If we put aside the probable and obvious cause for disrupting the air traffic - namely, introduction of the permanent emergency state (in the future 2-3% of all flights may be affected - small price for maintaining the power), I wonder what are the logistics of injecting false information into the snooping systems. Most of those are automated and prone to false alarms. Few ideas: - Orchestrated credit card purchases under proper "suspicious" conditions ("travelling without husband" - check today's news). - No shows at US-bound flights. Extremely efficient use of economy class fare. - Orchestrated telephone conversations using codewords ("thw worm will meet the apple on monday") - Ordering tens of almanacs, etc. Some simple scanning around these ports will reveal what is effective and what is not. Bearing in mind that basic TCP/IP protocols, servers and clients, after years of fixing, are still vulnerable to new attacs I doubt that pinheads on the TLA payrolls will be able to fix theirs. The beauty of these attacks is that they can be launched by any entity - from ragheads to governments, and next to impossible to trace if done properly.
At 11:01 AM 1/3/04 +0100, privacy.at Anonymous Remailer wrote:
If we put aside the probable and obvious cause for disrupting the air traffic - namely, introduction of the permanent emergency state (in the future 2-3% of all flights may be affected - small price for maintaining the power), I wonder what are the logistics of injecting false information into the snooping systems.
It sure looks Al Qaida et al have already figured this out. There just so happens to be "chatter" indicative of a major attack before every major holiday. This seems to lead to three possibilities: a. AQ has worked out that it's cheaper and safer to disrupt life in the US by "chatter" than by actually trying any attacks here, and disrupting holidays is more fun. b. There really have been attacks planned, but they've either been foiled actively (e.g., the terrorists got arrested or shot or something before the attack took place) or passively (e.g., the higher alert status, changes to security procedures, etc., have made the terrorists postpone their attacks. c. There really isn't much useful information about AQ plans in the available intelligence, and what we're seeing is the intelligence community's priors (in the Bayesian sense; their prior assumptions are swamping the effects of their meager data). ... --John Kelsey, kelsey.j@ix.netcom.com PGP: FA48 3237 9AD5 30AC EEDD BBC8 2A80 6948 4CAA F259
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