SADAQAHCOINS: Darknet Jihad Funding

A few days ago the word got out that a new da’esh jihadi funding site had hit the darknet. Much of the reporting has been about the novelty around this idea which isn’t all that novel really. There was another site back in the day that was looking for bitcoin donations and was much more sketchy than this site is but who’s paying attention right? Anyway, this site is the next generation of jihobbyist funding by an unknown group of guys and it is novel in a couple of ways that in reading the other reports, was missed out on. In fact, one alleged expert just marked this site down as just another scam site when in fact, while it may in fact be a scam, it is much more nuanced than the usual fare you see in the darknet and thus, I judge it to be run by people who at least know the jihad well and understand the Hadiths.

The premise of the site is based on the Islamic notion of Sadaqah, which is misspelled for the jihobbyists on this site to make it catchy. Sadaqah, literally means charity or benevolence and is an apt name for this site because it is exactly that which they are seeking. It is an interesting area of Islam concerning your obligations for charity as well as public works and in this twist, the sadaqacoins crew is attempting, as others have, to manipulate the original intent of Sadaqah, for jihad and the furtherance of the war against the infidels. That this site is using trackable bitcoins and attempts to use a more opaque currency like Monero is novel only for the fact that this site is much more slick and put together than the others I have seen out there in the past. Honestly, much of the jihad has always been propped up on donations and the Hawala system since the beginning of the GWOT.

Of course this site not only wants to have the believers give them bitcoin for the jihad but they have funding programs for specific things like buying a sniper rifle or a truck that they can mount a gun on. Not much new here in the way of asking for donations like this inside the jihad. Now, what is new is that the site is open to “others” to suggest finding programs or “projects” as well so anyone could hit them up within different areas of the jihad to get this funding set up. This could be the big difference if this thing actually flies. Imagine more of the disparate cells asking for new projects and then setting up their own bitcoin wallets. This could mushroom a bit for the more savvy jihadi’s out there on the net looking to help but maybe not get blown up in the lands right?

In fact, the most interesting bit for me and for my old friend Onionscan, was the fact that these guys added an Eid celebration to the mix where you could donate for sacrifice. What this means is that you could help the jihadi’s celebrate Eid in country by funding their goat dinner. This is a bit that I think others missed in reporting this because of two reasons. First, these people who wrote about the site don’t understand the religion and the sociology, and two the site had been updated by the time I got to it with the Eid celebration. In fact, it was here that Onionscan puked out some interesting information about the mostly secure site. It seems that their Eid celebrations were in haste to be posted and they forgot to get rid of their EXIF data.

Oops.

Basically, the data that I managed to pull out of all these photos show that they are using a phone camera by Motorola and managed to not have their geolocation turned on. Of course this doesn’t mean they won’t mess up later and leave that kind of data in them for us to hoover up and use as coords for a hellfire visit. This all could be leveraged by the right players though to manipulate them to make a mistake in the future as well. I look forward to seeing where this all goes in the future. However as it stands now, their OPSEC is fair to medium. They did manage to give us a lot to work with though with all the email addresses to reach them on and their Telegram channels to infiltrate and get in their insides with.

 

 

Another point of interest for me on the OPSEC front was their choice of languages  for the site. It seems that these jihadi’s like to speak German, Turkish, and English. These three languages are of note because the site has no area that is strictly in Arabi and that is an oddity. This implies that the group who set this up are English speakers, Turks, and Germans but not really well equipped to write and read Arabic and this kind of tracks with some of the intelligence that comes out of the da’esh circles over the last couple years. There has been an influx of foreign fighters to the jihad but really guys, no Arabi? Shame on you as good Muslims not at least being able to have a page in Arabi!

I guess maybe we can see if they add some Arabic later on…

14gymFijxkFzbxbacbP9ioGndsqHRuJJTc —0 coins
1Dft8kgCWiuqRBLqgTuH2ZhVeUAxC8KGGi—0 coins
1KHDmXfqHJM9XqDHvGfCN4KVhsuReHDfLc—0 coins
1LGHotsLQF1evDXkt7DBTwvZ48SY3idTBL—0 coins
12QufGGoEoNUZN6aobofCoj9giNzCeHFP4—0 coins
184FNLi5aXGcurjEmUs7kgc7cYJ5gauduB—0 coins
1HABpbonuhGUL1woiQELuoDFXBEV6ZLpyG—0 coins
1Br6MtEQLgikLAQSFsrZKWxX6UPYzkAQz9—0 coins
15zbyqsq3q5s5ea5uEQz8xFkEpsPYAW3CE—0 coins
1KHmpHw8p7VGjQpftj2axdqq5NE3JYGT6C—0 coins
1MFeZbNsfWqBVytLmUjYcZoV3RhxJpQ3Kn—0 coins
17mwSmM6NzZTzoAiP3PHLAkooF9jd1xDY8—0 coins

Meanwhile, back to the bitcoins. This site has 12 bitcoin wallets at the time of my assessment and NONE of them have any coin in there at all. Nothing, nada, niente. Of course the site is fairly new so I can see why it wouldn’t have any coin in there yet. In fact the site only popped up on my link search in the darknet on the 24th of August so there is that. (see below) So we need to give it time to see what else they do and if anyone actually donates. Once they do, well then we can track the coins and see who did what huh?

Well, this was an interesting diversion for a while but I am still kinda meh about the whole thing. I am gonna keep an eye on it and maybe visit those Telegram channels to see what other OPSEC FAIL’s they make. Until then, hey, it’s out there and it’s novel.

BOOGA BOOGA BOOGA JIHAD IN THE DARKNET BOOGA!

Derp.

K.