Terrorists recruit on file-host sites

Terrorists using Internet techniques pioneered by child molesters and copyright pirates to recruit new followers lost a battle when Pakistani authorities arrested five Americans who reportedly wanted to join the jihad.

But videos, audios and written missives from Osama bin Laden and militant Muslim clerics continue to flow through cyberspace in an effort to attract new followers, experts say.

That, in turn, puts law enforcement and counterterrorism agencies in a battle to keep up, given the speed with which the Internet and personal computers evolve.

Two key technologies have been used by copyright pirates and child porn rings: peer-to-peer, or P2P, networks that were popularized a decade ago by Napster, Kazaa and Gnutella, and more recent file hosting services.

P2P users store videos and other material on their own personal computers, and others get access to it through special software.

File-hosting involves storage in large data centers owned by third parties. Many file-hosting companies provide free, anonymous accounts.

Extremists prefer file-hosting services over P2P, according to a recent article in Sentinel - the journal of the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y.

When new statements, videos or audios are released by a terror group, the article said, they are uploaded to be stored on multiple file-hosting services, creating dozens or even hundreds of ways to access them on the Internet.

Extremists then post links to these pages on special password-protected chat rooms so others can download the videos or other material.

By using these file-hosting services, extremists “are able to remain more anonymous,” says the author of the Sentinel piece, professor Manuel R. Torres Soriano, head of political science and administration at the Pablo de Olavide University in Seville, Spain.

Users of file-hosting services get added protection because they don’t have to store the videos or other material on their own computers, as P2P users must.

That means if extremist Web sites are taken down or overwhelmed by large volumes of traffic, the propaganda remains available to supporters from other Internet addresses.

File-hosting technology poses both investigative and forensic challenges, say current and former law enforcement officials.

Videos, for example, “could be residing in six different data centers,” said Roderick Jones, founder of a San Francisco-based security advisory company, InTerrain.

He added that “the key piece [of evidence] could be overseas,” outside the jurisdiction of law enforcement agencies trying to prosecute the people sharing the information.

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