Friday, June 3, 2011

UK: Spies Hack al-Qaida's Inspire Magazine

An AP newswire article by Paisley Dodds, via Salon.com, reports:

Britain's spy agencies have a new message for terrorists: make cupcakes, not war.


Intelligence agents managed to hack into the extremist Inspire magazine, replacing its bombmaking instructions with a recipe for cupcakes.


It's the first time the agents sabotaged the English-language magazine linked to U.S.-born Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, an extremist accused in several recent terror plots.


The quarterly online magazine, which is sent to websites and email addresses as a pdf file, had offered an original page titled "Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom" in one of its editions last year. The magazine's pages were corrupted, however, and the instructions replaced with the cupcake recipe.


"We're increasingly using cybertools as part of our work," a British government official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters said Friday, confirming that the Inspire magazine had been successfully attacked.


The hackers were reportedly working for Britain's eavesdropping agency, GCHQ, which has boosted its resources in the past several years.


More here.

No comments:

Post a Comment

My Ping in TotalPing.com