The Terrorists, Inc., IT Department

Sidebar 1-6: The Terrorists, Inc., IT Department

In 2001, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal bought a used computer in Afghanistan. Much to his surprise, he found the hard drive contained what appeared to be files from a senior al Qaeda operative. Cullison [CUL04] reports that he turned the computer over to the FBI. In his story published in 2004 in The Atlantic, he carefully avoids revealing anything he thinks might be sensitive.

The disk contained more than 1,000 documents, many of them encrypted with relatively weak encryption. Cullison found draft mission plans and white papers setting forth ideological and philosophical arguments for the attacks of 11 September 2001. There were also copies of news stories on terrorist activities. He also found documents indicating that al Qaeda were not originally interested in chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons, but became interested after reading public news articles accusing al Qaeda of having those capabilities.

Perhaps most unexpected were e-mail messages of the kind one would find in a typical office: recommendations for promotions, justifications for petty cash expenditures, arguments concerning budgets.

The computer appears to have been used by al Qaeda from 1999 to 2001. Cullison notes that Afghanistan in late 2001 was a scene of chaos, and it is likely the laptop's owner fled quickly, leaving the computer behind, where it fell into the hands of a secondhand merchant who did not know its contents.

But this computer illustrates an important point of computer security and confidentiality: We can never predict the time at which a security disaster will strike, and thus we must always be prepared as if it will happen immediately.