(Image source from: Jihadi Help Desk for 24-hour tech support})
NBC News reported that ISIS has 'Jihadi Help Desk', its own 24-hour tech support, taking high-tech recruitment to new heights. Around six ISIS senior members are operating the help desk. Jihadi Help Desk is basically designed to help recruits as well as others to help understand the use of private-messaging platforms, encryption and others.
The Combating Terrorism Center, counterterrorism analyst, Aaron Brantly, told NBC News that, "They answer questions from the technically mundane to the technically savvy to elevate the entire jihadi community to engage in 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."
According to Brantly, the five or six help-desk operatives at least have training in information technology at college level or master's-level. And many helpers all across the globe help them and assist in various roles.
"You can kind of get a sense of where they are by when they say they are signing off to participate in the [Muslim] call to prayer,'' which traditionally occurs at five specific times a day, Brantly said. "They are very decentralized. They are operating in virtually every region of the world."
Also read: Abdelhamid Abaaoud, Master Mind behind Paris attacks dead
ISIS is bringing new recruits and less tech-savvy members to speed on the latest privacy technologies so as to lessen the risk of discovery of the plot or a network compromised. The terror outfit has been guiding followers to use popular messaging app, Telegram to send self-destructing messages for the purpose of communication. ISIS’s other unlikely source of privacy is a video-game console, ‘the PlayStation 4’.
Jan Jambon, home-affairs minister of Belgium, said, "The most difficult communication between these terrorists is via PlayStation 4. It’s very, very difficult ... to decrypt the communication that are done via PlayStation 4."
-Sumana
