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James Griffiths

Terrorist and militant groups including al-Qaeda have drastically improved their data security and encryption methods in the year since Edward Snowden’s revelations about US government spying, experts say.
After Snowden revealed how the National Security Agency’s PRISM surveillance programme collected data from supposedly secure services run by Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Apple and other tech giants, there has been a significant increase in the use of more sophisticated encryption methods across the internet as a whole.

Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt said last month that the company’s new encryption method was so secure that “no one believes the NSA can break [it] during our lifetime”.
The web giant also announced earlier this year that it would rank encrypted websites higher in search results, giving a commercial incentive for companies to adopt higher levels of security.
Facebook, too, has increased its security, announcing last week changes which will allow users of the Tor browser, which claims to allow people to surf the web anonymously by redirecting their data through multiple layers of encryption and proxies, to access the social network.
Tech giants are not the only ones to change their policies in response to the NSA leaks, however.

Security experts say terrorist organisations and militant groups such as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, are following suit.
“There’s no question that the technology now exists and is available for people to cover their tracks if they’re disciplined,” Greg Barton, international director of the Global Terrorism Research Centre at Monash University in Australia, told the South China Morning Post.
“It’s a game of chase and catch-up [between security services and extremists], it’s certainly become a lot harder than it was previously,” he said.
“The general raising of awareness, and the way NSA leaks were so broadly discussed in the mainstream press and extremist circles” has led many extremist groups to improve their data security policies and be more wary of what is discussed online, Barton said.

On Wednesday, al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) announced that it had developed its own modified version of the Tor browser “for al-Qaeda brothers”.
A Twitter account connected to the group, @AQIS_Bangla, also recommended that followers use a Gmail-like service offered by Russian web company Yandex.
The promotion of Yandex Mail is surprising as, while some privacy enthusiasts have hailed it as being “NSA-free”, the company is known, according to the BBC and other media, to have provided information on users to the Russian security services in the past.
Russia also operates a PRISM-like electronic spying system known as Sorm for surveillance of the internet.
Such oversights like this are what NSA and other security agencies depend on in the new digital war on terrorism, Barton said.
Unlike previous efforts to subvert encryption and institute mass surveillance, this latest battle may not have such a negative impact on regular internet users.
“It really represents a threat to those who go under the radar rather than society in general,” Barton said. “The damage to individual privacy has already been done.”


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Edward Snowden

‘Secure’ al-Qaeda browser shows how terrorists are ramping up data defences since Snowden leaks

Supporters of the Pakistani Taliban burn a US flag during a protest in May 2014 on the third anniversary of the death of slain al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Photo: AFP

Current al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. Photo: AFP

An Islamic State militant waves a black flag after the group's successful invasion of the Syrian city of Raqqa. Islamic State has largely supplanted al-Qaeda as the world's leading jihadi organisation. Photo: Reuters

Television screens in Tsim Sha Tsui show footage of NSA leaker Edward Snowden in June last year. Photo: David Wong

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New | ‘Secure’ al-Qaeda browser shows how terrorists are ramping up data defences since Snowden leaks