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Source of Al Qaeda Steganography Rumor?
by Elonka at 1:17 pm EDT, Sep 3, 2003 |
Supposedly this is a transcript of a May 2003 article from the Hindustan Times, about a 17-year-old boy who claims to have been asked by the U.S. government to help with cracking a steganographically-encrypted Al Qaeda message. Personally, I think this is garbage. ] The Americans had tried almost everything, but they just
] couldn't crack an encrypted message they came across
] while investigating the 9/11 attacks. Finally, they
] approached a 17-year-old boy in Delhi about whom The New
] York Times had done a feature.
]
] Over the next 10 days, Ankit Fardia hunkered down in his
] room in Delhi and came up with the key to crack the
] message.
]
] The worst fears of American investigators came true --
] Al-Qaeda was using a sophisticated technology,
] called steganography, to communicate. It involved sending
] encrypted messages concealed in a photograph or series of
] photographs.
]
] "I was lucky in some ways but I am still proud that
] I was the only one in the world to be able to crack the
] code," Fardia told the Hindustan Times from Pune,
] where he is lecturing students and corporate employees on
] cyber security. Fardia is the author of Guide to Ethical
] Hacking.
]
] Fardia was understandably cagey about revealing the
] contents of the message or the name of the US agency that
] approached him. "In January 2002, I received an
] e-mail asking me whether I would like to help the US in
] breaking open a message which was of great importance to
] national security. I did not believe it was actually from
] a US agency so I asked them to send me their digital
] signature. They immediately sent it back," he said.
]
] "I would not like to discuss the message. But yes,
] what I cracked was a message from Al-Qaeda," he added.
] The US government sent him letters of appreciation.
]
] US embassy officials said they knew nothing about this.
] But they said it was possible for a US agency to make such an
] approach without keeping them in the picture.
]
] Fardia said the Al-Qaeda message he cracked had been encrypted
] thrice over to make sure it could not be read, even if it was
] intercepted.
]
] The US is considered one of the leaders in encryption technology,
] but the technology used by Al-Qaeda was as good if not better,
] Fardia added. Bogus bogus bogus. I bet he got the idea for "thrice encrypted" from "Triple DES". I hate it when news media will print stories as fact, without bothering to verify anything. More information about this kid and his claims, here:
http://www.memestreams.net/thread/bid7800/ |
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RE: Source of Al Qaeda Steganography Rumor?
by Decius at 1:56 pm EDT, Sep 3, 2003 |
Elonka wrote:
] ] "In January 2002, I received an
] ] e-mail asking me whether I would like to help the US in
] ] breaking open a message which was of great importance to
] ] national security. I did not believe it was actually from
] ] a US agency so I asked them to send me their digital
] ] signature. They immediately sent it back," he said.
]
] Bogus bogus bogus. I agree. What did he do, check the CIA's official PGP key? Sorry. No. They don't have one. |
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RE: Source of Al Qaeda Steganography Rumor?
by Elonka at 3:08 pm EDT, Sep 3, 2003 |
Decius wrote:
] Elonka wrote:
] ] ] "In January 2002, I received an
] ] ] e-mail asking me whether I would like to help the US in
] ] ] breaking open a message which was of great importance to
] ] ] national security. I did not believe it was actually from
] ] ] a US agency so I asked them to send me their digital
] ] ] signature. They immediately sent it back," he said.
] ]
] ] Bogus bogus bogus.
]
] I agree. What did he do, check the CIA's official PGP key?
] Sorry. No. They don't have one. Another error in the article, is that they misspelled his name. It's actually "Ankit Fadia", and I learned that he's been raising the hackles of a lot of other people in the tech community, as you can quickly find by doing a google search of "ankit fadia fbi". Supposedly he has websites at http://www.ankitfadia.com and http://hackingtruths.box.sk/, but both are currently down, and ankitfadia.com was reportedly hacked earlier this summer (smirk). So much for his security knowledge, eh? The most recent article I was able to find says that he's about to go to Stanford on a five year scholarship:
http://asia.cnet.com/newstech/security/0,39001150,39146333,00.htm Though since this kid evidently lies so easily and blatantly, I have to wonder if this is just more hoax-mongering... I wish there was a way to put an alert out to the news media: "DO NOT BELIEVE ANYTHING THIS KID SAYS. JUST BECAUSE HE SAYS IT, DOES NOT MEAN IT'S TRUE". (sigh) |
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RE: Source of Al Qaeda Steganography Rumor?
by Decius at 4:01 pm EDT, Sep 3, 2003 |
Elonka wrote:
] I wish there was a way to put an alert out to the news media:
] "DO NOT BELIEVE ANYTHING THIS KID SAYS. JUST BECAUSE HE SAYS
] IT, DOES NOT MEAN IT'S TRUE". (sigh) Hehe... Trouble is you'd have to put out a similar alert about 50% of the people they interview. They don't care if it's true. They care if it's compelling. |
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RE: Source of Al Qaeda Steganography Rumor?
by Elonka at 4:39 pm EDT, Sep 3, 2003 |
Decius wrote:
] Elonka wrote:
] ] I wish there was a way to put an alert out to the news
] media:
] ] "DO NOT BELIEVE ANYTHING THIS KID SAYS. JUST BECAUSE HE
] SAYS
] ] IT, DOES NOT MEAN IT'S TRUE". (sigh)
]
] Hehe... Trouble is you'd have to put out a similar alert about
] 50% of the people they interview. They don't care if it's
] true. They care if it's compelling. Y'know, we need an RBL for news sites. A filter to quickly check whether a so-called "news" site is one that actually checks its facts and sources, or just passes things along verbatim. There are certain news sources that I trust (most of the time). If it's from CNN, BBC, the New York Times, 60 Minutes, Time/Newsweek magazine, snopes.com, urbanlegends.about.com, and a few others, I know that they get suckered some of the time, but in general they seem to care about getting things right (and just as important, when they're wrong, they'll admit it, apologize, and post a retraction). Certain others are good for "up to the minute" commentary (such as Slashdot and various sites in the blogosphere) but still need to be read with a large grain of salt. For other news sources I haven't heard of, I can generally form my own opinion after having read several articles there as to whether they're more on the "news" or "sensationalism" side of the fence, but it would be nice to have a resource to check for sites that I haven't heard of in the past. Do you know of such a thing? A news-spam-garbage filter? Or maybe we could do some sort of a Memestreams flag that signals green/yellow/red reputation flags on a certain news site to say, "Other Memestreams users see this as a reputable source" or "Other Memestreams users think this site should be read for entertainment value only," "good site for the latest breaking news and rumors, but they don't do any fact-checking", "strong opinions, but may or may not be true," "this site is known to print bogus stories, even when the most basic cursory fact-checking would show this to be false" etc.? |
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RE: Source of Al Qaeda Steganography Rumor?
by Decius at 10:20 pm EDT, Sep 3, 2003 |
Elonka wrote:
] Y'know, we need an RBL for news sites. A filter to quickly
] check whether a so-called "news" site is one that actually
] checks its facts and sources, or just passes things along
] verbatim. Now that is something worth thinking about. The current google "interest" ranking is somewhat similar to this, but its a mystery to me how the thing works. I imagine it means "popular" which is not exactly what I'm looking for in an internet rating. I want a few different scales (funny, reliable, informative..) I'll file this away for further consideration. |
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