Das Internet im Bürgerkrieg in Syrien: Überwachungstechnologien als Waffen und staatliche Hacker

Im Bürgerkrieg in Syrien werden Menschen verhaftet und ermordet, nachdem ihre Computer und ihre Accounts ausspioniert wurden. Businessweek berichtet jetzt erneut, wie Überwachnungstechnologien zu Waffen werden können. The Atlantic berichtet, wie Iran und USA jeweils eine Seite hochrüsten.

Stephan Faris: The Hackers of Damascus – Businessweek

It didn’t matter. His computer had already told all. “They knew everything about me,” he says. “The people I talked to, the plans, the dates, the stories of other people, every movement, every word I said through Skype. They even knew the password of my Skype account.” At one point during the interrogation, Karim was presented with a stack of more than 1,000 pages of printouts, data from his Skype chats and files his torturers had downloaded remotely using a malicious computer program to penetrate his hard drive. “My computer was arrested before me,” he says.

Researchers have described the Syrian Electronic Army as a paramilitary-style group working in coordination with the country’s secret services and linked to the Syrian Computer Society, a government organization once headed by Assad himself before he became president. In our chat, @Th3Pr0_SEA denied the connection, repeating the group’s claims that it’s not an official entity and that its membership is unpaid, motivated only by patriotism. When I asked why the group’s website was hosted on servers owned by the Syrian Computer Society, he answered that his group paid for the service. “If we host our website outside of Syria servers, it will get deleted and probably hacked,” he wrote.

Sean Lyngaas: Syria’s Digital Proxy War – The Atlantic

There is a proxy war going on in Syria, one measured in megabytes rather than in arms. On one side, Iran is providing Bashar al-Assad’s regime with the tools of digital dictatorship to locate and bait the Syrian opposition. On the other side, the United States is trying to help the opposition protect itself from such attacks and set up alternate channels of communication. The outcome of this proxy war will affect the lives of many Syrians and the credibility of the State Department’s efforts to promote digital freedom internationally.