Financial Cryptography Update: El Qaeda substitution ciphers

[Ian Grigg]

((((( Financial Cryptography Update: El Qaeda substitution ciphers )))))

                              April 19, 2004


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http://www.financialcryptography.com/mt/archives/000119.html



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The Smoking Gun has an alleged British translation of an El Qaeda
training manual entitled
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/jihadmanual.html _Military Studies
in the Jihad Against the Tyrants_

Lesson 13, http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/jihad13chap1.html
_Secret Writing And Ciphers And Codes_ shows the basic coding
techniques that they use.  In short, substitution ciphers, with some
home-grown wrinkles to make it harder for the enemy.

If this were as good as it got, then claims that the terrorists use
advanced cryptography would seem to be exaggerated.  However, it's
difficult to know for sure.  How valid was the book?  Who is given the
book?

This is a basic soldier's manual, and thus includes a basic code that
could be employed in the field, under stress.  From my own military
experience, working out simple encoded messages under battle conditions
(in the dark, with freezing fingers, lying in a foxhole, and under
fire, are all various impediments to careful coding) can be quite a
fragile process, so not too much should be made of the lack of
sophistication.

Also, bear in mind that your basic soldier has a lot of other things to
worry about and one of the perennial problems is getting them to bother
with letting the command structure know what they are up to.  No
soldier cares what happens at headquarters.  Another factor that might
shock the 90's generation of Internet cryptographers is that your basic
soldiers' codes are often tactical, which means they are only secure
for a day or so.  They are not meant to hide information that would be
stale and known by tomorrow, anyway.

How far this code is employed up the chain of command is the
interesting question.  My guess would be, not far, but, there is no
reason for this being accurate.  When I was a young soldier struggling
with codes, the entire forces used a single basic code with key changes
4 times a day, presumably so that an army grunt could call in support
from a ship off shore or a circling aircraft.  If that grunt lost the
codes, the whole forces structure was compromised, until the codes
rotated outside the lost window (48 hours worth of codes might be
carried at one time).

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