Islamic State launches 24 hour tech-support 'help desk'

Islamic State have started a 24 hour 'help desk'

ISIS appears to have reached new levels of online sophistication.

 

Islamic State – or ISIS – has a reputation as a technology-savy terror organisation.

The group has a strong social media presence, which is uses to disseminate propaganda and lure western recruits to Syria.

But now Islamic State appears to have reached new levels of sophistication, with the launch of a 24-hour tech help-desk.

 

According to an NBC News report, the terror group is staffing a "24-hour Jihadi Help Desk" designed to support its followers.

Roughly six extremists staff the support desk and "answer questions from the technically mundane to the technically savvy to elevate the entire jihadi community to engage in global terror," counterterrorism analyst Aaron Brantly revealed to NBC News.

Earlier this week, Islamic State published a guide to its followers to help them avoid detection online.

 

NewsNewsBlog.blogspot.com has chosen not to reveal the name of the app, Senior Researcher at Georgia State Uni

ISIS actively encouraged its followers to keep changing their IP address and only communicate with one another using a popular encrypted messaging app.

The instructions were published by the extremist group – days after cyber activists Anonymous declared all-out war on ISIS.

ISIS also cautioned followers to never open URLs, unless they were sure of the source, and constantly change their IP address.

Never talk to strangers on Twitter or on other messaging apps, the extremists warned.

 

In response to the terror attacks in Paris, Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne this week announced plans to double the budget for cyber-security in the UK.

"ISIL are already using the Internet for hideous propaganda purposes; for radicalisation, for operational planning too," George Osborne told the GCHQ.

"They have not been able to use it to kill people yet by attacking our infrastructure through cyber attack," he said. "But we know they want it and are doing their best to build it."

The Chancellor said public spending on cyber-security would be almost doubled to a total of £1.9 billion over the period to 2020.

 

Gunmen – strapped with suicide vests – killed 129 people in Paris this weekend

 

George Osborne this week announced plans to double the budget for cyber-security in the UK

Addressing the difficulty tracking Islamic State online, CIA director John Brennan told a security conference in Washington earlier this week: "There are a lot of technological capabilities that are available right now that make it exceptionally difficult, both technically as well as legally, for intelligence and security services to have the insight they need to uncover [terrorist activities].

"I do think this is a time for particularly Europe, as well as here in the United States, for us to take a look and see whether or not there have been some inadvertent or intentional gaps that have been created in the ability of intelligence and security services to protect the people that they are asked to serve."

 

Islamic State this weekend claimed responsibility for a series of orchestrated terror attacks in the French capital which claimed the lives of 129 people.

Gunmen – each fitted with a suicide vest – targeted six different locations in central Paris, including the Stade de France where president Francois Hollande was watching the national team play a friendly match against Germany.

Terrorists also attacked restaurants, cafes and the Bataclan theatre where rock band Eagles of Death Metal were perfuming to a sell-out crowd.