Taliban loosing war in Paki

Photo by Gerald © 2008

Taliban have NO honor,,,G

Taliban as Tribe G

You might be Taliban if ...G

Taliban leaders

20 kg flour bag for Rs 300 in Ramazan: $ 3.91 USD
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www.chinaview.cn 2008-08-25 00:23:31

ISLAMABAD, Aug. 24 (Xinhua) -- A Pakistani official said Sunday that the operation against Taliban would continue until their surrender.

Advisor to the prime minister on interior Rehman Malik told reporters that the unilateral ceasefire announced by Taliban was not acceptable, as they had broken previous pledges.

The private Geo TV quoted Malik as saying that the ceasefire could only hold if Taliban surrender their arms publicly in Islamabad.

Malik said that 550 Taliban had been killed in the Bajaur military operation, while a number of dead bodies were still lying in the area.

To a question, he said that some of killed and arrested militants are Uzbiks, details of whom will be shared with media soon.

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The area is refered to as "Stan" by military leaders, on both sides of Durand border, Taliban cannot stand up to this kind of joint pressure.

Taliban are on the down side slope, just a matter of time.

Of course this doesn't discount some last ditch effort in a major atack by the Talbi.

Our survey for Pakistanis only PLEASE,

Gerald

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Loosing the Internet WAR

Written in Spring of 2004, FOUR YEARS AGO.

but the war against radical Islamic terrorism continues, and cyberspace is among its most active fronts. The Internet is host to thousands of websites run by terrorist groups and their supporters, with Al Qaeda exerting a dominant influence on their bloodthirsty content. After September 11, as Paul Eedle observed in Jane’s Intelligence Review, Al Qaeda launched an online campaign to win the hearts and minds of the Muslim world—to advance its ideology of total war with the West and discredit those few Muslim leaders who spoke out against terrorist jihad. Today, the jihadis clearly have the advantage in Islamic cyberspace: Radical Islamist websites have proliferated,....

"Al Qaeda's use of the Internet is amazing," said Rita Katz, director of the Search for International Terrorist Entities Institute, in the New York Post. "We know from ... captured Al Qaeda fighters who say they joined up through the Internet ... that this is one of the principal ways they recruit fighters and suicide bombers."................

The Editors of The New Atlantis, "Dot-Com Terrorism," The New Atlantis, Number 5, Spring 2004, pp. 91-93.

http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/dot-com-terrorism

http://snipurl.com/325fk

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So why are there more terrorist sites on the web today than 4 uears ago?
BECAUSE THE US MILITARY HAS NOT ENGAGED THE ENEMY IN THIS DOMAIN.
THE US MILITARY DOES NOT RULE THIS DOMAIN BECAUSE THEY FEAR IT, EVEN THOUGH THE TECHNOLOGY, AND MANPOWER IS AVAILABLE TO DOMINATE THE WWW.

A junior officers should be assigned to every General officer to educate them on an ongoing daily basis.

FOUR YEARS AND AL QAEDA'S C2 HAS GOTTEN STRONGER WITH EVEN MORE WEBSITES.

THIS WILL COME TO HAUNT THIS GWOT.

Gerald
Internet Anthropologist

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Al Qaida loosing support in Iraq...from Al Jazeera

Al Qaida loosing support in Iraq...from Al Jazeera
islam is anti-al qaeda

Loosing the Internet Security WAR

Top Ten Cyber Security Menaces for 2008

Twelve cyber security veterans, with significant knowledge about emerging attack patterns, worked together to compile a list of the attacks most likely to cause substantial damage during 2008.

Participants included Stephen Northcutt, Ed Skoudis, Marc Sachs, Johannes Ullrich, Tom Liston, Eric Cole, Eugene Schultz, Rohit Dhamankar, Amit Yoran, Howard Schmidt, Will Pelgrin, and Alan Paller.

Here's their consensus list in ranked order:

1. Increasingly Sophisticated Web Site Attacks That Exploit Browser Vulnerabilities - Especially On Trusted Web Sites

   Web site attacks on browsers are increasingly targeting components, such as Flash and QuickTime, that are not automatically patched when the browser is patched. At the same time, web site attacks have migrated from simple ones based one or two exploits posted on a web site to more sophisticated attacks based on scripts that cycle through multiple exploits to even more sophisticated attacks that increasingly utilize packaged modules that can effectively disguise their payloads. One of the latest such modules, mpack, produces a claimed 10-25% success rate in exploiting browsers that visit sites infected with the module. While all this is happening, attackers are actively placing exploit code on popular, trusted web sites where users have an expectation of effective security. Placing better attack tools on trusted sites is giving attackers a huge advantage over the unwary public.

2. Increasing Sophistication And Effectiveness In Botnets

   The so-called Storm worm (which was not really a worm at all) started spreading in January, 2007 with an email saying, "230 dead as storm batters Europe," and was followed by subsequent variants. Within a week it accounted for one out of every twelve infections on the Internet, installing rootkits and making each infected system a member of a new type of botnet. Previous botnets used centralized command and control; the Storm worm uses peer-to-peer control, so there is no central controller to take down. Additional variants have used messages with different subjects and improved the capabilities of the rootkit. In 2008 additional variants and continually increasing sophistication will keep this worm and other even more sophisticated worms near the top of any list of menaces.

3. Cyber Espionage Efforts By Well Resourced Organizations Looking To Extract Large Amounts Of Data - Particularly Using Targeted Phishing

   One of the biggest security stories of 2007 was disclosure in Congressional hearings and by senior DoD officials of massive penetration of federal agencies and defense contractors and theft of terabytes of data by the Chinese and other nation states. In 2008, despite intense scrutiny, these nation-state attacks will expand; more targets and increased sophistication will mean many successes for attackers. Economic espionage will be increasingly common as nation-states use cyber theft of data to gain economic advantage in multinational deals. The attack of choice involves targeted spear phishing with attachments, using well-researched social engineering methods to make the victim believe that an attachment comes from a trusted source, and using newly discovered Microsoft Office vulnerabilities and hiding techniques to circumvent virus checking.

4. Mobile Phone Threats, Especially Against iPhones And Android-Based Phones; Plus VOIP

   Mobile phones are general purpose computers, so worms, viruses, and other malware will increasingly target them. Google's recent announcement of "android" and the formation of the "open handset alliance" is a watershed moment for the mobile industry. A truly open mobile platform will usher in completely unforeseen security nightmares. The developer toolkits provide easy access for hackers. And hackers are taking note. The author of Metasploit, H.D. Moore, plans a mobile payload presentation webcast this month.
   
   Attacks on VoIP systems are on the horizon and may surge in 2008. VoIP phones and the IP PBXs have had numerous published vulnerabilities. Attack tools exploiting these vulnerabilities have been written and are available on the Internet. In short, the VoIP attack surface is enormous.

5. Insider Attacks

   Insider attacks are initiated by rogue employees, consultants and/or contractors of an organization. Insider-related risk has long been exacerbated by the fact that insiders usually have been granted some degree of physical and logical access to systems, databases, and networks that they attack, giving them a significant head start in attacks that they launch. More recently, however, security perimeters have broken down, something that allows insiders to attack both from the inside and from outside an organization's network boundaries. Insider-related risk (as well as outsider risk) has thus skyrocketed. Organizations need to put into place substantial defenses against this kind of risk, one of the most basic of which is limiting access according to what users need to do their jobs.

6. Advanced Identity Theft from Persistent Bots

   A new generation of identity theft is being powered by bots that stay on machines for three to five months collecting passwords, bank account information, surfing history, frequently used email addresses, and more. They'll gather enough data to enable extortion attempts (against people who surf child porn sites, for example) and advanced identify theft attempts where criminals have enough data to pass basic security checks.

7. Increasingly Malicious Spyware

   Criminal and nation-state attackers continue to refine the capabilities of their malicious code, expanding on flux techniques to obscure their infrastructure, making it even harder to locate their servers. Additionally, the recent Storm variants' capabilities of being able to detect investigators' activity and then respond with a flooding attack against the investigators will become more mainstream and even more powerful, protecting the attackers and making investigation more difficult. Tools will also increasingly target and dodge anti-virus, anti-spyware, and anti-rootkit tools to help preserve the attacker's control of a victim machine for as long as possible. In short, malware will become stickier on target machines and more difficult to shut down.

8. Web Application Security Exploits

   Large percentages of web sites have cross site scripting, SQL injection, and other vulnerabilities resulting from programming errors. Until 2007 few criminals attacked these vulnerable sites because other attack vectors were more likely to lead to an advantage in unauthorized economic or information access. Increasingly, however, advances in XSS and other attacks have demonstrated that criminals looking for financial gain can exploit vulnerabilities resulting from web programming errors as new ways of penetrating important organizations. Web 2.0 applications are vulnerable because user-supplied data cannot be trusted; your script running in the users' browser still constitutes "user supplied data." In 2008, web 2.0 vulnerabilities will be added to more traditional programming flaws and web application attacks will grow substantially.

9. Increasingly Sophisticated Social Engineering Including Blending Phishing with VOIP and Event Phishing

   Blended approaches will amplify the impact of many more common attacks. For example, the success of phishing is being radically increased by first stealing IDs of users of other technologies. Salesforce.com users were targeted for an "FTC complaint" phishing email. Monster.com users were targeted for a job offer phishing email. Even if it is non-targeted, event phishing is gaining in sophistication. Tax filing scams and scams based on the U.S. Presidential elections will be widely used this year, and many of them will succeed. A note with the subject "Hillary drops out of the race" or "Rudy and female staffer caught on film" could generate huge new botnets of people who are interested in politics, but may not have patched their systems fully. Add to those opportunities potential bogus fund raising sites and even political dirty tricks going digital, and you'll have an explosive junction of hacking and politics.
   
   A second area of blended phishing combines email and VoIP. An inbound email, apparently being sent by a credit card company, asks recipients to "re-authorize" their credit cards by calling a 1-800 number. The number leads them (via VoIP) to an automated system in a foreign country that, quite convincingly, asks that they key in their credit card number, CVV, and expiration date.

10. Supply Chain Attacks Infecting Consumer Devices (USB Thumb Drives, GPS Systems, Photo Frames, etc.) Distributed by Trusted Organizations

    Retail outlets are increasingly becoming unwitting distributors of malware. Devices with USB connections and the CDs packaged with those devices sometimes contain malware that infect victims' computers and connect them into botnets. Even more targeted attacks using the same technique are starting to hit conference attendees who are given USB thumb drives and CDs that supposedly contain just the conference papers, but increasingly also contain malicious software.

SOURCE:

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From IntelFusion:
CIA reveals another reason to focus on Insider Threats

CIA Official: North American Power Company Hacked:

"We suspect, but cannot confirm, that some of these attackers had the benefit of inside knowledge," he said. "We have information that cyberattacks have been used to disrupt power equipment in several regions outside the United States. In at least one case, the disruption caused a power outage affecting multiple cities. We do not know who executed these attacks or why, but all involved intrusions through the Internet."

Protecting our nation's computer infrastructure is tough enough, and something that we haven't reliably accomplished yet, but how do you protect against the malicious acts of employees against their own companies? That's the domain of defense against Insider Threats. I have some ideas about that hard problem that I'm spending this week fleshing out.

From IntelFusion:

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Internet Security is falling Further behind in the security war, we are subject to more attacks, threats than ever before. And many of them untraceable with current technology.

G

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Al Qaeda Documents Show Internal Trouble

By Kevin Whitelaw Thu Oct 11, 10:16 AM ET

A new study released by the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy examines the history of splits among the top leadership of al Qaeda and finds that the terrorist network may be more vulnerable than many officials suggest.

"From its beginnings . . . al Qaeda has been at war with itself," says the report, which draws upon a trove of captured internal al Qaeda documents and correspondence released by the Department of Defense. The translated documents depict an organization of al Qaeda associates who frequently protest decisions made by al Qaeda's leader Osama bin Laden, as well as his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

The report documents a constant theme of the group's leaders arguing over everything from immediate tactics to the wisdom of making the United States the group's primary target. It also shows how prejudices of the group's Arab leaders against their non-Arab affiliates and their former Taliban hosts repeatedly led to serious infighting and even some betrayals. The report's authors conclude that many of these splits remain a characteristic of al Qaeda today.

"There is no evidence to suggest that it has overcome the persistent weaknesses identified in this report," they write, adding that the group's transition to a global "brand" name has created new vulnerabilities that could make it open to exploitation.

"Lacking a broad command-and-control structure, al Qaeda Central finds itself unable to control the uses--and abuses--of its brand by self-starting 'affiliate' groups." They point to the gory tactics of the now deceased Abu Musab Zarqawi, the al Qaeda-affiliated terrorist who wreaked havoc in Iraq but alienated many of al Qaeda's potential supporters with his indiscriminate killing of other Muslims.

Source:

IN their own words: Al qaeda

Binny loosing control

al Qaeda suicide bombers, counter-productive

Suicide Bombs Target Salahadin Awakening Leader

By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

Yesterday, two suicide truck bombs targeted a leader of the Salahadin Awakening Council. (The Awakening movements that have sprouted up across Iraq during the past year are based on the model that experienced great success in the Anbar province.) The Times of London reports: "Up to 22 people were killed and many more wounded when two suicide truck bombs exploded in a town in northern Iraq today, targeting a police chief and a tribal leader who had joined forces with the US military against al-Qaeda."

This is in line with al-Qaeda in Iraq's announced campaign of assassinations intended to coincide with Ramadan. As the MEMRI Blog reports, shortly after the assassination of Abdul Sattar al-Rishawi, an extremist web site published a list of names and photos titled "Pictures of the Infidels and Apostates Wanted by the Islamic State of Iraq." The accompanying message praised al-Rishawi's killing, and threatened other tribal leaders who opposed al-Qaeda:

We killed your leader and sheikh on the first day of Ramadan, as we promised you. You should know that the ISI [Islamic State of Iraq] will prevent most of your [other] leaders from offering up their holiday prayers [on 'Id Al-Fitr at the end of the month of Ramadan]. You will never see 'Id Al-Fitr, because [the jihad fighters] have turned [this] Ramadan into a grave for the apostates. [Al-Rishawi] is the first... dead hypocrite of this month – [the month of] jihad and mujahideen – and will be followed by many others.

The indispensable Bill Roggio notes that "al Qaeda has conducted several high-profile tribal assassinations" since this announcement -- including killing senior Salahadin Awakening Council member Sheikh Muawiya Jebara as he traveled near the provincial capital of Samarra.

Yesterday's attack did not succeed in killing its intended target, Salahadin Awakening Council member Thamer Ibrahim Atallah. Local police chief Colonel Saad al-Nifous, another target of the attack, also escaped unharmed. However, both men lost family members in the attack. A senior military intelligence officer tells me in an e-mail that their survival "is really good news," since both men are "key allies in the province."

This situation bears watching. The reversals that al-Qaeda experienced in Anbar and Diyala show the importance of tribal allies. Al-Qaeda in Iraq apparently hopes to decapitate the movement in Salahadin before it gains too much steam.

October 10, 2007 06:33 PM Link

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The locals have better intel and sources than USA, al Qaeda will pay dearly for this.
And it shows the locals how they must deal with AQ.

Big stradegy error on AQ's part, but they are very scared and concerned about the sucess of the Awakening Councils, Islam will put an end to al qaeda, and AQ cannot survive without local support, ZARQAWI has admitted this in captured letters.

Gerald

Great analysis, USA winning

Iraq as Qaeda bait

James Lewis
BrookesNews.Com
Monday 17 September 2007

The Left thinks Iraq is a killing field for Americans. Actually, it is a killing field for our enemies, at a very great but vitally important sacrifice. That reflects a grand strategy, tailored to the peculiar nature of the global terror threat. You don't shoot poisonous fire-ants with a BB gun; you just set an ant trap. Ant colonies are highly “distributed” biological societies, much like the world-wide web. They can’t be killed with a BB or a pressure hose; even pouring flaming gasoline on an ant hill won't work. Instead, you destroy ant colonies by attracting hungry ants to a chemical bait, and then kill them all in one small place. Ant traps work.

That’s the Bush strategy in Iraq. Al Qaeda isn't centralized, with big cities or steel industries like Nazi Germany. So you can’t destroy the enemy by hunting them one by one. Rather, you bait a trap — provoke them to come to you, and make sure they don’t get out alive. Iraq is a trap for Al Qaeda. Our mere presence in the heart of the Osama’s Caliphate-To-Be draws them like ants to sugar. General Petraeus just reported that

...in the past 8 months, we have considerably reduced the areas in which Al Qaeda enjoyed sanctuary. We have also neutralized 5 media cells, detained the senior Iraqi leader of Al Qaeda-Iraq, and killed or captured nearly 100 other key leaders and some 2,500 rank-and-file fighters. Al Qaeda is certainly not defeated; however, it is off balance and we are pursuing its leaders and operators aggressively.

Most of the Qaeda fighters come from Saudi Arabia and other breeding grounds. Now that the Sunni tribes are turning against them, they are more exposed and hunted than ever before. Wars are fluid and unpredictable, but no one can imagine that Al Qaeda is happy with its victories since 9/11. In Afghanistan, they have been on the run since 2003, although the Pakistan border regions continue to supply new recruits. But in Afghanistan they are being destroyed before ever reaching the cities. Add that to a sizable numbers neutralized in Pakistan, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and more.

Add to that the cells pinpointed in Europe and America, the Philippines and Indonesia. We are wiping out the fire ants wherever they can be found. At that attrition rate, every single year we stay in Iraq, we could get rid of another couple of thousand AQ fighters. Yes, we pay a high price — but nothing like the price that baddies running loose and attacking us at home would exact. We are demonstrating who is the strong horse, and who is the weak horse. When the message is finally driven home, the enemy will come to his own conclusions.

In addition to Al Qaeda, other jihadi militants, like Iranian Quds officers and Shiite militants, are being caught in Iraq. A top Hezb’allah operative was just captured there — and Hezb’allah has been killing Americans ever since they blew up the Marine barracks in Lebanon. As the President said when our perverse press pointed out that the terrorists might hit us in Iraq: Bringhem on. That was not an idle boast, but just a statement of the bait and kill strategy. The many critics of that statement simply do not understand or do not want to understand the strategy.

Now take a look at the map of Iran and notice where our military are today. To the west is Iraq, where American forces move and attack freely. To the east is Afghanistan, where the same is true. South and south-west are Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, and the Gulf itself; those Sunni countries now consider Iran to be their biggest threat. We therefore have hundreds of thousands of military surrounding the next biggest problem, Tehran: to the east and west, and on naval vessels in the Gulf, the Mediterranean, and the Indian Ocean. We just had joint maneuvers with the Indian Navy, the Japanese and the Aussies.

In Qatar we have major bases. We just sold another 20 billion dollars worth of military equipment to Saudi and Oman, including anti-missile defenses. Farther away, Egypt and Jordan are American clients — within limits. So, of course, is Israel. In sum, Tehran can be struck from most points of the compass by our air and missile forces. The Israeli Air Force just struck Iranian weapons located in the eastern corner of Syria, right next to Iran. Iran is a rising threat, and no one knows how that scenario will play out. But would you really want to be Ahmadi-Nejad today? Every time he makes another wild boast, more people become convinced that he cannot be allowed to get nukes. The German government has just been reported as giving up on the European negotiation effort to stop Iranian nukes. Instead, German officials

gave the distinct impression that they would privately welcome, while publicly protesting, an American bombing campaign against Iran's nuclear facilities.

It can’t be comfortable to be a regime supporter in Tehran today. Or would you want to be a Baathist general? A few years ago they were at the top of the heap. The fact is that we are drastically weakening or destroying our terror-supporting enemies: Saddam is dead, Al Qaeda is being degraded, the Taliban are hemorrhaging, and the Mullahs are surrounded. Yet all the know-nothings think there is no strategy for Iraq. There’s even a clever ironic twist in terms of domestic politics, because our liberals are constantly screaming Defeat! Defeat! Defeat! That message of weakness and vulnerability inspires more and more of our enemies to come to Iraq and join in the bloody slaughter of Americans.

But when they get there, they discover they’ve been suckered. It’s not the Americans who are taking a beating, but the jihadis who fell for the headlines and who listen to the American Left. So even our malicious liberals end up encouraging the enemy to go to Iraq to die.

As President Harry Truman did, George W. Bush recognized the stakes, set in place the right strategy, and was vilified by critics as stupid. But good poker players like Harry S. Truman and George W. Bush know that you don’t show your cards too soon, just to make people think you're smart.

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James Lewis blogs at dangeroustimes.wordpress.com. This article originally appeared in the American Thinker