Documented criminal/terrorist uses of cryptography?

David Honig honig at sprynet.com
Wed Oct 10 19:54:24 PDT 2001


At 07:25 PM 10/10/01 -0400, dmolnar wrote:
>Hi,
>
>Does anyone have pointers to documented instances of terrorists or
>criminals using stego or crypto? As opposed to the speculation recently
>seen regarding Osama bin Laden.
>
>Thanks much,
>-David Molnar

The FBI docs (from cryptome.org, IIRC) mention that all the hijackers
paid in *cash*, with *none* of them buying over the net (and using
SSL in the process).  Several of them *did* use the net to *reserve* but
not pay for tickets;
they probably wouldn't have used crypto (SSL) for that.

\begin{rambling} 
There is *no* solid evidence that they used crypto in the open source
literature.  There are recent
nearly-unverifiable claims that invisible writing (stego) was used; 
these claims would be made in any case, to condemn stego.  Claims
about videotape stego are now being made (10/10/01) and the videonetworks
have bent over for it.

Still, I wouldn't want to be scanning the latest Playboy to email to my
brother in <random arabic country> right now.  

I've not even heard (not that that means much these days) reports
of the hijackers' computers being seized.  I would expect them to
have use disk encryptors, e.g., in case their machine was stolen
or needed repair.   For communications security, the hijackers may have
worried
about traffic analysis too much.  

Maybe you'll have to give a fingerprint
to use a library's machines from now on.

\end{}





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