IS expands online presence, operates 24-hour ‘Jihadi help desk’
No terrorist organisation uses the online medium as much as the Islamic State does to spread its tentacles, making it easy for it to reach and radicalise gullible youth across the globe.
ISIS is known to have several twitter accounts, facebook pages, online sites including online magazines. And now it has emerged that the dreaded outfit also operates a 24*7 online help desk and its main aim is to train terrorists.
According to reports, 5-6 senior members of the Islamic State operate the Jihadi Help Desk and their primary function is recruit new fighters and train them to plan terror attacks online without being detected by surveillance networks.
Aaron Brantly, a counter-terrorism analyst at an independent research organisation at the US Military Academy, told NBC News that the help desk trains aspiring jihadists to learn how to use encrypted communication platforms so that they can evade online detection by cyber police and other security agencies that monitor terrorist activities on the internet.
“They’ve developed a series of different platforms in which they can train one another on digital security to avoid intelligence and law enforcement agencies for the explicit purpose of recruitment, propaganda and operational planning,” he said in his interview.
He explained how the senior ISIS members running the site answer all sorts of questions to help jihadi fighters engage in nefarious activities and facilitate global terror.
“Clearly this enables them to communicate and engage in operations beyond what used to happen, and in a much more expeditious manner. They are now operating at the speed of cyberspace rather than the speed of person-to-person communications.”
Many cyber experts believe that ISIS members are using new ways of communicating online to plan and execute terror attacks and the online help-desk is another way of recruiting and spreading the Islamic State’s reach.
