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Recent events draw attention to the misuse of the Internet to unleash terror. The need to keep cyberspace clean and safe cannot be overstated.

Roy Chowdhury

Murky depths to cyberspace.

R.K.Raghavan

The recent unsuccessful terrorist attempts to trigger massive explosions in London and at the Glasgow airport are very much in the news.

Police investigation is spread over three continents, and there is a general feeling that electronic communication played a key-role in orchestrating events preceding the misadventure. The principal players in the episode include at least four physic ians and one engineer, whose capability for exploiting cyber space for carrying out their diabolical plan can be presumed without fear of contradiction.

As if to confirm the credibility of such an assumption, there is a report that the Bangalore City Police are actively looking at all the electronic evidence available at the house of Kafeel Ahmed, who drove a Cherokee jeep into the Glasgow airport terminal on the afternoon of June 30, 2007.

A high-capacity hard disk seized from the house is said to have been sent to the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) at Thiruvananthapuram for a thorough analysis of its contents. Investigators in the UK and Australia are on a similar pursuit, and their focus seems to be on e-mail traffic involving all the suspects.

These developments once again bring to our focus the importance of the Internet as a means of communication, and the need for governments and right-thinking citizens to continually explore avenues for keeping cyber space clean and safe for legitimate users.

That the fears expressed over misuse of the Internet are not imaginary would be best illustrated by a criminal case that recently ended in the conviction of three persons in the UK. The trio (Waseem Mughal, Younus Tsouli and Tariq Dour) were experts at stealing credit card information online (mainly from gambling Web sites), using which they made huge purchases from online stores. The goods they so bought were mainly that required by Jihadists.

According to a Washington Post report, the three established a network of communication forums and Web sites for the benefit of such Jihadists. Incidentally, the sites carried tutorials on hacking and how to prepare explosives. Vol uminous material on the happenings in Iraq, especially on suicide bombing, was also made available. A posting on one of the sites carried a discussion following which was a message: “We are 45 doctors and we are determined to undertake jihad and take the battle inside America.” The involvement of doctors in the recent London and Glasgow terrorist attempts should not, therefore, come as a surprise to those who had knowledge of the activities of Mughal and company. It is certain these three will also be under scrutiny during the current investigations by the UK Police.

Interestingly, one of the conspirators, Tsouli, was arrested from his West London apartment while he was logged on to a Web site titled ‘youbombit.r8.org’. In his laptop, the investigators located a folder entitled ‘Washington’ that carried short video clips of the city’s important landmarks, and a hazardous chemical response vehicle.

Investigation against the three youths began in late 2005 after a tip-off from the Bosnian Police. The latter were examining the involvement of a Swedish and a Danish national in a plot to cause explosions in Europe, after they were found in possession of substantial amount of plastic explosives. Also seized from the two was a video carrying a message from them supposedly after causing the explosion they were planning. Obviously this was meant to be posted on the Internet for propaganda purposes!

Right through their trial, Waseem Mughal, Younus Tsouli and Tariq Dour maintained before the UK Court that they were innocent. Towards the end, however, they crumbled to admit their guilt. Following this, they were recently convicted to various terms of imprisonment ranging from six-and-a-half to ten years. This was the first conviction for a newly defined offence of inciting terrorist murder on the Internet. This strengthening of criminal law in the UK to meet the menace of the use of the Internet to promote violence should receive attention from Indian law makers.

There comes news of similar misuse of the Internet from other parts of the world as well. First in Switzerland the authorities seem to be extremely concerned over the problem and determined to come down heavily on miscreants using the Internet for inciting terrorist violence. Two individuals, Moez Garsalloui and Malika El Aroud (widow of an Al Qaida suicide bomber), were recently convicted by a Swiss court for running pro-Al Qaeda Web sites. The sites gave details of how to make bombs and launch attacks.

In Indonesia, a 24 year-old student, Prabowo, was sentenced to three years a few weeks ago for creating a Web site that instigated attacks against foreigners.

It is significant that one of those who assisted Prabowo was Abdul Aziz, who was convicted for the deadly Bali bombings in 2005 in which 20 people and three suicide attackers were killed.

The spate of instances of Internet misuse for disseminating propaganda that glorifies violence has spawned a new class of experts who are constantly hunting for terror-based Web sites so as to bring them to the notice of law enforcement.

One of them is Aaron Weisburd who runs a Web forum, Internet Haganah, which is solely on this laudable mission. He recently undertook an intensive study of the sites in vogue and established that there was a nexus between those engaged in setting up terrorist sites and counterfeit online banking Web sites.

In his view, credit card frauds are also linked to such individuals. Terrorist organisations badly need resources, and it looks as if the one main source of funding is stolen financial information that facilitates online thefts from banks. This means, there is only a thin line of distinction between some of those who preach terror in cyber space and those who can rightly be labelled classic cyber criminals always on the prowl for victims.

The writer is a former CBI Director who is currently Adviser (Security) to TCS Ltd.

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