Online Gaming Jihad

Jihad Wargaming but Don't Blame the Games

I've come across a few Pro-Jihadi (named) players in BF2 on bigpond and internode servers in Australia. Nothing like getting your tank destroyed by jerks who load c4 on their jeeps and ram you with it, jumping out at the last second and exploding themselves & the vechicle destroying the tank.

"They are very savvy with their technical skills,"

World of Jihadcraft

First there was paintball jihad training, and now this. "Second Life and WoW 'plagued by terrorists'," by Nick Farrell for The Inquirer:

AUSSIE SECURITY experts claim that Second Life and online games such as World of Warcraft are being used to train terrorists.

According to the Australian newspaper a terror campaign has been waged in Second Life which has left a trail of virtual dead and injured, and caused hundreds of thousands of dollars' damage.

Apparently there are three jihadi terrorists registered and two elite jihadist terrorist groups in Second Life and they use the site for recruiting and training.

This is on top of the Second Life Liberation Army, which has been responsible for some computer-coded atomic bombings of stores on the site.

Rohan Gunaratna, author of Inside al-Qa'ida, said terrorists are rehearsing their operations in Second Life because they can't practice in the real world.

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.

Full article: <http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/017612.php>

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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.

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.

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.

Natalie O'Brien is a senior writer on The Australian.

read it all:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22161037-28737,00.html