{"id":22293,"date":"2012-09-15T09:10:52","date_gmt":"2012-09-15T05:10:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/?p=22293"},"modified":"2012-09-15T09:11:41","modified_gmt":"2012-09-15T05:11:41","slug":"facebooks-terrorist-honey-traps-beware-attractive-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/showcase\/facebooks-terrorist-honey-traps-beware-attractive-women\/","title":{"rendered":"Facebook’s Terrorist “Honey Traps”: Beware Attractive Women"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Facebook, the social networking website with over 955 million profiles, has been used as a \u2018honey trap\u2019 by terrorists posing as attractive women to unsuspecting Australian military personnel. This is, at least according to the Australian government, the new danger that the war on terror has thrown up, if its research into the dangers of social media usage by the military can be believed.<\/p>\n

Australian news sites<\/a>\u00a0this week put the spotlight on the\u00a02012 Australian government report\u00a0(PDF)<\/a>\u00a0that recommended the implementation of more detailed guidelines and policies ensuring safe social media use in the military. At the moment secure control of usage is left to reliance on the individual\u2019s \u2018common sense\u2019, subject to personal interpretation, but the report revealed a systemic risk in online security.<\/p>\n

It makes imaginative reading. It claimed that Australian soldiers had been courted by Taliban insurgents posing as attractive women in fake profiles on Facebook. The soldiers then went on to add the insurgents as \u2018friends\u2019. By adding such imposters soldiers run the risk, the report argued, of exposing crucial military information regarding location and identity.<\/p>\n

Most notably, though,\u00a0details of specific cases were not revealed, raising the possibility that this is all a clever military intelligence piece of propaganda.<\/p>\n

It was clear that the Australian government see a real threat here. The main concern is that social media could prove\u00a0damaging to army operations in secret or sensitive locations. One possibility, for instance, is that the\u00a0geo-tagging functions of social media could unwittingly reveal the user\u2019s location to the world.<\/p>\n

There might be some substance to such concerns. As more and more soldiers rely on social media to keep in touch with family and friends, there is clearly the potential that information found online might be used in a counter-intelligence operation.<\/p>\n

A fake Facebook account of Admiral James Stavridis, chief of US European Command, was\u00a0recently uncovered<\/a>\u00a0as having been an attempt to elicit personal information from the high-ranking British military, Defence ministry and NATO officials who knew him. NATO said it wasn\u2019t clear who was responsible for the Facebook page, but other security sources implied China was to blame.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s not just \u2018the enemy\u2019 who is moving onto the online battlefield. In 2010 the US\u00a0Central Command (CENTCOM), which oversees US armed operations in the Middle East and Central Asia, was revealed to be developing an \u2018online persona management service<\/a>\u2019 that would allow one US military personnel to control up to 10 separate identities based all over the world.<\/p>\n

Known as \u2018sock puppets\u2019, these identities were designed to influence internet conversations and spread pro-American propaganda. According to Commander Bill Speaks, US Central Command\u2019s chief media officer of CENTCOM\u2019s digital engagement team: \u2018This contract supports classified social media activities outside the US, intended to counter violent extremist ideology and enemy propaganda.\u2019<\/p>\n

It\u2019s clear that as the fight against terrorism moves from the real battlefield to the cyber battlefield a whole new array of issues are going to have to be managed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TBIJ: As the fight against terrorism moves from the real battlefield to the cyber battlefield a whole new array of issues are going to have to be managed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1255,"featured_media":22294,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,692,63,1628],"tags":[5587,18343,4472,39,8507,191,3181,143,2033,1374,18302],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22293"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1255"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22293\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}