14 DAY TRIAL // Officers from the British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) have executed a successful sabotage attack against a jihadist digital magazine which resulted in most of its pages being replaced with garbled data.
The attack took place back in June 2010 and targeted the first issue of Inspire, an al-Qaeda-sponsored English-language magazine which, in addition to anti-Western propaganda, was supposed to contain instructions to create bombs.
The magazine's issue was released on jihadist websites and discussion boards, only for mujahideens to realize that everything past the first pages was corrupted.
At first they feared it was a computer virus and began discouraging its distribution. However, the weird data contained in the file was actually a cupcakes recipe.
According to the Washington Post, the attack was the work of British intelligence officers who acted after a similar plan was rejected by the CIA.
The identity of the agency that carried out the attack was not disclosed, but The Telegraph says the evidence points to the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in Cheltenham.
The GCHQ is the center for the governent's Signal Intelligence (SIGINT) activities and is also home to the Cyber Security Operations Centre (CSOC), MI5's new cyber warfare unit.
The exact reason for the attack is not known, but it was probably intended to discourage the distribution of the magazine and make jihadists mistrust it.
Whether the plan worked or not is not clear because the magazine has since successfully published several issues without incident. The Telegraph cites a British official who said the attack was a propaganda exercise that was meant "just to let them know [that we can]."
This attacks is not representative of how intelligence agencies operate online. They usually prefer infiltration and monitoring, remaining undetected being a priority. That's probably why the CIA vetoed the plan in the first place.