Web holds terror clues
By Greg Wright
Gannett News Service
Oct. 02, 2001
The World Wide Web may be more important than bullets in the war against terrorism - at least that's what some cyberexperts are saying.
Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect behind the deadly Sept. 11 attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, likely used encrypted e-mail, chat rooms, and even Internet audio and digital images to communicate with his "cells" around the world, and U.S. agencies need more manpower to monitor such activities, experts said.
"Cyberspace is going to be the great battleground in the war against terrorism," said John Arquilla, a senior consultant at the Rand Corp. in Santa Monica, Calif.
But a cyberwar against terrorism could cause fallout among home computer users, too. U.S. law enforcement agencies may seek broader authority to monitor e-mail, chat rooms and other electronic communication, said Leland Ware, a professor of law and public policy at the University of Delaware-Newark.
"First of all, what the terrorists want to do is change democracy," said Ware, who urged Americans to fight any legislation that threatens privacy. "You don't want to give in and let them win - they want to take away our freedom and fundamental rights."
At least one of the hijackers in the terrorist attacks, Mohamed Atta, connected to the Internet and sent e-mail with a student account from a German university. Federal investigators also asked Internet service providers America Online and Earthlink to provide information on subscribers who may be connected with the attacks.
FBI officials refused to comment about whether a Web-based investigation has yielded clues, although news reports said the agency is working with private Internet security experts. Some analysts said the FBI is bound to find valuable evidence on the Internet.
Terrorist organizations such as bin Laden's al-Qaida group send encrypted messages via e-mail, said Jack Mattera, director of computer forensics at the Intelligence Group in Far Hills, N.J. They also hide messages in digital music and pictures posted on the Web, a practice called steganography, Arquilla said.
The FBI's controversial Carnivore system scans the Internet and e-mail for keywords and letter combinations that can hint at terrorist activities, but Carnivore can be fooled if terrorists use code words, Arquilla said.
Federal investigators probably are going through the e-mail from the 19 suspected terrorists to pick out code words used to plan the airplane hijackings and terrorist hits in the United States, Arquilla said. Breaking such a secret language would be crucial in preventing future attacks, he said.
Steganography is also difficult to track, Mattera said. For instance, investigators would have to examine the data content of a photo transmitted by terrorists with an original photo file to determine whether it contains a hidden message, he said.
"You have to compare the sizes of the two files," he said. "The embedded text will be bigger - sometimes much bigger."
The U.S. government monitors more than 5,000 Web sites devoted to terrorist and criminal activities, said Neil Livingstone, a terrorism expert at Global Options LLC in Washington, D.C. Some of these include sites run by radical Islamic student groups in Vienna, Va., and Richardson, Texas, that support bin Laden, he added.
Congress approved $40 billion in emergency funds to fight terrorism and aid victims of the New York and Pentagon attacks. President Bush could use this money to beef up terrorism investigation on the Web.
"We're behind the curve in processing this stuff on a real time basis," Livingstone said. "We can collect a lot more information."
