Project Reynard: Searching for Terrorism in Virtual Worlds

Via BBC -

The US government has begun a project to develop ways to spot terrorists who are using virtual worlds.

Codenamed Reynard it aims to recognise "normal" behaviour in online worlds and home in on anomalous activity.

It is likely to develop tools and techniques for intelligence officers who are hunting terrorists and terror groups on the net or in virtual worlds.

The project was welcomed by experts tracking terror groups using the net to organise or carry out attacks.

Brief details about Reynard came to light in a report sent to the US Congress by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) - which co-ordinates the work of US intelligence agencies.

In that report, which talked about the data mining efforts undertaken by the ODNI, Reynard was described as: "a seedling effort to study the emerging phenomenon of social (particularly terrorist) dynamics in virtual worlds and large-scale online games and their implications for the intelligence community".

Using publicly available data Reynard researchers will carry out observational studies to establish "baseline normative behaviors".

Once these are identified, Reynard will "then apply the lessons learned to determine the feasibility of automatically detecting suspicious behavior and actions in the virtual world".

"It's a positive step," said Andrew Cochran, founder and co-chairman of the Counterterrorism Foundation. "For a number of years we were behind in chasing jihadists' presence on the net and detecting it."

"That's a very sensible step at the moment," said Roderick Jones, a vice president of Concentric Solutions and a former special branch officer. "Just to feel their way around them and work out what new intelligence collection methods might be required to deal with this threat, because you won't be able to use traditional law enforcement methods."

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As many will tell you, terrorists have been using the power of the internet to facilitate and aid real world terrorist attacks.

Not to be confused with cyberterrorism, terrorists around the world can aid each other and use the internet for anonymous communications, information trading, weapons training and even chemical & biological attack training.

This is the type of OSINT that this project is looking to find....and should be welcomed.