ISIS Using Social Media To Help Carry Out Attacks

WASHINGTON (WJZ) -- Terrorists have found new ways to plan major attacks undetected.

Rick Ritter with a look at how ISIS is using social media and "dark apps" to flourish and continue their reign of terror.

Apps some of us use every day are allowing terrorists to operate secretly and effectively and help carry out their heinous attacks.

The vicious attacks on Paris were deemed a success by ISIS, leaving many wondering how terrorists managed to plot the complex massacre without being detected.

Authorities believe the attackers used "dark apps" to hide their messages from surveillance leading up to Friday.

"The end to end encryption was used to communicate between those individuals," said Senator Richard Burr, (R) Senate Intelligence Committee.

Dialogue that simply starts through social media--Twitter, YouTube--before ISIS brings recruits over to mobile messaging apps.

"If they find somebody they think might kill on their behalf or might common kill in the caliphate, they move them to a mobile messaging app that's end to end encrypted," said FBI Director James Comey.

...Which allows them to avoid detection. Comey says it's like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

ISIS even uses the dark web to solicit donations from donors all over the world--one of the many ways they fund their army.

It was a cell phone used by one of the Paris attackers that was found near the site of the Bataclan Theatre, and then in Belgium, while searching for accomplices, investigators found a PlayStation 4.

"PlayStation 4, Xbox One, they're very inexpensive almost super computers," said Michael Vesely, political analyst. "And the processors in them allow for a very sophisticated level of encryption."

A frightening reality authorities don't yet have an answer for.

Both medical and legal professionals use dark apps to keep our information private, making it difficult for agents to dig for information and still protect citizens' privacy.