The Global Islamic Media Front (GIMF) released what it called the first “Islamic program for encrypted instant messaging,” named “Asrar al-Dardashah,” and provided tutorials in seven languages including Arabic, English and German.
The GIMF issued a message announcing the development of the plugin on jihadist forums on February 6, 2013, and directed users to a website it created to download the plugin and its tutorials, and to view video tutorials in Arabic and English. In the introduction for “Asrar al-Darsashah,” or “Secrets of Chat,” the GIMF explained that it is an extension of its “Asrar al-Mujahideen” encryption program for written communications, and represents its support of jihadi media and the fighters. According to the group, the plugin uses keys generated by “Asrar al-Mujahideen,” and is to be used with the instant messaging program Pidgin, which it chose due to its support for popular messaging networks such as AOL Instant Messenger, Google Talk, and Yahoo Messenger.
The GIMF stated: “The Asrar al-Dardashah plugin is the most preferred means for secure instant messaging between users. It offers a level of encryption which has not been cracked or broken and can be relied upon entirely to protect the confidentiality of sensitive communication.”
The English copy of the video is available here:
http://sitemultimedia.org/video/SITE_GIMF_Asrar_Dardashah.mp4
Following is a copy of the English message:
The First Islamic Program for Encrypted Instant Messaging
Praise be to Allah, the Lord of the Universe, and the end is for those who fear Allah, and may prayers and peace be upon His slave, His messenger, His Khalil, and His faithful one for his revelation, our Prophet, our Imam, and our Master, Muhammad bin Abdullah, the Imam of the Mujahideen, the best of all preachers, and the leader of the resplendent, may Allah’s prayers and peace be upon him, and may Allah bless him, his family, his companions, and his followers until the Day of Judgment.
Thereafter:
The Ummah is suffering from the weakness and shortcomings of the media. This has not been for a short time but instead a long period. We believe that this weakness was created on purpose by the regimes that rule the lands of the Muslims, for the Islamic world possesses many material capabilities and factors, but despite that, there is great scientific delay. The reason for this is the intentional plan to keep those tyrants’ control over their oppressed peoples and keep the children of the Ummah away from all that would achieve a true renaissance in the Islamic Ummah. Therefore, they have not expressed any interest in promoting the media in the required manner.
The Jihadi media – which is the principal arm for speaking on behalf of the Mujahideen all over the world – shared in the weakness of the media due to the war that was and is still being exercised against it, whether by the Crusader campaign from the West or the rulers who betray their Islamic peoples. For many of the works of the Mujahideen have been lost and did not appear in the right way to the world, especially in the war of the Mujahideen against the Soviet Union, Bosnia, and other Jihadi front lines.
With the appearance of the internet, this became an important new means for the Mujahideen to be able to express themselves and deliver their word. There is no doubt that they have used it well, despite the lack of capabilities they have, and even with the pursuit, trials, and criminalization by unjust governments. Yet despite all of this, the Mujahideen have been victorious in the media war against the West. In March 2006, Eric Clark, the official spokesperson for the American Central Command, acknowledged that the Al-Qaida organization won the media war against the United States, and he clarified that Al-Qaida works through the internet to provide a new technical level and harness it for its use. This represents the driving force of those who mobilize everywhere in order to extol a specific concept for the Islamic world’s opinion, and even the world.
Therefore, we still say that the youth of the Ummah were endowed by Allah with the knowledge to know to support this religion with all the knowledge they were given, and that this support reaches an individual duty that is fulfilled only by doing it. Therefore, every sincere Muslim who wishes to support his Ummah in this Crusader war led by America and in which it is aided by the Islamic world’s rulers should not delay in offering support to the Mujahideen and the available means of communication, praise be to Allah.
Allah has facilitated in this media battle that the Global Islamic Media Front be the spearhead in this battle and has resolved to spare no effort in offering support to the Mujahideen. Allah has facilitated in the technical field its designing of the program Asrar al-Mujahideen. It is a program for encrypted text conversations, thereby recording a distinct development in Jihadi media. In extension of this path, today, they announce the designing of an “Islamic Encryption Plugin” for the encryption of text conversations directly through the internet through chat programs.
And in conclusion of this introduction, we thank all the brothers who programmed this Plugin and to make their work be in the path of Allah and to grant them a reward for all who helped or benefited this work in the path of Allah.
Likewise, we are honored to dedicate this work to the martyrs – with Allah’s permission – of the Jihadi media who wrote pages of light along the journey of the Jihadi media, and especially among them the brother: Seif al-Din al-Kanani, may Allah have mercy on him. And the brother: Abu Dujana al-Khorasani, may Allah have mercy on him. And the brother: Abu Umar al-Pakistani, may Allah have mercy on him. We dedicate this to all of the media foundations and to all the prisoners from the Jihadi media; may Allah release them.
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Description of Asrar al-Dardashah:
Asrar al-Dardashah offers the highest levels of encryption for secure communication through instant messaging. It is the first Islamic encryption plugin which relies upon the Islamic encryption program Asrar al-Mujahideen for secure correspondence through networks. It is highly technical in encryption that is above globally existing levels of encryption which secures communications with the greatest degree of secrecy and is based on the highest standards reached by cryptography and digital telecommunications engineering.
The Asrar al-Dardashah plugin supports most of the languages in the world through the use of Unicode encoding, including Arabic, English, Urdu, Pashto, Bengali, and Indonesian. The plugin is easy and quick to use, and, like its counterpart the Asrar al-Mujahideen program, it uses the technical algorithm RSA for asymmetric encryption, which is based a pair of interrelated keys: a public key allocated for encrypting and a private key used for decrypting.
To use the plugin, both of the communicating parties should install and activate the plugin and produce and import the Asrar al-Mujahideen private key into the Asrar al- Dardashah plugin, which automatically produces the corresponding public key of 2048-bit length for use. When Asrar al-Dardashah is activated by the two parties, the plugin automatically exchanges the public keys and activates RSA encryption. The users can confirm their public keys before the chat in order to prevent man-in-the middle attacks and confirm that they are speaking with the desired person by comparing their Public Key Fingerprints through another channel.
The Asrar al-Dardashah plugin is small in size and installs in seconds for use with the program Pidgin for instant messaging. Pidgin was chose because it supports many of the protocols and networks for instant messaging, including Yahoo Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, AOL Instant Messenger, Google Talk, and Jabber/XMPP.
The Asrar al-Dardashah Plugin has many features:
First: It is easy to use and only requires exchanging the Key Fingerprint to confirm the integrity of the each public key. Afterwards, using the plugin is quick and easy.
Secondly: Asrar al-Dardashah does not require any special technology or expertise. Nor does it require the installation of complex files or long text that can be corrupted. All a user has to do is activate the plugin by clicking on the plugin's icon to turn on encryption. Then, the plugin automatically encrypts the communication without any other effort on the part of the user.
Thirdly: The Asrar al-Dardashah plugin is trusted for use in secure communication, due to its reliance on the Asrar al-Mujahideen encryption program, which for several years has been the only reliable and safe program for use in the communications of the Mujahideen and the Ansar.
Therefore, the Asrar al-Dardashah plugin is the most preferred means for secure instant messaging between users. It offers a level of encryption which has not been cracked or broken and can be relied upon entirely to protect the confidentiality of sensitive communication.
