>> From the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. [ Silence ] >> Hello, I'm Gail Shirazi of the Israel and Judaic Section of the African, the Asian-Middle Eastern Division at the Library of Congress. Welcome to today's presentation: Terrorism in Cyberspace: The Next Generation, a presentation by Professor Gabriel Weimann. Sponsored by the Science, Technology, and Business Division, and the Hebrew Language Table here at the library, in cooperation with the Wilson Center for International, the Wilson International Center for Scholars and The Rabin Chair Forum of the G. W. University. Special thanks to the site tech and business division and their wonderful staff. To Dr. Walter Rife [phonetic] of The Rabin Forum at G.W., and the Woodrow Wilson Center and Glena [inaudible], and, of course, thanks to Gabriel Weimann. Professor Weimann is a world-renowned expert on terrorism and the internet. He's tracked terrorist's movements and activities in cyberspace since the 1990's. His new book, Terrorism in Cyberspace: The Next Generation, is being published by the Woodrow Wilson Center and Johns Hopkins University. It's upcoming and should be out in the fall. Gabby is a full professor at the Department of Communications at Haifa University in Israel, and he's currently a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center. His interests include the study of media effects, political campaigns, persuasion and influence, media and public opinion, modern terrorism and mass media. He's authored eight books, including the Theater of Terror: Mass Media and International Terrorism, and the groundbreaking, Terror on the Internet: The New Arena, The New Challenges. He's written many chapters and has more than 160 papers to his name. Professor Weimann received numerous grants and awards from internet foundations, including his most recent grant from the European Union to study terrorism and radicalism in cyberspace. Again, I'd like to thank the entire team that made this lecture possible, and following the lecture, we'll have time for Q&A. So it's with great personal and professional pleasure, I introduce Dr. Gabriel Weimann. Thank you! [ Applause ] >> Thank you Gail. This is not my first time at the Library of Congress, it's actually the fourth time, and the reason for that is that, you know, I've been dealing with terrorists for many years. And, trust me, it's easier to [inaudible] terrorists than to say no to Gail Shirazi [laughter]. In this tiny woman, there is a giant hiding, and a very powerful one. There's no way I could say no. Okay, I'll, I'll move from the microphone, I, I guess you'll hear me. Just one thing before we start, I have a lot to show you and a lot to tell you. And it will be more like in show-and-tell than just me speaking, so, it will be moving fast, because I won't, will have it all done within 40 minutes and leave some time for questions and answer. So, don't blink. You blink, you miss three pictures. Okay. Terror Cyberspace: The Next Generation, I'm, I'm trying basically to show you some of the recent findings that will be included in the book, in the forthcoming book. In 2006, we published the last book or the first book on this issue of terror on the internet, things have changed in these last 8 years, and my lecture today will highlight some of the most important changes that I want to, to show you. Just to give you an idea how terrorism and, and the internet are interconnected, just look at these pictures, some of them, and you'll see, this is the new set of, of terrorists. Regardless of who they are, what motivates them, what kind of conflict, you'll always find these pictures, I'll show you some of them. Terrorists hiding somewhere, this case, Chechen rebels somewhere, [inaudible], weapon, and a computer. This is a Taliban fighter. Again, terrorists, [inaudible], and a computer. Uzbeki Jihadist leader, computer. This is Adam Gadahan, now known as the official spokesperson in English for Al Qaeda, two computers in his office. More than any university professor usually has. This is, does it look like a bunker for a terrorist group? It is. It looks like a computer lab for a university, but this is a Hezbollah bunker. All of these computers all connected to the internet, and in a minute, you'll understand why. This is a computer lab of a terrorist group. This is how it looks like. Masked faces at computers. Okay, the project that I'm part of started in 1998. Three years before 9/11. We've been monitoring terrorist use of the internet for 16, 16 years now. And when I say terrorist websites, the number right now, even of last month, was over 9,800, almost 10,000 terrorist websites that we are monitoring 24/7, in 20 languages. Every material, the visual and textual, is downloaded, archived, coded, in a computerized, digital way so we can always access it and analyze it and we analyze it as communication scholars focusing on rhetoric on the persuasive tactics used and the audiences they target and so on. Some of these will be presented soon. This research is funded by many academic grants, including one USIP, National Institute of Justice, NIJ, here in the states, the Woodrow Wilson Center, the recent one is the EU, I didn't even have time to put it in, but that's, these are our sources. All our findings are reported, they are open. You could find them here at the Library of Congress, easily. Like this book, Terror on the Internet, and all the publications, papers, books, lectures, special reports, and so on. Believe it or not, even Al Qaeda reviewed my last book [laughter]. And...okay, and we, we, it, it's not because they were really that eager to help the Israeli Jewish scholar, I think what motivated them, that they felt that they, they read the compliments to their achievements in using the internet, and decided that they should promote a book that compliments them. When we started, we had 12 websites. [Inaudible], they're very easy to analyze. After 9/11, the numbers grew rapidly to thousands, and right now, and even not right now, when I say right now, it's December 2013. We already reached 9,800 terrorist websites. Now on top of it, all the digital, digital platforms of social media, like YouTube and Instagram and Twitter and Facebook, and we analyze all of them. Now, who are the terrorists online? You don't have to read the list. One, this is enough. Every terrorist organization is online. Most of them in more than one form of presence, more than in one language, using all the facilities that they can find on the internet. So, why is the internet so useful for them? Well, it's easily accessed, you can't find them, they can hide in cyberspace. They can use it to reach huge audiences, especially young people which are important for them. They can keep, maintain their anonymity which is very important once you deal with terrorism. It's very fast. There's no way to block them, no way to censor them, and it's a multimedia environment. It's not one more medium on top of the others, but it's actually all media in one platform, because you can download and upload music or text, pictures, books, lectures, and so on. Now, what are they doing on the internet. Actually, everything's possible. From scaring us, psychological warfare, from propaganda, raising funds, teaching, intuition, recruit people, mobile people, look for information, data mining, teach, and even the last one, which will be discussed today as the last topic, see it as a weapon, use it was a weapon to attack the infrastructure, to attack banking systems, transportation system and so on. The so-called cyber terrorism. Now, since I have so little time to discuss so much, I decided to focus on four new trends, things that we actually monitored recently, in the last two years or so, and not to cover the entire spectrum of the activities and presence online. So I will speak about new media meets, new terrorism meets new media, narrowcasting, I'll explain the term, the issue of lone wolves, a term used to describe solitary action or so-called solitary actions of terrorists, and I will argue that behind every lone wolf, there's a virtual pack of wolves that you can find them and track them, they are never alone, and finally, the scary vision threat of cyber terrorism. Okay, let's start. New terrorism meet the new media. Now all of you, I guess, are aware of all of these new platforms online. Let it be Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Instagram, Google Earth, some of you may know even Second Life. All of these are, today, used by all terrorists group. They never invented any of these. They never improved any of these. But they learned how to use I would say the most sophisticated, innovated, innovative platforms, communication platforms of the west to attack the west. So, this was the early website of Al Qaeda. I hope nobody's offended, but it was quite a primitive look website. It was called alneda.com, the call [phonetic], in Arabic. It was very simple, only one language, it didn't change a lot. It was very easy to monitor and follow, they didn't really change it a lot. But after 9/11, actually a year after 9/11, this was, by the way, the last time we saw it. The last time we downloaded it, July 2002, and then it was replaced by much more sophisticated websites that looked like this, by the way, if you look at the cracked computer, the bottom, it has a meaning and the idea of, of cyber attacks. Al Qaeda today is running thousands of websites and other platforms, well-protected, sophisticated, streaming videos, music, and so on, so it's not the primitive website that you saw in the 90's. But I would like to highlight one of them, which is more important to the trends that we are focused, and this is something that is very alarming. This is a magazine, online magazine, called Inspire. It's in English, you can find it easily online. There are some copies, it's, these are the front pages. They are very sophisticated targeting English-speaking Muslims. And trying to recruit them, to seduce them, to radicalize them. The magazine is very, I would say glossy, chicy, modern, updated. These are some of the issues published online, all of them. And I would even argue that it's not just nice to look at, it's also influential, it has an impact, and almost all the recent terrorists that were involved, either in attempts to perform act of terrorism, or actually did it, in some ways were linked to this magazine. The last one, by the way, Inspire number 12 came out just a couple of days, what you see now is the fresh, new version. So when they moved to the internet, they are now present in a much more sophisticated way than ever before. Inspire 12, by the way, is calling for car bombs in America. They have a section called Open Source Jihad, like, visit our website and we will teach you. Do they have students? Sure. You know them. Remember the two brothers in, in, [inaudible] brothers in, in, right, in the marathon in Boston? I'll show you where they learn the material from, the pressure cooker bombs, you'll see it soon. They were students of Inspire. And now it's not just a magazine online. All terrorist groups are using the multimedia platforms online. It is television online, like in the case of Hezbollah's Al-Maran Television, you can watch it online. Radio online of the terrorist group. Publishing house, so everything that you want to read, download, you'll find online, even posters of the leader, Nasrallah, if you want to download them, print them, and put them on, on the walls of your bedroom. They even have a university of Jihad. Jihad Academy where they can teach you the principles and the importance of Jihad. Now, to do that, to produce such material, and more sophisticated than ever before, they need an assembly line. They need a production system, and they have it. They have the producers, they have the stars, they have the distributors, people who, because it's not enough to create the website, or to launch a magazine online, you need people to access it, you need to publicize it, you need to promote it. So they have the distributors and the promoters. So we think about the producers, what you see here is a list of Al Qaeda's online production companies. All of them, by the way, have their own logos. So whenever you see some material, there will be, I can show you later, some of the logos you can identify who did it. So if it's [inaudible] or former leader of Al Qaeda, Bin Laden, wanted to produce something online, they usually sent it for those production companies, they edited, and then launched it online, but [inaudible] something else, and these are the distributors. People who will not just distribute it, but get the audiences, so let me show you one of them. His name was Irhabi 007, Irhabi in Arabic is terrorist, and 007, you know where it come, this was his nickname, he was hiding for many years in England, in London, and was one of the chief distributors of the Al Qaeda propaganda material online, so let's see if we can manage to see the video, short section about it. [ Music ] >> Over the space of only two years, Irhabi 007 became the undisputed, undefeated king of internet terrorism. [ Music ] >> This is not only being fought on the ground in Iraq, but also in cyberspace. [ Music ] >> This is the story of a man who called himself, terrorist 007. A man who used the internet to build a network of terror, stretching from Iraq to Canada, from the United States to Bosnia, all from his bedroom in London. >> He, I think it's not unreasonable to say, provided a link between core Al Qaeda, the heart of Al Qaeda, and the wider networks that he was linking into through the internet. >> The story of terrorist 007 revealed how virtual terrorist networks can emerge out of sight of the authorities and not only radicalize young Muslims online, but also help them carry out terrorist attacks. [ Explosion Sounds] Younis Tsouli arrived in London with his father from Morocco in 2001. He enrolled at this small college at the city of London to study IT. He was a loner who soon started using his newfound skills to surf the internet. He viewed footage like this, taken from the cockpit of a U.S. fighter jet, as evidence of a Western plan to wipe out Muslims across the world. It's alleged that the film shows innocent Iraqi civilians being killed in Fallujah. The real facts are unclear. >> Impact. [Breathing sounds] >> It was from his bedroom in this house on an ordinary road in West London that Younis Tsouli went from being another angry young man to one of the most notorious cyber Jihadists in the world. He would use the internet to spread fear and hatred across the globe. By 2004, Tsouli had assumed the username of Irhabi 007. Irhabi meaning terrorist in Arabic. He posted advice on hacking and uploaded videos of Osama Bin Laden onto U.S. government websites. This attracted attention. Aaron Weisburd monitors extremist's Islamic activity on the internet from his home in the U.S. >> Well I first came across him because he was active on a forum on the internet that I was monitoring. It was called the, it was called the Islamic Terrorists Forum. I mean, that was the official name of the website, and he was, he demonstrated a, a degree of technical knowledge. He demonstrated a concern on that site for the security of the community, and he demonstrated a high degree of paranoia. >> Extremists also began to recognize Tsouli's potential. As Iraq descended into violence, Al Qaeda's leaders there contacted Tsouli. They asked him to build websites for them. Tsouli's contribution was invaluable, according to one expert on internet terrorism who testified in Tsouli's trial last year. >> Irhabi 007 was, essentially, a fixer for Al Qaeda in Iraq and Al Qaeda elsewhere, an online fixer. Someone who took, took care of tasks that Al Qaeda couldn't do its own. He had a flare for marketing, and he had the technical knowledge and skills to be able to place this stuff in areas on the internet where it wouldn't get it easily erased. [ Music ] >> Suicide attacks were filmed in Iraq and e-mailed to Tsouli, who posted them on websites across the world. But these were often closed down. Tsouli needed a constant supply of money to pay for new sites. He was helped by this man, [inaudible], a British biochemistry undergraduate. And another man from West London, Tariq Aldor [phonetic]. Tsouli and Aldor never met in person, but Aldor had access to over hundred thousand stolen credit cards, and supplied money to Tsouli. By now, Irhabi 007 was a central player in Al Qaeda's propaganda war against the west. And he didn't mind who knew it. >> Over the space of only two years, Irhabi 007 became the undisputed, undefeated king of internet terrorism. His name is ubiquitous when it comes to cyber terrorism, modern cyber terrorism. >> By the way, the reason, he's the guy in the middle, the reason you see all those blood stains on his face, he fought back when he was arrested. So, he was really some kind of 007. So, this is a production line. He's in jail, but there are many others, distributors, who replaced him. >> So what was he charged with? >> This would be [inaudible] terrorist material, teaching, launching, he was actually even communicating among, connecting terrorist groups, like the Chechen groups to AL Qaeda and so on. He was the middle man. Let's speak about the new media. YouTube, they tube too. Now, you know that, that YouTube, and there are many advantages, if you think about it from the perspective of a terrorist. It's a, it's free to all, you can upload, download, watch videos, whatever you want, even terrorist material. It's very attractive visual, moving images, easier to find, very easy to find, I'll show you in a minute how. Appealing to young people, and allows the users to download to the telephones, computers, CDs, and distributed. So, let me just give you an example, done actually these days. If you just log on, open YouTube, on the web, and you put the words, the search of YouTube, Hamas Islamic Resistance Movement, you'll find that this is true for last days, 1 thousand, 5, almost 1,500, 15 hundred videos of, of Hamas. How about this guy? Al Awlaki. I'll keep mentioning his name. He's not alive anymore, but his videos are there online. If you just put the words, right now, today, on YouTube, American company, you put tribute to Anwar Al Awlaki, Awlaki was the guy behind many actions related also to the marathon in Boston, related also to the 9/11 case, and to almost all terrorist events in the west. He's the preacher, he used to be the preacher, killed by an American drone in Yemen, put the words, tribute to Anwar Al Awlaki, and you'll find 4,580 videos. All there. Some of the groups launched their own YouTube, like Hamas in 2008, launched the AqsaTube, look at the similarity, note the similarity between the logos, and Pal Tube in 2011, and today, all terrorist groups, all of them, are on YouTube, thousands of videos. [Inaudible], Al Qaeda, plenty of, this is the Adam Gadahan, ex-American converted to Islam and joined hardcore Al Qaeda. Many, many videos by the Chechen rebels, PKK, the [inaudible] underground in Turkey. Talibans. How about Google Earth? I'm sure that you know it. Now try to, for a second, be a terrorist and think about Google Earth, isn't it nice to have three satellite services as a terrorist? You don't need to launch or to buy satellite, all you have to do is go to Google Earth, and download the pictures, the maps, satellite maps, satellite pictures, and use it. Now this is not a theory or a threat, this is already happening. Remember the case, the attack, the deadly attack in Mumbai on, by Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Jihad group from Pakistan, within one day they attacked several targets in Mumbai, including the Rabbi House and killing the rabbi, but if you look at this picture, this was on the telephone, on the cellular telephone on each of the terrorists. They downloaded the picture, the site, the directions, the distances, so they would all attack at the same time, they would know where to go to, using the free services, Google Earth. It was used, and I'll really go fast, but they used Google Earth for other actions, and this was one in Basra, Iraq, Abu Ghraib Prison, guiding volunteers to join Al Qaeda group in Somalia, downloading on the website the directions from Google Earth, targeting Israeli targets, with [inaudible] from Gaza Strip using Google Earth, and here's one of the Hamas operators saying, we obtained the details from Google Earth, and he's sitting watching, actually, the targeted cities in Israel, and this is the picture that you can find on his screen. Believe it or not, the Jihad website even posted the headquarters of the CIA, how far is it, like 10 miles from here? In Langley, Virginia. Using new media can, by terrorists, it can be useful for online training. Terrorists don't need to go through camps and meet and teach other. They can actually go to virtual camps in cyberspace, where they'll find all the magazines, all the guide books, all the menus, including how to prepare various poisons, how to beat planes, how to attack computer networks, cyber terrorism, something that we will discuss later, how to damage a target with an explosive car, how to damage a target with an explosive car, how to build a detonation device. It's all online. They don't need to go anywhere. They can sit at home and join the camp. If we have time, I can maybe later show you, for some of you may consider a career, though it's a very short career, this is a suicide vest [laughter], how to build, online, how to build a suicide vest. And it's, watch, watch it for 10 minutes, you can do it. Let's move to the second trend because we have short time and a lot to see, and this is the term that I want to explain, narrowcasting. Now, communication, in communication you use the word broadcasting to target as broad as possible audience with the same message. One message, one appeal, one medium, to the broadest audience. But modern marketing and modern advertising, employing new tactics, they call it narrowcasting. Instead of one message to all, they slice the target audiences into small subpopulations, according to age, demographics, education, a standard of living and so on. And each group is getting their own messages on their own platforms. Now terrorists do the same. Instead of one message to all, they are moving now to very specific and narrowcasting type of propaganda and recruitment online. Let me give you two examples very quickly. One of them, maybe the most alarming, is targeting children online. Narrowcasting, terrorists targeting children for propaganda, [inaudible]. Please know that I'm not saying youth or young people, I'm saying children. Age 3, 4, 5, 6, not much more than that. You may think, well, how can a child at the age of 3 do anything for a terrorist group? Well, if you consider that your struggle is a long-term one, it will take generations [inaudible], you are thinking about educating the next generation of terrorists. So they use narrowcasting to children, some of it you may even know of. For example, if you go to target children, trying to [inaudible], to seduce children, let's say that you sell soft drinks, Coke, Nike shoes or whatever, what will you do? You will use childish material, like comic-style stories, prize-winning competitions, a lot of color, moving images and so on. Now terrorists do the same, only that they don't sell Nike shoes, they sell suicide and killing and terrorism. Okay, Mickey Mouse, we all know him, right? Mickey Mouse and terrorism don't go together. Well not really. Hamas started some years ago their own Mickey Mouse, they called it Farfur. He looked like the Mickey Mouse we all know. The Mickey Mouse that we know was, of course, a very gentle one and never involved in violence and not in politics, and certainly not in terrorism. But Farfur was very different. I'm won't show you the whole, the entire film, but capture, some captured stills from it. The Mickey Mouse, the Farfur one, is a really vicious one. He's a terrorist. He's speaking about fighting, sacrificing himself, and he does it for the ruling of the world by Islamic leadership. So he is really pretty, and this is for very, very young children. Now, the [inaudible] the idea of Mickey Mouse as being used by a terrorist group? Certainly, since they were not paid any royalties for that [laughter]. So they started threatening Hamas, and as a result, Hamas decided, well, let's put an end to it by killing. So Farfur was beaten to death because he won't, he was interrogated by the Israeli agent and he was killed and became a martyr, replaced, well, you may know the childish figure of Maya the Bee, well, they have their own Jihad Bee, Nahool, again, becomes suicide terrorist, nasty messages, very violent one, not childish at all, replaced by Bugs Bunny, Hamas bunny, Assud, again, one by one, each one of them, was a childish figure appealing to children, but selling the messages of death, suicide, killing terrorism. The recent one is Nassur, teddy bear, again, a nasty character, slaughter, killing, destruction, suicide. The next one, I have to apologize, this is not an easy one to see, comes also from Hamas websites for somewhat young, older children that can read and write. This, this is the website, a very childish, colorful, moving images, cheerful, and if a child goes, a child, usually at age 6 to 8 can read simple Arabic, all of these are links to stories. He will go like this, among these, he will surf those pictures, but finally, he will hit this picture. A child. And this is no fiction. This is not cartoon. This is real. This is the beheaded body of a terrorist, female terrorist in Jerusalem, 2004, on the front here. So a child that will go into these websites and surf the stories, will finally end up looking at the dead body. And the glorified suicide bombing. Children, computer games, of course, that's another method. So many terrorist groups launched their own games to teach children how to use those game, desensitize them through the use of violence, to killing, and even to suicide. And even, Hezbollah, who launched one of those games said this is a mental and personal training for those who play it. This is how they see it. And some games, in started in Iraq with the quest for Bush, where leaders were targeted and the child gets points for killing American leaders, or soldiers. And there are so many games that just give you some examples, Al Qaeda Strike 1.4. Children are also used to promote themselves, to preach for it, to play with it, to show it, and to glorify it. If you remember, and I will not show it to you, but the first hostage, American hostage captured in Iraq in 2004 was Nicholas Berg, he was executed, beheaded by the Al Qaeda group, this is one frame from the picture, and the only reason I'm showing the videos to you, there's no way to block it, and thousands of websites carried the, the bloody, gruesome execution of a helpless, actually the beheading, seconds later after this picture, but the amazing and maybe the shocking thing was to see, online, children, Arab children taught to play the game of execution, imitating the same act of beheading a hostage. It is clearly that they [inaudible] because they do it second by second. The impact is clear. More and more children are involved in suicide bombing, more and more children are recruited in Afghanistan, in the Maghreb, and so on. Another example, very rapidly, women. Narrowcasting to women. Websites designed for women. Al Qaeda has their own magazine online, Al Khansa, this is the first issue, they have Mona in pink, targeting women, calling women to join, to sacrifice themselves, to support their spouses, to educate their children and so on. And the website, terrorist websites designed for women. For female Jihadists. Even teaching them how to be in cyber fighters. How to use computers as a weapon. Zawahiri, now the leader of Al Qaeda, replacing Bin Laden, his wife has a website online preaching terrorism, Zawahiri's wife, and this I show the website looks. This image shown online is, is a good example, and maybe a troubling one, for a mother sending her son to become a suicide bomber. It's fake, this, this is not really an explosive, but, but the message there is that the mother is behind the action. It gives, gives legitimacy to the action, and even tells young people that your parents will be supportive. Then again, we see rising numbers of women involved in terrorism and especially in suicide terrorism. Let me move to the third one, the last before, and this is the issue of the lone wolf. A new trend in modern terrorism. It seems like lone wolf terrorism is individuals, not groups, not organization, not movements, but the individuals launching their own terrorist campaign by themselves. Well I would argue that they are not really alone. In nature, by the way, a wolf will never hunt alone. They can't. They will die. The lone wolf will die. They need to hunt in packs, and the same about lone wolf in terrorism. The only thing that you don't see the virtual pack, but it's the, it's online. First of all, we have to realize, as Obama, President Obama, this seems to be now the new trend in modern terrorism, the most alarming one, and we see more and more cases of those lone wolves, but we also see that there are these aligned behind them. There are footprints in the snow, if you want, of the virtual pack behind them, guiding them, leading them, teaching them, seducing them, and launching them. Now, some examples that you may remember, Major Nidal Hasan shot some of his colleagues in camp. Britain's lone wolf, there are several of them, all of these are lone wolves, and actually almost all cases in the west today, were done by lone wolves. Including the, this murder in London, the beheading of the British soldier. But, as I said, they are called online, they are recruited online, they are taught online, they are even launched online. One of, remember the Inspire magazine, this is one of the articles in the Inspire magazine, targeting Arabs in the U.S. and in Canada. I'm proud to be a traitor to America. Preaching to those that are here, but feel alienated, feel that they are second-rate citizens, feel that they don't belong, and trying to motivate this frustration, social frustration to terrorism. Al Qaeda is using all the social media, from Facebook to Twitter, to YouTube, to reach those lone wolves, radicalize them online, teach them online, and finally launch them online. This is the Boston Marathon attack in April, just a year ago. Killing people, including, later, policeman. These are the two brothers, you see them, Tsarnaev brothers. Picked up by a camera. Lone wolves? Not really. What did they use for a bomb? They used a pressure cooker. But these guys never, were never in a terrorist group, never educated by terrorism, never went to a camp. How did they know? Well, we know now, because we can go back and check the footprints in cyberspace, and find that they breached this website, Al Qaeda's Inspire magazine, teaching how to build a bomb from a pressure cooker. Exactly the way they did. You have all the instructions there. Remember the open source Jihad? They used it, they followed it, they activated it. And so did many of the others. They are taught online, they are communicated online, they are launched online, [inaudible] behind them. And Al Qaeda launched only last year. A pocketbook for lone wolves. Again, self-radicalization, self-teaching, and launching. Awlaki, this famous guy, even after his death, he's still active on many of those social media, believe it or not, they are even calling, send us questions and he will answer. Of course, there are people answering on his, in his name, but the idea that he's still there is [inaudible] is still guiding, and he's glorifying the wolves, not just calling, but glorifying those that were active, including, in this case, Nidal, and this is from Inspire number 11, look at this picture and the message here. This is the dead brother among the two of them, one of them was killed. And he looks like someone, heaven in the skies, surrounding by angels and so on. One [inaudible], but almost all terrorists, lone wolf terrorists, were somehow linked to Inspire magazine, to Awlaki, and if you draw a map of the online connections, you'll find that all the lines lead to one guy in the middle, Awlaki. And all done online. He never met them, he never guided them personally, it's all done by online messages. So let's get to the last one, and this is worst news that I have. I saved, if the other was very cheerful, this is certainly not. Cyber terrorism. What is cyber terrorism? It's a combination of cyber and terrorism. This is launching attacks by terrorists online. What can be targeted? As we will see, there are many targets, and we are very vulnerable online, and very dependent on computers. Now, why should terrorists use cyber warfare? Because it's, actually, if you know how to do it, it can be easy to do. Our society, [inaudible] societies, rely heavily on computers, from libraries to transportation, from infrastructure to monitoring planes and airports, or subways, everything is dependent on computers. Quoting President Obama, I was probably quoting his advisors about the risks of cyber terrorism. Now what can be targeted? The list is very long, but of course, news communication facilities, transportation, civilian companies, banking systems, pharmacies, hospitals, they all rely on, on computers. And not only companies, but power grids, transportation system, water authorities, nuclear facilities, all controlled by computers. So, it seems like something very alarming, but something maybe distant, some, something in the future. Maybe we should not worry about it. Well, not really, because it's already happening right now. Let me explain that, that one of the scariest scenarios, and this is the issue of BotNet, anyone knows the term? BotNet means that your, we might call it a zombie network. Let's say that this is you sitting somewhere, wherever you wanted, and you want to launch a cyber attack that will actually activate thousands of computers, but you don't have thousands of computers, you're all by yourself. So what you do is you spread a virus to many computers on the world, all over the world, the virus is a sleeper, sleeper type, you don't see it, you don't feel it, by the way, maybe many of you, without knowing it, are victimized by that. Your computer may be having that virus. It will not do anything, it will not damage your computer, it will never, it will not slow it down, you will never know it. Unless, one day, that guy, that guy in the middle, will decide that he wants to attack a target and he will send a message to all of those BotNets, and they will start sending a message to the targeted computer, that will be flooded with thousands of messages, thousands of computers, attacking at the same time, causing a crash to that computer system. Is it, again, a nightmare, a probable scenario, no, it's happening. First of all, there are, this is just to show you the amount of BotNet computers, BotNetted computers, and we are talking about 6 million infected by BotNets in 6 months only. It was used, it was used 7 years ago. There was a case in Estonia, just very briefly, the, the whole case was about, Estonia is a small country near Russia, and there's a tension between, as you know, between Russia and some of the neighbors, including Estonia. Now in, in April 2007, exactly 7 years ago, the Estonia government moved the memorial statue and caused a huge criticism coming from the Soviets, from Russia. As a result, there was a BotNet attack on Estonia, causing a huge collapse of the entire system, everything collapsed in, in Estonia. This was the junk messages coming from all those networks, and for weeks, the entire country was paralyzed. No banking, no transportation, no government, no news, all the organizations, if you look at the list of targeted facilities, and it was very clear that it was all organized, because if you follow, you don't have to understand the chart, but if you follow the time, you can see that all the attacks came at the same time, like somebody activated all those BotNets, all those infected system, somebody sophisticated, probably Russian hackers working for, I don't know who, Russian authorities, but it was certainly well-coordinated and a very sophisticated attack. By the way, they repeated it a year later when they attacked Georgia. Before the Russian troops went into Georgia, attacked the computer system. So cyber threat is not really something that may happen in the future, it happens here, it happens every day, and there are thousands of cases, everyday, of attempting to break into American systems by cyber attacks. And you can see the testimonies, and these are more recent, from Robert Mueller, the FBI Director at that time, in 2012, about the growth, about the threat. And let me just conclude with showing you, you don't have to read the numbers, but this is the amount of the number, rising number of cyber terrorists attacks on American facilities. We can even look at the distribution, and this was in 2001 once and June 2012. Industry, government, education, online services, these were targeted by. Now who, who may it come from? It may come from terrorists, from hackers, criminals, and states. States do cyber attack too. Remember, some of the attack, the Iranian facilities, was [inaudible], that was probably a state or maybe more than one. But how about the alarming situation when you get a combined, a joint corporation, joint venture, let's say states and terrorists. Iran has hackers unit in the Iranian army. Iran is also supporting terrorist groups. How about Iran? Launching a cyber attack through the proxies. There was proxies. How about recruiting professional hackers? Motivating them, either by money, by [inaudible] religion, prestige or whatever, or terrorist and criminals cooperating. Professional hackers or professional cyber hackers and terrorists? We certainly see a growing number of cyber attacks on American facilities, and the numbers are just growing. So let me conclude here with two recommendations and both of them are important. The first one has to do with the new arena that we are now facing. It's not more war tanks and rifles and so on, we are fighting against, there is a new type of war, and we need new soldiers, new armies, new training, new weapons, and new defense mechanisms, including monitoring terrorist activities online, like the [inaudible] do. However, and here comes my second recommendation, and please remember that I always combine the two of them, all these activities, all this new war on terrorism must be regulated. Should be regulate, including the NSA's activities online or monitoring telephone conversation, so, we need the monitoring, but you also need it to be regulated. We need regulation that will say who can access what, who can download what, and who can access the data that was archived? If you don't do that, I would say the regulation of the monitoring, we may end up paying heavier prices for terrorism than just in terms of terrorism, but also in terms of our [inaudible]. Thank you very much. [ Applause ] >> Thank you Gabby. We do have time for questions and, Gabby, would you please repeat the question so it goes into the webcast. >> Okay, I'll repeat the question David asked about regulation, what is the state of regulating the activities now and maybe a comparison between Israel and the states. Let me say that I don't know much about what is done there. I'm, I'm monitoring more the bad guys than the good guys. But in the same time, I'm quite aware of the various measures used online. We see them. Starting from blocking websites, hacking websites, into [inaudible] material online and so on. We see their counter activities. I'm not quite sure all of them are productive, like removing websites and blocking them doesn't work, they reemerge sometimes very. Now NSA, so far, was not really regulated and, you know, the, the leaks coming from Snowden and others that provided information on the, on the size and the, the ,the depths, I would say, of monitoring telephone conversation and so on, only shows you that some of the recommendation that I, the first one, that we should monitor other. So far, I don't see any regulation. Now let me give you, David, the regulation that I'm looking for, and it's not that, I, I'm really thinking that we are moving them, because the growing criticism of NSA, for various service, social service and political service, we lead them, and it is [inaudible], both President Obama to launch some of those measures. But let me give you an example that all of you know. And then apply it to the internet. And to the NSA. When you go to the end of the airport, you are victimized by TSA, right? You're harassed, because they ask you to turn around and leave them open and take off your shoes and then your belt and, and they scan you, but you are willing to do that, because you are willing to sacrifice some of your civil liberties, some of your privacy, for the sake of security, but you want it to be regulated. Not anyone can tell you go and run naked in the corridors of the airport, right? You know who's allowed to do what to whom. He needs to be authorized for that, he needs to be officially, wearing some kind of uniform, and you know what they're allowed to do to you, right? Why don't we have the same rules applied to the internet? Who's allowed to do what to whom? Who's allowed to access, and, and this will remove a lot of the problems associated now with the wide [inaudible] that is launched there online. Now what the Israeli's and the American's are doing, oh, I'm not an expert on that. I can only tell you they are doing much better than they did some years ago. However, it's always the, we are always trying to follow the terrorists. That is they are always one step ahead. Like they learn to use the YouTube, we come, we start thinking what can we do against it? They start to use Facebook and Twitter and Second Life, which I didn't speak about, and Instagram and Flickr, and whatever facilities that we provide them. Maybe we should start thinking ahead. What would be the next, the emerging platforms of communication that are now being designed, and how can we prevent them before it's launched? To be used or abused by terrorism. This is, I think, the next challenge for us. Anonymous, the activities or anonymous. Joshua is asking about them, and I would look at anonymous from the perspective of terrorists. They are certainly a good lesson for terrorists who look at the success of this group, who see the weapons used, who see the measures used, who see the impact, and I can tell you, when I'm looking at cyber terrorism, one of the reasons that I'm worried about is because you need two conditions. You need the motivations and you need the capabilities. Now, in the past, they were not that interested in cyber terrorism, and certainly not capable of doing it. Recently, first of all, they are motivated to use it. I, I mean we're analyzing the chart here, and you see how often they [inaudible] and, and they refer to the case of anonymous. So they're certainly more motivated. And, remember, if you want to be more effective than 9/11, what can you do? How can you be more effective than killing 3,000 people in one day? A couple of hours. You need to move to a higher sphere, that's cyber terrorism. So motivation is there. How about capabilities? Here, they look at those hackers, thinking about educating their own people, recruiting their own, people like that, either by ideology, religion, or money, or joining forces with hacking units that are in, operated by states. I mentioned Iran, how about Syria? SEA doesn't probably tell anything. But this is the Syrian Electronic Army. A unit, an electronic hacking unit of the Syrian army, launch, operated by the Syrian president targeting Americans. Now only recently, some banks use agencies, were attacked by cyber attack. In September 2013, only some months ago, the Navy computer system were hacked by the Syrian army. It took them 6 months, 6 months, to remove the virus from, from the Navy. Check it, you can find the reports on, Wall Street Journal reported twice. First the penetration, and second the failure to remove it. So they, they are capable of doing it, and certainly they look at anonymous and, and say if it works to them, for them, it can work for us. The question has to, is focusing on, on the use of Inspire, and what does it bring? Or what is the message for American Arabs, or Muslim, and, and Muslims in, especially young Muslims in the U.S. First, it's very interesting, some of the articles the, have nothing to do with terrorism. It's more like social bonding. You feel that you are alone, you feel that you are isolated, come to us. Come brother, be one of us. We will provide you a virtual community. You can talk to us, you send questions, we will answer, don't feel alone. So some of the messages have nothing, do not do anything with terrorism. They, they are simply seductive in a social way, social bonding, providing the community. Some of them, I would say, are channeling existing frustrations. You are not really an equal citizen. Your chances of a good life are slim. Come to us, we feel like you. So, again, it's not always preaching to, for terrorism. Some of the Inspire magazines, there are already 12 issues, some of them are more, I would say, instructions, like how to build a bomb, how to build a bomb in your mom's kitchen. That's one, that's one of the titles of the articles, including the pressure cooker. So there, there are many articles, some of them religious, some of them social, some of them practical, different levels, but as you see, almost all of the attempts of terrorism in the west were somehow related to the online magazine. So it is effective. It has an impact. I will guinea pig that question and show you one more video. Counter campaign is not just using soldiers or virtual soldiers or digital soldiers, and launching a campaign to shut down or to block or to spread viruses, there's also the, the notion of sending a different, a counter narrative. Using the same platforms, using the same measures, using the same social media, but not to preach for this destruction in terrorism, but to preach for hope, life, happiness, optimism. There's another scenario. Let me show you and I, I hope you don't mind, it's a very short video, and this is a video of the counter narratives. Like launching a campaign against terrorism, against the use of terrorism, targeting young people, but to a different message. [ Background Sounds ] Say No To Terrorism is the name of the campaign. It is not really revealed who is behind it, according to our analysis, it's the Saudis doing it. It's a whole campaign, and I just showed you one video. Simply, it relates to your question. I think the only way to fight back is not to believe that you can shut down the internet. In one lecture, somebody asked me, why don't we shut down the internet and restart it again? There's no way to go back, I mean, it's, it's going back to stone age. There's no way to change history. But we may think of using the same platforms to appeal to the same targeted audiences with different narratives. And this is one example, we are actually, it's, it's very new. And we are now monitoring it and studying and trying to see what's, what's the impact. But it is certainly one of the measures used to counter terror issues of the internet. Well, that's a question and [inaudible] question we have to look for, but let me tell you, it's not only one magazine, and it's not just [inaudible] and Inspire, there are hundreds of them. And various terrorist groups in different languages. Now you may, by the way, question why would they publish English-speaking magazine to Arabs? Don't forget that they are preaching to young Arabs in America, some of them never spoke one word in Arabic, they don't even know. Some of them are second [inaudible] generation in America. They call them, for example, to come and join the war in, in Syria, for Al Qaeda, of course, not for the Syrian president. So, these, there's a long list of magazines, of video clips, used by, by terrorist groups, so it's not only one, but, but you're right, there is some feeling of escalation. They become more violent, more threatening, and they, they certainly go higher in terms of victimization, and cyber terrorism is considered one of the, which was not done, like three or four years, they never discussed it. Now, they do. And, and to the [inaudible], to the, this is Hungarian, okay? I'm just trying to impress with my, Hungarian's my first language, and I'm now, well, you can tell the accent is from the same place that my parents came from. This is a good question, and, and it relates, you have to realize that this arena, the online arena, is open not only to terrorists, but to radicals from all sides, and when Gail introduced me, she mentioned the, the EU grant that we got. Let me only say that it's 60 million dollar, 60 million Euros, that we received for five years project, involving eight nations in Europe. Why is the EU so [inaudible], not about terrorism, about the radicalization online. This is what they are, they are worried that political extremism, from the right, extreme right, extreme left, religious or not religious, political or not political, will use the same platform that I showed you here. So the risk is not, terrorism is just one section that I focus on, but the threat may come from different groups that are coming from extreme right, extreme left, what have you. So whatever I suggest and, and I'm worried about terrorism, is related [inaudible] to other groups, including neo-Nazi's and, and fascists in Europe and here. This was, by the way, the, the Europeans decided to spend so much money. Not because they saw that this is an important academic issue, because there are scared, because they are threatened. Thank you very much. [ Applause ] >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov.