Terrorists using Tor – a free web browser that allows Web users to hide their location.
Islamist militants the world over have benefited from using Tor, a free browser that lets Web users hide their location and identity. Tor is basically free software and an open network that helps you defend against traffic analysis, a form of network surveillance that threatens personal freedom and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security.
Created almost a decade ago by the onion routing project of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory to help people in authoritarian countries evade government controls on the Internet, Tor helps ensure anonymity by bouncing traffic around a global network of relays.
Tor protects you by bouncing your communications around a distributed network of relays run by volunteers all around the world: it prevents somebody watching your Internet connection from learning what sites you visit, and it prevents the sites you visit from learning your physical location.
“We’d assume Tor is being used by terrorists,” said Andrew Lewman, the executive director of the not-for-profit Tor Project, which maintains the software and says it doesn’t screen users. “Tor is easy to use, and any technology you’ve put out there can be corrupted.”
On top of Tor and tools such as Pretty Good Privacy, used for sending encrypted messages, extremists are working hard to build electronic infrastructure of their own.
The Global Islamic Media Front, an umbrella organization for Islamist groups, has developed its own encryption programs for PCs and Android smartphones with user guides in English, Arabic, Bahasa Indonesia and Urdu. Free to download and updated periodically, they provide a “weapon for our brothers for continuous communication far from the eyes and monitoring of the enemies,” according to the group’s website.
See website: https://www.torproject.org/index.html.en