![\"Comms\"](\"https:\/\/hcsblogdotorg.files.wordpress.com\/2016\/07\/comms.jpg?w=620\")
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A new report documents how extremist groups\u2019 use of secure digital tools software has evolved.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think that there are too many [makers of encrypted communication tools who] can say that bad guys don\u2019t use their stuff, accurately,\u201d NSA<\/span> deputy director Richard Ledgett said during the recent Defense One<\/em> Tech Summit<\/a>, describing ISIS<\/span>\u2019 use of various messaging services and platforms to communicate and distribute propaganda. A new report<\/a> from cybersecurity group Flashpoint makes an attempt to catalog the digital tools in common use by jihadists, and when they started using\u00a0them.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s the\u00a0shortlist:<\/p>\n Tor<\/a>: Developed by the U.S.<\/span> Naval Research Laboratory in the 1990s to help installations and military units keep contact during a global conflict, TOR<\/span> anonymizes connections to the internet, making it harder for snoops to know who is visiting a given site. Throughout the last decade, \u201cTor\u2019s popularity grew sharply within jihadist Deep and Dark Web forums,\u201d the Flashpoint reports\u00a0says.<\/p>\n In 2012, the Snowden revelations showed that the NSA<\/span> could snoop on TOR<\/span> traffic with a program called XKEYSCORE<\/span><\/a>. In 2014, the German news service Tagesschau<\/a> poked aroundTOR<\/span>\u2019s source code and found that the NSA<\/span> was watching nineTOR<\/span> servers that allowed it to do \u00a0deep packet inspection<\/a> on basically anyone accessing TOR<\/span> outside of Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States (the so-called Five Eyes surveillance\u00a0partners).<\/p>\n Extremist groups have also begun using virtual private networks, or VPNs, which encrypt traffic between computers. As early as 2012, Al Qaeda was discussing the use of the free CyberGhostVPN<\/span>,<\/strong> the report notes. But today\u2019s savvy suicide bomber is likely to go in for a paid subscription to a better VPN<\/span> service. \u201cSome safer VPNs require monthly subscription,\u201d the Pro-ISIS<\/span> United Cyber Caliphate wrote earlier this year, warning loyalists to stay away from cheap\u00a0VPNs.<\/p>\n Secure messaging apps, such as Telegram<\/a>, and other services are proliferating and getting easier to use every day<\/a>. \u201cIt used to be that you had to be pretty technically astute to use encryption on a device or for personal communications,\u201d Leggett said. \u201cThat\u2019s become very user friendly, very easy to use and now very unsophisticated actors can install very high-grade encryption on their devices, so ISIL<\/span>, like many other targets, use that to hide their activities from\u00a0us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n