Cyber Crime and Cyber Terrorism

THE ROLE OF THE VIDEO
Videos play a key role in the propaganda; they show the ability of a terrorist group 
to carry successful operations such as suicide attacks. They also act as evidence for 
funders and sponsors proving that the money they have donated is well used for in-
stance for the "Jihadi cause" concerning al-qaeda type terrorism.

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CHAPTER 10
Terrorist use of the internet
According to law enforcement open source monitoring of Syrian groups, within a 
year, most of the moderate Syrian fighting groups that aimed at democratic elections 
after the fall of Bashar al-Assad have now shifted toward the jihadi ideologies which 
target the establishment of the Sharia law. All these fighting groups have released 
statements on the Internet to publicize their change of ideology—most probably to get 
the attention (and funds) of sponsors who are in favor of a Syria ruled by Sharia law.
ONLINE FORUMS—BLOGS
Forums are the most common way of promoting terrorism on the Internet since they 
provide a platform where people with the same way of thinking gather together; never-
theless, these forums have also some inconvenience which needs to be clarified. In the 
past, each terrorist forum used to be controlled by only one administrator but the success 
of several Law Enforcement Authorities in arresting administrators brought down or dis-
rupted the operation of several terrorist forums. Because of those arrests, a new trend has 
emerged which aims at sharing the administration of a terrorist forum between several 
administrators. They either all share the same login/passwords or have multiple adminis-
trators and they all know how to run the forum. If one of them is arrested, the forum can 
continue its usual activity. This is exactly what happened when the Spanish authorities 
arrested an administrator of the terrorist forum “Ansar al Mujahideen” few years ago.
The main advantages for those terrorist groups to own their own forum is to have 
a total control over censorship, namely the communications between its members: 
messages and threads can be modified, deleted. They also have total freedom over the 
choice of the running platform, hosting location, activity logs and user access control, 
so members can be banned or promoted based on the way they behave.