Dec 2, 2008

India - FBI help crack internet terror calls

MUMBAI: The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) registered a case in connection with the audacious Mumbai serial attack that left over 180 people dead, including six
Americans, and are helping Indian investigators in cracking codes of Internet telephony used by terrorists of Lashker-e-Taiba.

The FBI team, accompanied by investigators from Scotland Yard, are camping in Mumbai for the last two days collecting information. They are also assisting the Internet telephony signatures intercepted by Indian intelligence agencies when militants were receiving calls from their Lashkar handlers from across the border.


The FBI team, which came here on Sunday, was attempting to decode the Internet telephony.

As per the US laws, the FBI has to probe the death of any American citizen outside of the US and later submit a charge sheet.


In this case, it sought the interrogation report of Mohammad Ajmal Amir Iman who was arrested by police on November 26 from Chowpatty area.


The FBI was trying to ascertain the origin of the mail and how many times it was opened in Pakistan.

The deciphered packets of the satellite conversation between the militants and their handlers, and the air length frequency waves used for conversing on Internet were also
being examined.

The militants used to receive calls from the Voice Over Internet protocol (VOIP) from Pakistan and the FBI, along with the Indian intelligence agencies, was trying to break the code to see when the calls started coming in on the phone besides ascertaining the instruments' previous locations.

This is probably the second case after the infamous IC-814 Hijacking case in which the FBI had registered in India as one of its citizen -- Jeanne Moore -- was in the Indian
Airlines aircraft in the hijack case.


The sources said the FBI team was also facing some problem in breaking into the encrypted code of the Gramin GPS phones but since the company was headquartered in the US, they would be able to break it using the master key code of the instrument available with the company.

Both the FBI and the Scotland Yard Police have taken details of call records apart from finding out the longitude and latitude positions of the mobile phones used by the 10
terrorists when they were raining bullets on Mumbaiikers.


Samples of the explosive material and the timer used in the detonation of the Improvised Explosive Devices were also taken by the two foreign investigating agencies for
examination.

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