fact they've been doing so even before 9/11, but I feel it's the good guys' cavalier attitude that ended up in the now, mature cyberterrorism platform.

A great source for open source intelligence to anyone interested in, here's a summary :

"This sixth and newest version of the Simon Wiesenthal Center's annual report of problematic websites exposes the growing use of the Internet as a key propaganda weapon, marketing tool and fundraising engine by terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda and Hamas, in addition to its continuing assessment of traditional extremist groups such as the KKK and neo-Nazis. "Although they swear to destroy the West, extremists and terrorists have taken to using Western technology to recruit, finance and plan their insidious actions," said Mark Weitzman, Director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Task Force Against Hate."

Now what would an intelligence agency do when knowing exactly where to look? Shut them down and prosecute someone, or adapt deep within the community to gather as much OSINT as possible. Whatever the outcome, keep in mind on the possibility of indirect intelligence engineering, as the way you're watching them, the same way they're watching you, watching them.

Current State of Internet Jihad

Very good article on various geopolitical issues related to the Middle East vs the West, and most importantly an overview of the current state of online jihad. Excluding webcasts, video howto's, and video games as a commodity in the big picture, what's left at the bottom line is easily accessible open source intelligence, and tactical warfare practices such as this one :

"Some of the techniques of evasion are disarmingly simple. Rather than send emails, some jihadists simply write and save draft emails, storing them in an account with a password that's known to other members of the cell. Because they are never actually sent, they can't be detected by intelligence agencies."

Can you intercept an email that's never been sent? And what if a legitimate user's account end up as a dead box? Moreover, the article points out to the recently released Technical Mujahid magazine :

"Raisman points to a recent publication by the al-Fajr group, another communications arm of al-Qaeda and its fellow travellers. He said it contained a very sophisticated manual on internet security, how to avoid hackers, secure personal files and ensure any computer that is captured is of little value to Western authorities."

Going through the magazine itself as I indeed obtained a copy and will publish a summary of it anytime now, there's nothing really that very sophisticated to be afraid of, unless you know nothing about installing a virtual machine, or what triangulation is all about.

A handy summary of the article and things to keep in mind :

- There are over 5000 militant Islamic websites, up from less than a dozen in 1998 -- these are only the static ones compared to hundreds more temporary campaign ones

- They are an extremely effective way for terrorist groups to plan operations, recruit followers, raise funds and distribute propaganda -- centralization of forces and services is exactly what a terrorist organization isn't into. Diversification and autonomous management for the sake of improving the continuity of the site in operation is what really matter, namely you'll have the propaganda platform spreading online details on how to donate cash on a site that's been set up for this purpose only. By the time there's been a leak in the "good guys" covert competitive intelligence efforts, the donation site will dissapear and reappear somewhere else, while the central propaganda platform remains fully active. Take the other perspective, if the "bad guys" are aware the "good guys" are reading, they may logically leave a decoy to later on analyze how it's being processed and disinform on what may seem a very decent first-hand information gathered through open source intelligence.

- Their mastery of the web could extend to cyber-terrorism, such as disabling the communication systems that underpin key sectors such as banking and energy -- any government's single biggest mistake is stereotyping about cyberterrorism, namely that it's the offensive use of cyberterrorism to worry about, whereas the defensive, or passive concepts are already maturing.

- Western agencies are almost powerless to stop the jihadists' internet activities -- of course they aren't, and stopping compared to monitoring is totally wrong, the enemy's location you know is better than the enemy's location you don't know.

- Western governments have been very slow to respond and are only now turning their attention to combating the potent "story" promulgated over the internet -- they wouldn't be that very slow in responding if they actually knew how many people read and got brainwashed by it, thus what conversion rate can we talk about from a reader, to collaborator, to wannabe terrorist, come up with metrics and raise eyebrows.