US intelligence officials hacked a prominent al Qaeda online magazine to disrupt communications to followers, authorities said.
The operation succeeded in temporarily thwarting publication of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s English-language May issue of Inspire, according to The Washington Post.
Federal snoops in the National Security Agency and the CIA have been beefing up their cyber capabilities in recent years.
The feds say the recent hacking operation was just the latest attempt to stymie al Qaeda’s on-line operation.
Inspire contains first-person accounts of the terror group’s operations, do-it-yourself advice for extremists and calls for jihad.
Meanwhile, al Qaeda shows it is still formidable — particularly in recruiting youths to its terrorist cause.
In Mali, students are given a manual on how to use a surface-to-air missile capable of taking down a commercial airliner.
And officials confirm that the al Qaeda cell is actively training its fighters to use these weapons, also called man-portable air-defense systems, or MANPADS, which likely came from the arms depots of ex-Libyan strongman Col. Moammar Khadafy.