Need input fast / important
 

OK Gents-
I know the matrix is not a secure area.
I am still in theater. I use my ONLY laptop to talk to my wife at night via Yahoo Instant Messenger.

She tells me tonight that she has received THREE single instant messages that are represented in Arabic at different times over the past few days. This is VERY CONCERNING to me with my being here in theater.

We are not going to use Yahoo for awhile and are going to use another IM service. Additionally, we are both going to change our Yahoo chat names and passwords in case those have been associated somehow with either of us.

I have asked her to save and print any further messages that come through in Arabic and take them to the CID folks on post to direct her to the proper people or see if they are threatening in any way that may warrant her needing additional protection. We have no idea what they say or if they are truly even directed at her, but Fort Leonard Wood is a small post and I am sure they don't have a large force or resource pool to deal with this sort of thing.

1) What else should I do regarding the "chat" thing. Is there a secure way for us to communitcate?

2) Any other suggestions regarding what to do with the messages?

3) Is there another reporting requirement? Local office of the FBI? Dept. of Homeland security?

She is armed at all times (and well trained) when off base. I have made it known that this is important to follow up on and for her to continue to be watchful of her surroundings when out and about. Bu this is generating a true sense of worry for me.

Please help. Thank you.

Joe

I have no idea as to the quality of the translation, but Google has a Arabic-English translation beta at

http://www.google.co.uk/language_tools

I'm looking into encrypted IM.

It's probably something innocent, a glitch in the Yahoo IM director, but you are of course doing the right thing.

Pretty Good Privacy (PGP)
 

I know thie following works with AOL Instant Messaging (AIM) but am not sure about about Yahoo chat. It will work very well with standard email systems and once set up runs pretty much in the background.

http://www.pgp.com/products/desktop_email/index.html

Thanks for the rapid response.....all others continue to be welcomed.

Joe

Joe -

IM messages are sent in the clear and any HTTP sniffer can ferret them out. I asked my resident geek and he said to use X-IM:

http://x-im.net/windownload.asp

He doesn't know if the current version gives options for encryption strength but suggests you use the max length keys if an option exists.

Do you do voice chat or video chat? If so I'll look for other options.

We do video when the bandwidth supports it. Generally only one or the other but rarely both.
No Voice.
She is on a MAC system...I run windows.

Thanks again for the quick help.

Joe

BitWise seems to be held in high regard, is free, and runs on Window and Mac. It is standalone, i.e. doesn't go through Yahoo:

http://www.bitwiseim.com/download.php

Looks like a good thing to start off with!

THanks!

#

Sponsor your wife on AKO and use the AKO chat option. It works pretty good and would be behind the AKO firewall.

#

I think you might want to inform someone in your 2 shop (probably the 2X). There are possibilities that they may want to consider.

+1 on the que up your 2 shop.

My recommendation is to log times and copy and paste the posts in a word document. If you need additional help PM me and I'll see if I can help you by passing this up the chain and to some old co-workers.

Another Tool
 

Eagle 5 (and others),

Here is another tool you might want to consider
Cryptainer. This is a great tool with one very important caveat - do NOT XXX NOT forget your password - there is no way to retrieve the information (according to the company web site, they do not have a back door into the system nor a master password).

You can also load it on a flash memory drive and run it off that.
The free version provides 128-bit encryption, the pay version provides 256-bit encryption.

V/R,

Army Special Investigations Unit