« Telephony Phishing | Main | 27B Stroke 6 »
April 28, 2006
Virtual Dead Drop
The Madrid bombing suspects didn'r email each other about their plans but wrote messages and saved them as drafts on the the shared email account to which they all knew the login and password.
"Hassan had given me an address on the Internet the day that I left," Turk said. "I was to check the Internet address in question every day and to go to the draft menu to check for messages." "The only way to get in touch with him was through the e-mail address Babana12002 with password Wahd11," the man said. "Hassan told me that the address worked in Yahoo or in Hotmail." Spanish investigators contend that by saving the messages as drafts, the men did not leave the digital traces that are normally created when e-mail messages are sent. But Jordán, of the University of Granada, said he was skeptical that intelligence services were as unable as they claimed to track unmailed messages. "There is still communication between the computer and the server," he said. "I wouldn't be surprised if the intelligence services have a way of monitoring that." ..... One of the leading figures indicted in the March 11, 2004, train bombings in Madrid used a simple trick that allowed him to communicate with his confederates on ordinary e- mail accounts but avoided government detection, according to the judge investigating the case. Instead of sending the messages, the suspect, Hassan El Haski, saved them as drafts on accounts he shared with other radicals, according to papers issued by the judge, Juan del Olmo. They all knew the password and so they could access the accounts to read his comments and post replies, according to the judge ........ In his indictment, the judge said that Haski had been a habitual user of the Internet who would communicate through e-mail accounts on Yahoo or Hotmail. ....... "Hassan had given me an address on the Internet the day that I left," Turk said. "I was to check the Internet address in question every day and to go to the draft menu to check for messages." "The only way to get in touch with him was through the e-mail address Babana12002 with password Wahd11," the man said. "Hassan told me that the address worked in Yahoo or in Hotmail." Spanish investigators contend that by saving the messages as drafts, the men did not leave the digital traces that are normally created when e-mail messages are sent.
Posted by seans at April 28, 2006 11:16 PM