Al Qaeda Needs New IT Guys

With Wall Street's tailspin sucking up most of the news cycle, this tidbit, from Evan Kohlmann at the always-informative Counterterrorism Blog, was at least able to warm my heart:

For those who follow the workings of Al-Qaida's As-Sahab Media Foundation, it is no secret that As-Sahab has recently been suffering a series of embarrassing technical problems relating to the delayed publication of Al-Qaida's 9/11 seventh anniversary video, titled "Results of 7 Years of the Crusades."

...

Yet, a crippling network outage for Al-Qaida appears to have played a role in thwarting As-Sahab's efforts at completing the distribution process. One of the primary Internet discussion forums used by Al-Qaida and its global network of affiliates to distribute their propaganda and recruit supporters--known as "Al-Ekhlaas"--was suddenly knocked offline on approximately September 10. Next on the chopping block were a series of domains used by another competing extremist forum "Al-Hesbah."

After the terrorists got their servers in order, they accidentally sent out the wrong password, prompting a flood of annoyed posts on extremist websites throughout the scarier parts of the Internet.