Osama bin Laden raid yields trove of (not encrypted?) computer data. | Hacker News Reader

Osama bin Laden raid yields trove of (not encrypted?) computer data.

politico.com

33 pointscrocowhile26 comments

There was talk that this information may expose deliberate ties to the financiers of Al Quida including Saudi royalty. Not that this is new information per se, but awfully damning evidence if its found on the hard drive of bin Laden.

From the article:

“Hundreds of people are going through it now,” an official said, adding that intelligence operatives back in Washington are very excited to find out what they have.

This suggests data were not encrypted, I guess. Amazing.

Not all super villains have tech goons that read Hacker News

Even if they were using encryption, it was probably the kind the US government can very easily break.

What exactly do you mean here? ROT13? Some sort of crazy arabic version of pig latin?

Just because they have DARPA doesn't mean the americans can just waltz past elliptic-curve cyphers.

EDIT: Unless you mean the 'give me the key or I'll fetch the powerdrill' kind of encryption breaking, in which case, fair point.

Rubber hose crypto doesn't work on corpses. I was actually quite surprised that they didn't try/manage to get more people alive...

They were more concerned about keeping the American operators alive. When you're going after a zealous nutjob who welcomes death and seeks only to take as many others as possible with him, capture becomes significantly more dangerous than killing. The SEALs were mostly likely briefed that they were to attempt capture but not to endanger any of their team members for that purpose. The reports I read stated that he was offered a chance to surrender but declined. Since UBL was holding an AK and a human shield at the time, the SEAL who cornered him didn't waste any time going to "plan B."

> When you're going after a zealous nutjob who welcomes death and seeks only to take as many others as possible with him, ...

What you say is 100% true, but if history is any guide, zealous nutjob LEADERS have their MINIONS take as many with THEM as they can. The leaders, oddly, need to stay and suffer on this mortal plane.

This has happened, but Osama - who clearly was a capable and inspiring man - sacrificed a life of mostly carefree luxury for caves, manhunts, etc. I'm not saying he was not crazy or entirely free of being corrupted by his position, but it seems likely that he actually believed what he said he believed - and even if he didn't go out and blow himself up, he was probably aware of the likely consequences of his actions. (Evading capture in Afghanistan was quite a feat/lucky.)

> Since UBL was holding an AK and a human shield at the time,

Was it Osama using the woman? I read it was "one of the fighters", but not Osama himself.

(pause)

Most news outlets now are reporting that the woman may have been simply in the line of fire, and not being used as a shield for anyone. We may never know.

At a certain point they were using proper algorhytms but not regular pgp because they would not trust american software

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/02/mujahideen_sec...

News reports claim that the FBI has said that they can not crack TrueCrypt.

http://news.techworld.com/security/3228701/fbi-hackers-fail-...

Some people argue that they want to encourage the use of certain encryption products (e.g. Clipper chips) while others argue they are being honest about their capabilities being limited in the face of strong encryption.

To be fair, though, this kind of case would warrant the NSA's attention - and they seem to be much better than the FBI at this kind of thing.

What the FBI, and all security services are really interested in, is FUD.

This is the same reason why they've never issued a denial about aliens at area 51, the same reason that they make random comments about truecrypt out of the blue, the same reason they've never released all the CCTV footage from the pentagon on 9/11 even though they could, the non denials around ECHELON, HAARP, etc. etc. etc.

They'd much prefer people keep wasting energy guessing about the infinite space of "unknown unknowns" than spending time talking about the less titillating abuses that happen in plain sight.

If I could crack TrueCrypt, and I were the FBI, that's probably something I would say.

Probably not. There are enough algorithms that the government cannot break, and most people using encryption use those.

I doubt that. If they were using TrueCrypt, (or hell, even turned on Windows 7 BitLocker), and the machines were not captured turned on (so as to ensure the key isn't in memory), it'd depend on the quality of the passphrase.

More likely, hiding out like that, one is probably worried more about physical security and being found and figures that's the highest problem they have, and being found probably means being dead, at which point the value of encryption is slightly less relevant to the user.

The amazing part to me is that the reports say there was no internet connectivity and no phone lines running into the compound. Did they have an internal network? Or, were these all just stand-alone computers where they kept notes?

Perhaps he had a 3G connection? That would conflict with their statement about no internet connectivity though.

This doesn't surprise me at all: the guy was notoriously paranoid and wouldn't have wanted any kind of electronic tether that Americans could have potentially used to trace back to him. Never mind how plausible such a scenario actually is, in his mind it was a threat.

I'd bet that he had a dedicated sneaker-net servicing his compound with high bandwidth and acceptable (to him) latency.

Could be satellite internet...

Could have been a sneakernet with the courrier system. He was able to move videos out, it would make sense data came in as well. When you're hiding out for years at a time, the increased latency of such a network probably isn't a pressing concern.

Now we should call this usability problem "Why [even] Osammy Can't Encrypt"

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/5/8/114540/8364

"One of the choppers developed a mechanical problem that caused it to lose lift[...] When he couldn’t get the bird airborne again, the SEALs blew it up and left in one of the reserves."

What the hell? Is this Battlefield 2 or a multi-million dollar piece of hardware?

Was that area considered hostile territory? (I honestly don't know.) Maybe the Pakistanis said they couldn't help, so they blew it up to keep anything from getting into foreign hands?

They landed in the compound where the fighting took place, and that's where the helo went down. There's no point in letting the enemy being able to strip down / repair one of your aircraft and use it against you.

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