Posted: 9/15/2007 12:42:34 PM EDT
|
Virtual terrorists Hunted in reality, jihadists are turning to artificial online worlds such as Second Life to train and recruit members, writes Natalie O'Brien | July 31, 2007 THE bomb hit the ABC's headquarters, destroying everything except one digital transmission tower. The force of the blast left Aunty's site a cratered mess. Just weeks before, a group of terrorists flew a helicopter into the Nissan building, creating an inferno that left two dead. Then a group of armed militants forced their way into an American Apparel clothing store and shot several customers before planting a bomb outside a Reebok store. This terror campaign, which has been waged during the past six months, has left a trail of dead and injured, and caused hundreds of thousands of dollars' damage. The terrorists belong to a militant group bent on overthrowing the government. But they will never be arrested or charged for their crimes because they have committed them away from the reach of the world's law enforcement agencies, in the virtual world known as Second Life. Second Life, or SL as it is known to devotees, is an online reality game. It was launched in 2003 by California-based Linden Labs but it did not come to prominence until last year, when corporations including Sony, IBM, Nissan and the ABC bought islands and began marketing to visitors. In SL people create their own characters, known as avatars, and live an alternative life, buying goods, real estate and living in a community of more than eight million people from across the world. They go about their lives, attending concerts and seminars, building businesses and socialising. On the darker side, there are also weapons armouries in SL where people can get access to guns, including automatic weapons and AK47s. Searches of the SL website show there are three jihadi terrorists registered and two elite jihadist terrorist groups. Once these groups take up residence in SL, it is easy to start spreading propaganda, recruiting and instructing like minds on how to start terrorist cells and carry out jihad. One radical group, called Second Life Liberation Army, has been responsible for some computer-coded atomic bombings of virtual world stores in the past six months. On screen these blasts look like an explosion of hazy white balls as buildings explode, landscapes are razed and residents are wounded or killed. With the game taking such a sinister turn, terrorism experts are warning that SL attacks have ramifications for the real world. Just as September 11 terrorists practised flying planes on simulators in preparation for their deadly assault on US buildings, law enforcement agencies believe some of those behind the Second Life attacks are home-grown Australian jihadists who are rehearsing for strikes against real targets. Terrorist organisations al-Qa'ida and Jemaah Islamiah traditionally sent potential jihadists to train in military camps in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Southeast Asia. But due to increased surveillance and intelligence-gathering, they are swapping some military training to online camps to evade detection and avoid prosecution. Rohan Gunaratna, author of Inside al-Qa'ida, says it is a new phenomena that, until now, has not been openly discussed outside the intelligence community. But he says security agencies are extremely concerned about what home-grown terrorists are up to in cyberspace. He believes the dismantling and disruption of military training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan after September 11 forced terrorists to turn to the virtual world. "They are rehearsing their operations in Second Life because they don't have the opportunity to rehearse in the real world," Gunaratna says. "And unless governments improve their technical capabilities on a par with the terrorists' access to globalisation tools like the internet and Second Life, they will not be able to monitor what is happening in the terrorist world." Gunaratna says a fresh crop of home-grown jihadis has been groomed and is ready to step up and replace the leaders of Australian terror cells who have been arrested or jailed. He estimates as much as 80 per cent of the nation's counter-terrorism resources is dedicated to monitoring and tracking them. Kevin Zuccato, head of the Australian High Tech Crime Centre in Canberra, says terrorists can gain training in games such as World of Warcraft in a simulated environment, using weapons that are identical to real-world armaments. Zuccato told an Australian Security Industry Association conference in Sydney that people intent on evil no longer had to travel to the target they wanted to attack to carry out reconnaissance. He said they could use virtual worlds to create an exact replica and rehearse an entire attack online, including monitoring the response and ramifications. "We need to start thinking about living, working and protecting two worlds and two realities," Zuccato says. Earlier this year Britain's Fraud Advisory Panel warned that SL players could launder money across national borders without restriction and with little risk of being detected. The FAP says criminal or terrorist gangs can also use the game to avoid surveillance while committing crimes including credit card fraud, identity theft, money laundering and tax evasion. Intelligence and law enforcement agencies in the US and Australia are so concerned they have established their own reality world games in a bid to gain the same experiences as the virtual terrorists. Monash University academic and former Office of National Assessments intelligence officer David Wright-Neville agrees that online games and virtual worlds are being used by potential terrorists to hone their knowledge base. "They are very savvy with their technical skills," he says. Intelligence analyst Roderick Jones, who is investigating the potential use of the games by terrorists, says SL could easily become a terror classroom. "The teaching capabilities of the world can clearly be adapted for use by terrorists," he says in article published on website Counterterrorismblog.org. He believes the fast pace of communication that takes place in games such as SL is ideal for recruitment into radical groups, particularly because the age range of those engaged in this world is typically 18 to 34. Jones says streaming video can be uploaded into SL and a scenario can easily be constructed whereby an experienced bomb-maker could demonstrate how to assemble bombs using his avatar to answer questions as he plays the video. The bomb-maker and his students could be spread across the world, using instant language translation tools to communicate. "Just as real-life companies such as Toyota test their products in SL, so could terrorists construct virtual representations of targets they wish to attack in order to examine the potential target's vulnerabilities and reaction to attack," Jones says. One of the most useful tools available is theability to transfer SL money between avatars, funds that can then be translated into real currency. "The SL currency of Lindens (about $L270 to $US1) can be bought using a credit card in one country and credited to one avatar (account) and can be given to a co-conspirator avatar in another country," Jones says. The recent string of terrorist attacks in SL appeared to work and frightened off some retailers. In Nissan's case, its online officials cleaned up the mess, took away the bodies in virtual coffins and continued business. However, the American Apparel store is closing and moving out. The ABC has discovered that its bomb was a computer server error that it was able to fix within a couple of hours. Nonetheless, it is taking the likelihood of a terrorist attack seriously. Abigail Thomas, head of strategic development at ABC Innovations, says they are taking precautions to protect their most popular site on the ABC's island, known as the Sandbox. The Sandbox, which allows visitors to build or create objects including buildings, is considered the most vulnerable. "There have been some incidents where some people have built objects that are inappropriate for an ABC site," Thomas says. She says the ABC is monitoring the site closely, and has staff drop into the area twice a day to check on what is happening. There is an auto-delete button used to remove things quickly. "We have also harnessed the community to moderate the space," she says. Community representatives are relied on to report suspicious or inappropriate behaviour to the owners or the SL authorities, just as in the real world. Apart from the virtual worlds, nearly 5000 websites are maintained by terrorist groups. More than a dozen groups produce videos. Gunaratna, who is also head of terrorism research at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies in Singapore, says few governments understand the importance of the internet to terrorism. US terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman, from think tank RAND Corporation, says intelligence agencies deal with people only once they have become radicalised. But he warns law enforcement needs to step up its access to and understanding of internet communications and users. "We have to contest this virtual battle space in much the same manner as we are very successfully doing in other traditional forms," Hoffman says. www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22161037-28737,00.html |
What's not to get?  www.dailygut.com/?i=3256 |
ah shit the text in the second screen shot is killing me 
|
We got banned from the island, but they still heard us if we shouted. They started coming out and using their furry magic on us, but me and my buddy used a MK19 and an M60 to hunt some game. 
|
I would always tell them to give me money or I was going to blast them, alot of them did and I blasted them anyways. Should have had a piece. |
Haha, they have foam and trap guns now. I used to go around the "Gay Yiff Center" dressed as superman with an M249 and trap all the furries then start copy and pasting quotes from some online bible against gays to piss them off. It was hilarious. |
haha never been on SL but on one of the old "virtual Villages" back in the late 90's I set myself up as a street preacher finally got booted cause I was condemning everyone to hell, just for being on the 'net
|
|
Wait wait....you can get guns and explosives in second life? Hell, if I had known that I wouldn't have wasted all that time looking around for the stuff my idiot professor wanted me to look for. I would have gotten myself a belt fed and a few nades and kicked some a$$. |
hell yea.. i joined up for the free stuff. you wander around.. about all i found was all this weird sex shit, got old real fast.. if i could blow things up, be a serial killer, hunt terrorist and such.. heck. i would pay to play... would be cool, go in, set up a lab, bread humanazoids, zombies, predator type creatures, salt the world with killer ebola bird flu.. i though all you could do on second life was wander around and yak at people or play stupid role playing games... gotta go back .. that stuff about the furries is absolutely priceless... beyond cool.. almost as good as south park... |
yeah. i think it would be fun to wage some mayhem online. but i dont know how |
| When I was in SL for a half hour I found an island where they "sold" guns and was told that there were a few islands where you could shoot people. They had one island set up as the Wild, WIld, West and one island set up for Mafia type shootouts and a few others. |