Osama Bin Laden Didn't Encrypt His Files 333
An anonymous reader writes "If you're running a terrorist organization, it might make sense to encrypt your files. Clearly Osama Bin Laden didn't realize that — as some of the documents seized during the raid on his hideout in Pakistan have been made public for the first time. 17 electronic documents, which were found on USB sticks, memory cards and computer hard drives after US Navy Seals killed the terrorist chief in the May 2011 raid, are being released in their original Arabic alongside English translations by the Combating Terrorism Center, reports Sophos."
Security through obscurity (Score:5, Insightful)
Worked pretty well for the 10 or so years it took to *find* his files!
really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Security through obscurity (Score:1, Insightful)
How are we supposed to know they're legitimate? Hell, how are we supposed to know that they actually killed him? No real evidence has been shown, never mind a body. A case built on "evidence" like presented so far would be laughed out of even a kangaroo court!
Why bother with the inconvenience? (Score:5, Insightful)
He correctly understood that they wouldn't be used against him as evidence in a court of law.
Avoiding The Man 101 (Score:3, Insightful)
Lesson 1, Page 1, in covert operations:
Anonymity deflects more bullets than body armor.
Encryption prevents viewing the data only for the amount of time it takes to torture the passphrase out of you. Since you need the key to view your encrypted data, it's almost assured that the key will be near the data in some form, minimally protected. Encryption therefore provides little (if any) security in that scenario. In fact, it could cause more harm than good; It may lull you into a sense of false security.
Re:Security through obscurity (Score:2, Insightful)
How are we supposed to know they're legitimate? Hell, how are we supposed to know that they actually killed him? No real evidence has been shown, never mind a body. A case built on "evidence" like presented so far would be laughed out of even a kangaroo court!
Is this FreeRepublic.com now?
~S
Re:How do we know? (Score:4, Insightful)
^^ this.
He was dead anyway, regardless of how well protected his encrypted content was. Also, his network was (and is) set up in such a way that even a year after Bin Laden was captured/killed, we *still* haven't tracked down his lieutenants, I don't think he really had anything to worry about with the security of his data.
Re:You're kidding right? (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless of course you really think that any of this happened, in which you are hopelessly retarded! The only thing that might be true is that he's dead, probably in the Tora Bora attack years ago.
If bin Laden died in the Tora Bora years ago, Bush would have played that card when he was losing a bunch of domestic and international credibility after Iraq. That would have taken a lot of heat off of him and make it much easier for him to have gotten things done. Although, judging by your comment you probably also think bin Laden was a CIA agent since the 80s too.
Re:Security through obscurity (Score:5, Insightful)
All interested groups--those who would benefit from him being alive and those who would benefit from him being dead--agree that he's dead. His family members, including his wives, agree that he's dead. The Pakistani government, angry that the US violated their sovereignty, and embarrassed that OBL was in an area known to senior members of their intelligence apparatus (IE they were caught with their pants down), agree that he's dead. The consequences of claiming he's dead when he's not would be disastrous. A non-trivial number of people (between those in the situation room, including a photographer, those on the SEAL team, those on the ship that the SEAL team flew to) would be able to blow the whistle on the conspiracy.
This isn't about legal standard of proof--if it was ever legally required the government would show the court some of the DNA, dental, photographic, and video evidence they have--it's about simple common sense.
If you believe Osama bin Laden is not dead, say so. If you believe these documents are not legitimate, say so. This kind of wishy-washy devil's advocate crap where people claim that there are "unanswered questions" but lack the intellectual honesty to actually stand behind the only possible conclusion that could be drawn by the answers they're implying is so stupid.
Re:You're kidding right? (Score:4, Insightful)
The only thing that might be true is that he's dead, probably in the Tora Bora attack years ago.
Right. Because George & Dick wouldn't have trumpeted it to the heavens if the got him.
We aren't talking rocket scientists here (Score:4, Insightful)
Two thougths: (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Physical Security! (Score:2, Insightful)
Whahuh? Any modern, simple symmetric cipher could have protected his data from anyone but god, for the foreseeable future of the Universe. You can speculate all you want about NSA having some deep secret method of attacking asymmetric ciphers, but nestable modern symmetric ones with huge keys? Get real. And OBL would probably have loved knowing that the NSA was going to spend years accomplishing absolutely nothing with them. Heck, he probably should have encrypted a bunch of random data files alongside his real ones, for a true hoot.
Slashdot is surprisingly ignorant about crypto (Score:3, Insightful)
So they killed him? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Security through obscurity (Score:5, Insightful)
Jumping too soon on a story (ie. Chavez Out of Power, Dewey Defeats Truman), is hardly the same thing as just about every one else telling you that OBL is dead. The fact of Chavez being in and out of power is a much more fluid situation than Osama bin Laden with two holes in his chest and having been dumped in the Indian Ocean off the deck of a warship. With Chavez, they were simply wrong, with bin Laden, they'd have to be outright lying.
Fact is, you don't really get to keep nasty secrets like this for long. Just about everything the US government or its agents have ever done which is nasty or illicit has come out long before any sort of National Archives release date. Even Nixon couldn't cover his shit up. If OBL was not dead or it was a fake, it would come out. It might be for honesty, it might be for a huge payday, or it might just be for ego.
Documentation is fine, but it can be faked. In the end, you don't trust in documents, you trust in the preponderance of evidence that you get from a variety of diverse sources, including those who have no stake in telling lies. As someone pointed out, both the US government and AQ admitted OBL is dead. I don't see any reason to disbelieve them. It's not like it changed anything at all. No wars will end, no wars will start. Hell, it was even too soon to allow Obama to get an Election year bump in the polls.
Re:Security through obscurity (Score:5, Insightful)
This place has always attracted the conspiracy-minded. I think that there are more high-IQ people here than average, and high-IQ people like to find patterns. There is also a high correlation between paranoid schizophrenia and IQ. Conspiracy theories are really just grand pattern-finding exercises.
Of course, no one espousing these theories can explain to me how the government manages to keep a secret.
Re:And Still (Score:2, Insightful)
That';s insane.
A) we have footage
B) Why would George Bush keep the secret? IT would have been a huge boon the the GOP.
Re:Security through obscurity (Score:5, Insightful)
Because if Emmanuel Goldstein hadn't existed, it would have been necessary to invent him.
(Apologies to Orwell and Voltaire.)
Re:It's not like it would have help (Score:4, Insightful)
More likely they can just dedicate hundreds of hours worth of computing to brute-forcing a single piece of intelligence
More likely hundreds of years worth or more... I personally consume 20 CPU-years on a regular basis for things of no national security importance whatsoever.
Remember, kids, encryption strength is exponential with respect to key length! Make 'em nice and long if you don't want the NSA to read 'em!
It doesn't really have to be that much more advanced than what we have (although undoubtedly they are so far on the cutting edge of capability that they are probably in danger of falling off)
Frankly it won't be any more advanced than what "we" have. They might ask for a tweak or two to whatever vendor (e.g. or even i.e. Cray) they buy from, but it's not going to be significantly different than their commercially-available cutting edge.
Remember, the government doesn't make much of anything in the way of technology. The military, who undoubtedly has stuff "we" don't, still has that stuff designed and manufactured by private contractors -- Boeing, Rayethon, etc. Some of these are almost exclusively defense contractors so sure you pretty much aren't going to see what the military has elsewhere.
In silicon the big manufacturers sell primarily to non-government agencies, and they're selling their best stuff not holding back so the NSA can get it before anyone else when there's way more money in competitive advantage in the marketplace.
The government might have some fancy research, but to supply the NSA with what it needs requires large-scale manufacturing from industry.
Re:Security through obscurity (Score:5, Insightful)
The unanswered question is, why the claim of justifiable execution when they had him captured when the majority of the planet wanted him in trial.
Forget the bullshit about risk, that is just bullshit. By far the majority wanted to see him paraded before the public, lead around in handcuffs, reduced to nothing but just another criminal on trial. They wanted to see the evidence, they wanted all the accusations out in the open and, they wanted to understand how a US government funded agent become an anti-US terrorist.
They wanted the details, they wanted the truth they absolutely did not want some bullshit stage photo shoot of Barrack Obama and Hillary Clinton sitting around a room with the co-conspirators pretending to watch it live, what a crock of shit. We by law had the right to our bloody trial, we had the right to all the evidence, we had the right to know everything that went on and we had the right to track all the government failings of the.
Re:Security through obscurity (Score:4, Insightful)
Not just conspiracy theorists but gamers.
Come on, what does good gamer do? Put himself in the shoes of the other player and ask "What is the best move in his position?" This sort of thinking requires you to question what you think you know to make inferences.
How do we know any of these things? We don't. That's just the truth. We have no way of knowing, and we never will. Even the members of "Seal Team Six" wouldn't know...there is no way they read everything they collected. Nobody but the analysts will ever know.... until one of them writes a book about it...and then we still will have to wonder if he is full of shit or not.
We do know that they claim this is a small fraction of the total.
What is the smart move?
Fakes take work but, in this case, there is a low chance of anyone ever proving a fake. Denials by someone whose words were faked may come if they are still alive, but, it would be there word against the US Governments.
My guess is they are real, but heavily cherry-picked. They released enough to refocus some media attention on their crusade. That is always good when you are trying to justify your job. I don't know if you have gotten up close and personal with the inner workings of a lumbering bureaucracy like the federal government, but, from what I have seen, the top and middle are a constant storm of minor players scrambling to look important so that their budget gets expanded rather than cut. So any release like this is excellent for someone.
On the more tactical side, NPR was astounded at how unlike a comic book supervillian he really was, and more like a "Worried CEO", there is probably some attempt to highlight this in an attempt to demystify him.
added bonus, probably increases the general levels of communication within their networks, and entices any existing groups/members to make public statements in response, which provides more information, keeps the cause in front of the cameras, and gives the FBI some fodder to use on their front, creating fake terrorists to nab, and justify the eternal vigilance....and funding.
Because SEALs aren't the police (Score:4, Insightful)
The rules of engagement are different for soldiers. I'm not just talking in high level theoretical moral terms, I mean there are actual rules spelled out, laws, international agreements and so on. They were sent in to neutralize him, not capture him. Now that could mean capture, but only if he surrendered immediately and completely. If he tried to run, or fight, even in a proforma way, they were justified in killing him.
Police are legally supposed to use deadly force only as a last resort, only when it is necessary to defend life or the like. Soldiers are allowed to use deadly force far more widely. Their gun is often the first thing they go for, not the last.
Also Bin Laden was a completely legit military target. Commanders of hostile forces are always legit to go after, killing generals is legal.
If you declare war (successfully) on a country, and that is what he did, you are going to be subject to having the military of the country after you. They don't play by the same rules as civilian agencies in fact and in law.
Alive he would have been a rallying point (Score:5, Insightful)
dead he is a short term martyr at best.
What nation could try him let alone hold him? The US? Hell we would have enough people who regularly post here decrying that let alone people protesting everywhere.
Then when you try him exactly who is going to want to keep him? Which country wants a permanent living flashpoint in their borders?
For every reason I could see taking him alive I can find many more for having him dead. There are people in this world who simply serve no purpose in keeping alive. Yes it is a sad observation but until people acknowledge that the world isn't going to get far. You cannot simply wish people to be good. Some just are not fit to be part of society, some merely see society as something to destroy.
I guess it would make some people feel better about themselves, magnanimous even, to hold these types indefinitely but I find the who generally want this have no skin in the game to begin with.