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Al-Qaeda Hacked!

The online communication platform of the global militant, Sunni Islamist group, Al-Qaeda was brought down by a group of ‘seasoned’ computer hackers.

Anuradha Shetty|Jun 30, 2011, 17:44:05 IST

The online communication platform of the global militant, Sunni Islamist group, Al-Qaeda was brought down by a group of ‘seasoned’ computer hackers. The militant group has since been unable to manage their flow of videos, and other communications.

Caught off guard..!

According to a report in msnbc.com, Evan Kohlmann, from Flashpoint Global Partners, the firm monitoring Al-Qaeda’s communications, stated that, “Al-Qaeda's online communications have been temporarily crippled and it does not have a single trusted distribution channel available on the Internet.” It was further learned that, the nature of the hack wasn’t like the usual modes, which were observed. Instead, the hack was almost an ‘unusual cocktail of relatively sophisticated techniques’, in Kohlmann’s words. Although, any kind of detail about the hacker(s) is still out of the reach of the investigators, it is for sure that the militant group will take long to get their systems up and running again.

This attack comes a year after Al-Qaeda’s online system suffered a hack attack of a similar nature. At that time, it was found that the U.K. government had replaced the bomb-making recipe on the site, with that of a cup cake. And, even then, it took a while for the militant group to put their site back on track.