Nudge, nudge, wink, wink is the latest in counter-intelligence

[nancylebov]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/04/AR2008010403573_pf.html

"Taxi drivers," Redouane el Habab said, referred to suicide bombers; explosives were "dough." Anybody who had to go to "the hospital," he added, had been taken to jail, while those visiting "China" were really attending training camps in Sudan.

Experts said the codes may not appear sophisticated at first glance but can be time-consuming to crack, especially if the targets are conversing in Arabic.

Some of the people quoted in the article seemed surprised that the terrorists are intelligent about avoiding surveillance. I'm hoping the intelligence experts are just trying to convince the world they have a hard job or somesuch. If they're honestly surprised that they have competent opposition, I'm worried.

Link thanks to Bruce Schneier.

Comments

[autopope.livejournal.com]

This is a code (as opposed to a cypher) and they can be extraordinarily fiendish to crack in the absence of correlating data.

The classic case was the the Navajo code talkers during WW2 -- it was established fairly early that the Japanese military had no Navajo speakers or even a dictionary -- they weren't even aware of the language -- so the USN used Navajo sailors as living crypto machines for field operations.

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I'd call that a code: it's at a higher level than codes, as codes are higher than ciphers. But if those two are the only categories, I agree with you.

Is there a technish difference between "cipher" and "cypher", the way explosives jargon distinguishes "fuze" from "fuse" and newspaper jargon uses "lede" for the first paragraph instead of "lead" (from the days of molten type)?