The web-savvy ISIS terror network has set up a 24-hour ‘Jihadi Help Desk’ manned by IT experts to enable its foot soldiers spread its diabolic message worldwide, recruit followers and launch more atta
The web-savvy ISIS terror network has set up a 24-hour ‘Jihadi Help Desk’ manned by IT experts to enable its foot soldiers spread its diabolic message worldwide, recruit followers and launch more attacks on foreign soil, counter-terrorism experts say.
The help desk, manned by a half-dozen senior operatives was established with the express purpose of helping would-be jihadists use encryption and other secure communications in order to evade detection by law enforcement and intelligence authorities, according to counterterrorism analysts affiliated with the US Army.
The Jihadi Help Desk has been described as “a fairly large, robust community” that is anchored by at least five or six core members who are technical experts with at least collegiate or masters level training in IT. Aaron F Brantly, a counter-terrorism analyst at the Combating Terrorism Centre, an independent research organisation at the US Military Academy at West Point, said there are layers of other associates, living all around the world, who allow the service to operate — and respond to questions — at any time of the day or night.
“They answer questions from the technically mundane to the technically savvy to elevate the entire jihadi community to engage in global terror,” Brantly told NBC News. CTC researchers have spe-nt a year or so monitoring the help desk — and its senior operatives — via online forums, social media and other means. “They (ISIS are very decentralised. They are operating in virtually every region of the world.” The help desk workers closely track all of the many new kinds of security software and encryption as they come online, and produce materials to train others in how to use them.
