Spies hacked into an al Qaeda website to replace instructions on how to build a bomb with recipes for making cupcakes, newspapers reported on Friday.
The cyber offensive took place last year when the English language magazine called Inspire, aimed at Muslims in the West, was launched by supporters of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).
British intelligence officers based at the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the state eavesdropping service, attacked the 67-page magazine, leaving most of it garbled, British newspapers said.
Instead of being able to read how to “Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom,” readers were greeted with computer code which actually contained recipes from The Best Cupcakes in America, published by U.S. chat show host Ellen DeGeneres.
The Washington Post reported that the British action followed a dispute between the CIA and the newly formed U.S. Cyber Command.
The cyber unit had wanted to block the al Qaeda magazine but the CIA, which had countered such an attack would expose sources and intelligence methods, won the debate and declined to allow an attack on Inspire.
In this case, the CIA would seem to have been the wisest in the group.
As a matter of fact, the leaked intelligence is misleading.
British intelligence effectively botched portions of the attack. Or, are misleading journalists now with an angle on it that made no difference at the time.
For most people who downloaded Inspire’s initial offering, all of it except its initial teaser pages were gibberish.
There was no visible recipe for cupcakes. DD had a copy. A number of colleagues had copies. All were the same.
One initial suspicion was that there had been an attempt to make the archive into a malicious download, which would have been counterproductive for al Qaeda but immediately obvious as western intelligence work. The download was not, however, malicious.
In the time since, western intelligence — most notably the US, though contractors (see here), has actually moved into the business of making old jihadi electronic documents into malicious downloads.
These actions have come very late in the game. The potential is now patently obvious and, because of that, only effective against suckers.
If the purpose is to get the maximum number of readers, the insertion of digital gobble into the .pdf as padding — as this commenter details here – is astonishingly counterproductive.
It essentially creates impressions that the publication is either unfinished, a fake or that its creator greatly overestimated his own cleverness.
“[I] have no idea why it would occur to anyone to try it in the first place,??? commented one of DD’s colleagues in e-mail. [Hat tip to SA.]
And the publication’s relatively small number of downloads, in proportion to the news of it, would seem to be proof of fail.
“The language of the magazine, such as ‘Make a bomb in the kitchen of your mom,’ reflects either a poor command of English or a light-hearted sense of self-parody,??? writes someone — not very perceptively — at the Atlantic.
“Since I am not completely certain that the clean PDF doesn’t contain a hidden virus, I’ve elected not to post it just yet,??? adds Marc Ambinder.
Armbinder’s presumption is silly. The file [was] harmless.
Looking at today’s news, the British meddling, rather than being some great victory, accomplished very little, if anything, other than cause mystification in the western press.
The publishers of Inspire subsequently upped their game.
Clean copies of the magazine were published and subsequent issues have not been subject to noticeable interference.
The measure of the Washington Post story on cupcake recipes and British intelligence can be seen today by its pass-along value with chumps.
Dylan Ratigan of MSNBC just spent thirty seconds going on about it.
Ratigan can be counted on to be notoriously uninformed when he dives into brief news items concerning things with which he has no real
experience.
Therefore, the fact that Inspire was not noticeably hindered, in the long run, is overlooked. Or that cupcake recipes from Ellen DeGeneris just weren’t visible in the original corrupted pdf that most people had a look at.
Now, the real value of the intelligence operation is in today’s action resulting in the subtle misinforming of people who read English-language news in the US. For the vain benefit of a cyber-spying operation.
From the standpoint of observing the mainstream media’s reaction to this story, common-sense is beggared. But not if you’re someone who is baiting journalists with a silly and irresistible piece of misinformation.
Any actually visible cupcake recipe from Ellen Degeneris would, again, have been obvious as a plant. For the corrupt filler to work in raising doubt, it would have of necessity needed to appear just as simple garbage.
In any case, there was a short span of time before a clean copy was issued and in this period some people wondered about the nature of what appeared to be stumble in the art and process of al Qaeda’s fancy new publication. One possibility, discussed briefly, was that it had been interfered with.
Or that it was an example of incompetence on the part of al Qaeda.
Which, if that was the sole aim, was only very briefly successful.
As an effort to jam or deter actual publication of Inspire, eventually it had little effect.
I published this joke and the silly mugl shot that made him look old and beamish so many times it’s remotely possible it got around to him.
Now Ted shaves once again. Or it just could be he’d rather look more like he used to for the fans on his summer tour of rib shacks, casinos and ag fairs.
Sadly, once again a copy editor had to be cruelly humiliated:
The lede in to Ted’s essay:
Good friend and Texas Gov. Rick Perry should remember that now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country.
Now is that time, Rick. Run for president.
Ted is not pleased with the overall quality of GOP presidential material.
Interestingly, while other famous right wingers have lobbied vigorously for Chris Christie to jump into the fray, Nugent has been silent on the matter.
I know why. Ted was never going to get into the Christie mania.
Christie does have the same temperament and outlook as Ted Nugent.
But, and it’s one big but —[cough], a Ted thing is to hector Americans for being too zaftig.
Ted isn’t into those who find it quite the hardship to push themselves away from the dinner table.
Speaking of wild pigs, Nugent again got some bad press in Michigan this week.
The Kalamazoo newspaper published on article mentioning Nugent’s lobbying to have a law that will declare exotic swine illegal invasives in Michigan overturned.
The law has been enacted to curb disease and destruction to the environment caused by the animals when they escape their pens.
The report also cited an opposing view from Jack Mayer, a national swine expert, who said the ban is needed because swine easily escape enclosure and are able to survive and reproduce in Michigan.
“Every one of the states that has one of these commercial fenced shooting operations is leaking hogs,” said Mayer, according to the MIRS report. “You can’t fence wild pigs, I’m sorry.”
Military operations in Afghanistan rely too much on intelligence gathered by unmanned drones, often exclude important publicly available data and do not focus enough on the recruitment of human agents, a Pentagon report says.
The report by the Defense Science Board, a panel that advises the Pentagon, says that the defense budget does not properly direct funding for open-source intelligence collection – information available to the public and gathered from a wide variety of sources, including academic papers and newspapers.
With its overwhelming emphasis on technical collection, U.S. military intelligence is poorly equipped to meet the requirements of the counterinsurgency mission, according to a recent study (pdf) by the Defense Science Board.
A copy of the report is archived at the Secrecy blog.
It is worth a look, if only for the paradoxical list of Defense Science Board members, many of them from the drones and gadgets technical collections agencies, industry and lobby.
In future, a US president could consider economic sanctions, cyber-retaliation or a military strike if key US computer systems were attacked, officials have said recently.
The planning was given added urgency by a cyber-attack last month on the defence contractor, Lockheed Martin.
A new report from the Pentagon is due out in a matter of weeks.
“You can frame or phrase it in a different way — the aim [is] to create the impression, through ambiguity, that the U.S. will resort to unreasonably scary escalation if someone who actually controls the levers decides in favor of it … “The U.S. always reserves the right to overdo things. That’s the legacy of the last 10 years,” Smith said. “And to the world at large, it’s viewed as a nation that sees every potential problem as a nail to be hit with the hammer of the military and/or security contractors.”
So could Smith think of any possible cyberattack that would warrant military response? Blacking out the entire Eastern Seaboard? Opening the floodgates on the Hoover Dam?
“I’m not really in the business of making predictions, particularly here. Too many variables, and the intelligence on such matters is always fuzzy,” Smith replied. “I’m going with a conservative ‘no.'”
We’re not going to be seeing the opening of the floodgates of the Hoover Dam in our lifetimes. Or the former.
“Happy days, the party never ends, here’s to all us alcholics, another round for my friends.” — Jesus H. Christ
Alcoholics In My Town, the new video from old acquaintances from music journalism-ing, Jesus H. Christ and the Four Hornsmen of the Apocalypse. It’s a fine song made better through a video directed by some well-known guy, Dan Minehan of HBO’s Game of Thrones.
I’m usually inclined to say more but the press release says it best:
“Let’s party like we’ll never get old,??? the message seems to be, “And then let’s run our van into a guardrail on the way home and become paralyzed from the waist down and not have health insurance.???
The band wanted to write a song that celebrated small town life, in the vein of John Cougar Mellencamp and Bruce Springsteen: songs about the people they grew up with: the good times and the good buddies.
But, growing up in small towns, they knew, from personal experience, that most of these Good-Time-Charlies-and-Charlenes were usually alcoholics. The band doesn’t condemn, our exclude themselves, from this state of affairs- they just wanted to be medically accurate.
Still puts a tear in my eye.
So click it up and pass it around so they don’t have to buy views and risk getting banned by the YouTube police.
“Jesus H Christ will play their Philadelphia debut on Friday, June 10 at 8:30 PM, at The Farmers’ Cabinet at 1113 Walnut Street, Philadelphia in celebration of Philadelphia Beer Week with a beer tasting by band members/ beer importers The Shelton Brothers,” adds the release.
And I would certainly go if I lived in Philly. So you should if you do.
What, you don’t like beer? That’s really un-American.
