06.03.11
Brag about your trivial plan against al Qaeda to US newspapers
UPDATED
What do you do when people don’t notice your cyberspace offensive against al Qaeda?
You leak it to the US press a long time after it amounted to very little.
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.
Which is not to say al Qaeda is sucker free.
From this blog, on the first issue of Inspire, last year:
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.
And al Qaeda comic book, number four.
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.
And this is because it has been the practice of Inspire to publish in readable English so as to not only “inspire” potential jihadis, but also to jab the US and “inspire” consternation and apprehension in the enemy’s camp.
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.