Is ISIS really that technologically informed
There were several reports claiming that ISIS was able to send private encrypted messages across regions in order to provide safe passage to valuable pieces of information. However, these claims have all been put to rest thanks to the latest investigation conducted by Daily Dot. Defense One had earlier reported that ISIS had allegedly built a new Android app called Alrawi for exchanging encrypted messages. It did not take long for other sources to sprout up the news. However, there are several reasons why we believe that the claim has been put to rest.
First off, Alrawi, the messaging application is present on Android; in short, it is available for a mobile platform that is the least secure. With a flurry of devices running Google’s mobile OS, security is definitely far from top notch, particularly when you are running older updates of the operating system.
This would allow authorities to easily penetrate the firewall and virtually eavesdrop (for lack of a better term) on what the next move of ISIS is going to be. In short, this claim could just be for propagation purposes only and the real messaging platform could be something else entirely.
Additionally, western security experts also could not find a copy of the app on any of the official or unofficial ISIS channels. Furthermore, all of the media articles concerning that Alrawi app showed screenshots of a completely different app entirely, indicating that Alrawi can definitely be cut from the list. In fact, firm believes of ISIS’ crusade were actually asking on several forums on social networking websites where they could actually find the messaging app so that they could also be a part of the conversation, but unfortunately, their dreams have been hopelessly shattered.
However, there is no denying the fact that ISIS are actually using encrypted technology in order to send and receive valuable pieces of information; it is just not the one that we were expecting that they would use, and for very good reason. After all, throwing off the authorities from the actual trail will definitely buy the organization a lot of time to plan their next nefarious objective, which could be potentially anywhere in the world right now.
We will keep you up to date on what transpires in the near future, but for now, the Alrawi case has been officially shut down.
