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al-Qaeda's hacker caught; 'Terrorist 007', Exposed

washingtonpost.com — For almost two years, intelligence services around the world tried to uncover the identity of an Internet hacker who had become a key conduit for al-Qaeda

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  • datter, on 10/12/2007, -10/+26If by "007" you mean al-Qaeda has a man on staff who's afraid of guns, can't drive a stick and is an outspoken pacifist... then you might have a story.
    • quickpot, on 10/12/2007, -7/+9and has blonde hair
    • foolfromhell, on 10/12/2007, -9/+2Yep, Daniel Craig sucks
      On the top-right it says "advertisement", with no ad beneath it, it is probably an ad to join Al-Queada
  • cr3ative, on 10/12/2007, -5/+18The name's 007. Irhabi 007.
  • ScottMaximus, on 10/12/2007, -20/+3w00t!
  • FAT_PIGGY, on 10/12/2007, -35/+8al-CIAda
    • jczer68, on 10/12/2007, -15/+6I guess you didn't get the memo... if you're suggesting there's a connection between the USA and al-Qaeda then you're also a terrorist. LOL pwnz. George wins teh internet!
  • JQP123, on 10/12/2007, -9/+18"We say carry on with God's blessing. Carry on, may God protect you."

    Well, since he got caught, I guess God must have fell asleep on the job. But I'm sure he and his friends have some other rationalization.
    • AtheistArmy, on 10/12/2007, -12/+0There is no God... (WTC attack succeeded, need more proof...) ;-) Fools... All y'all praying while you could be fighting... with real guns!
  • mliving, on 10/12/2007, -12/+7Listen its not the ones that are screaming for attention that are cause for concern.

    Please!!! This headline and story make this id10t out to be some internet mastermind.

    He left enough breadcrumbs that a blind person could have followed his crunchy trail anywhere...

    Move along nothing to see here.
    • Jams, on 10/12/2007, -8/+9I agree. Blatenty the guy is some sort of script kiddie.
  • mortem, on 10/12/2007, -11/+0Pierce Brosnan ??
  • dipswitch, on 10/12/2007, -21/+9Al-Queda doesn't exist.

    Anyone can claim he/she is a member or be *accused of* being one and get jailed.
    • msprout, on 10/12/2007, -10/+2No, it does. A terrorist organization that you claim you're a member of isn't a very good organization at all.
  • Ares, on 10/12/2007, -9/+4Well this sounds as scary as the rest of it. All Webmasters and Gamers are now targets for spying.

    "The terrorists who congregate in those cybercommunities are rapidly becoming skilled in hacking, programming, executing online attacks and MASTERING DIGITAL AND MEDIA DESIGN -- and Irhabi was a master of all those arts."

    Wtf, why not just say, everyone in college is in trouble. ffs.
  • jczer68, on 10/12/2007, -15/+9OMGUSABBQ. Good news! Is it safe to leave the house yet?
  • jamesob5, on 10/12/2007, -17/+12Guilty...kill him. Ohhh...I forgot, we're not the throat cutters.
    • MoeB, on 10/12/2007, -12/+6but that doesnt mean your not an idiot.
  • tijer, on 10/12/2007, -7/+10"al-Qaeda's hacker" ? Do you really believe there's only one of them?

    And what is al-Qaeda anyway... no, really. Words have a habbit of sticking, without nobody really being able to explain or define them.
    • Irimi, on 10/12/2007, -7/+10al-Qaeda...
      I'm pretty sure that it is an international terrorist organization with a diffuse and openended leadership and memebership

      I could be wrong

      I took a class in terrorism, I think the teacher dropped the name a few times, and I think I heard something about al qua-id-a? on the news, but I'm not sure

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Qaeda
    • Rounin, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5The name "al-Qaeda" was created by the FBI in the 1990's. Personally, I prefer "Jihad International".
  • Stri, on 10/12/2007, -13/+5String the b****d up I say!
  • naisanza, on 10/12/2007, -5/+7his alias is Terrorist 007? sounds more like a name that you would find on counter-strike.
  • Jams, on 10/12/2007, -9/+4Was he a "hacker" though, or simply some script kiddy?
  • an0nym0us, on 10/12/2007, -8/+4He's a CS player!
  • Jams, on 10/12/2007, -4/+5I've found some more interesting facts here: http://www.lauramansfield.com/j/007.asp
  • Jams, on 10/12/2007, -6/+6"By the time American hostage Paul Johnson was kidnapped and beheaded in Saudi Arabia in June, 007 was an integral part of the network responsible for distributing the video films, borrowing server space from an unsuspecting California company, slipping in through the anonymous FTP security hole"

    Anonymous FTP wow.. "hacking" skills..
    • Jams, on 10/12/2007, -5/+6Im actually owndering how credible that article is now: "On many occasions, my virus protection intercepted attempts by 007 to download a keystroke logger to my company as I monitored his websites."

      Download a keystroke logger to her company?!!?
    • monolith, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2Just because the 'hacker' is an idiot... dosn't mean that his captors are not idiots as well.
  • xbox360, on 10/12/2007, -9/+14I say all hackers should team up and attack all al-Qaeda websites, and all other terrorist websites. Use your skills for an actual good cause for once.
    • jczer68, on 10/12/2007, -11/+3Yes!! All haXx0rz should attack all of George Bush's enemies. My superpowers are writing batch files, looks like you can man the xbox, does anybody know how to work an iPod? The terrorsts will be pwnzed in no time. pur peeeyooownzage.
    • Justice101, on 10/12/2007, -4/+7Sorry we already have commited all of our men to the western front. The war against the RIAA is a bloody and costly fight which we cannot afford to lose. We have lost so many great poeple already. For those about to hack I salute you.
  • n3td3v, on 10/12/2007, -24/+15Arrest one terrorist and theres a thousand more to replace him/her. Arresting terrorists doesn't solve world wide terrorism, it doesn't even come close. If you want to stop terrorism, you as Americans will need to stop bombing the hell out of countries that don't adhere to the greedy "American way of life", and you'll need to destroy your nukes, so that you don't contridict yourself when you want to invade countries on the basis of weapons of mass destruction. You screwed up Iraq on that basis, now you have your sights on Iran, but is bombing the entire country of innocent civilians really the solution to stopping a government from trying to aquire neclear warhead capabilities? To me by doing so, you give the terrorists what they want, and once you invade a country, you are commited to rebuilding it, and while that happens you're just a sitting duck for the terrorists who want to make a politcal stance against your foreign policy on the world stage.
    • soundboy64, on 10/12/2007, -10/+13I live in the states, I don't own nuclear warheads, I didn't invade Iraq and I'm not invading Iran. To blame me personally for what the gov't does is just like saying, "it's your fault you live in a third world country and your gov't abuses it's power to keep you in poverty."
    • Matt2k, on 10/12/2007, -16/+16I love how Digg self moderation results in anyone who holds a differing or unpopular viewpoint is reflexively modded down. Unless your post is extolling the virtues of AJAX, demonizing the RIAA, or praising Apple, that is. Automatic 1. What a ***** stupid moderation system. It's a brave new world we're forging here.

      Digg should get rid of the -1 moderation system and only allow people to hand out or retract points.
    • Qopax, on 10/12/2007, -7/+4Well, technically, we do live in a democracy and elect our own gov't, so it's hard to pass ALL of the blame onto the government.

      Oh well, at least I can use the excuse of underageism. Atlhough that ends next year, after which I can become a hypocritical American citizen with voting powers.
    • motionb, on 10/12/2007, -12/+17well if I remember right, they bombed us first. And seeing as how your obviously not from America, you have no Idea of what your talking about. "greedy American way of life" I have one suggestion for you, stop listening to your local America bashing news outlets, and do some research and reading ON YOUR OWN. Its funny how we can come to the rescue of many countries in WWII and now we are greedy Americans trying to take over the world. I am sure I can come up with at least a dozen stereo types of what ever country you are from, so feel free to post it, and will can bash you and your country to, cause by your standards we Americans are ALL the same and think just alike.
    • Arramol, on 10/12/2007, -9/+17Yes, if we go to war in Iran, I'm sure our battle strategy will be to "bomb the entire country of innocent civilians." That's what happened in World War II when it was the only way to hit the target. Nowadays civilian casualties are substantially lower, and those that happen are the results of accidents, either in the intelligence or in the actual deployment of the ordinance. Do you honestly believe we go in with the civilians in our scopes? And out of curiosity, what IS the solution to Iran? Do you really want to sit back and let a country whose leader publicly stated that Israel should be wiped off the map to have nuclear weapons? Diplomatic solutions may work all the time in an ideal world, but we live in the real one. I hate war as much as the next guy, but I'm sick and tired of people blaming my country for everything that goes wrong in the world and acting like we have no other reasons for sending our own people off to die than "to make them like us." You want to criticize us, fine, that's your right, but some of you anti-American trolls are every bit as bad as the people in Microsoft threads who automatically criticize everything, not for any good reason, but simply because it's "the evil M$."
    • jczer68, on 10/12/2007, -7/+2Dude, c'mon... everyone who's not american is a terrorst. What's the problem?
    • anduril, on 10/12/2007, -5/+8"greedy American way of life"

      Our productivity is so offensive isn't it? Good, i'm glad. Be offended.
    • monolith, on 10/12/2007, -7/+5Dude... take another look. The terrorists in Iraq have LOST... ever wonder what the deal is with the rise in vengance killings? It is civillians rising up and killing the terrorists. Your buddy Zarqawi has lost Iraq.
    • TomTester, on 10/12/2007, -5/+4reply to motionb:

      >well if I remember right, they bombed us first.
      As Prutz Shrubby would like us all to think (and I think he has succeeded with you) Iraq nor Afghanistan had anything to do with the Sept. 11 attack. Al-Qaeda did, but unfortunately they're not limited to one country (and this was true even before the invasion of Iraq). There's plenty of proof they had closer ties to other Arab countries whom we did not choose to attack.

      >And seeing as how your obviously not from America, you have no Idea of what your talking about.
      And you who are seem carelessly misinformed, repeating nonsensical propaganda in our US of A. This misinformation ***** goes on on both sides of the 'war'.

      Re: h@x0r story
      Please, this '007 is one step above a script kiddie, and the reporting journalist (Ms. Mansfield) is another sensationalist foolio who does not know anything about hacking, just like the guys who 'nailed' Kevin Mitnick... Now if spreading these beheading movies is 'assisting the enemy' let's take down CNN, Ogrish and tonns of sites re-publishing this ***** for the same reason. Hell, did anyone check youtube yet?

      Information wants to be free. Perhaps the behading videos helped the case FOR war more than they helped the case AGAINST America... I'm still waiting for video showing the arrival of our dead hero soldiers... does Al-Qaeda have a hand in preventing the release of this material on US broadcast stations... I think not.... Ask the person who refuses to welcome those corpses who defended our values (did anyone notice 'values' consists of the words SUV and ALE?)


    • Nodren, on 10/12/2007, -4/+4"If you want to stop terrorism, you as Americans will need to stop bombing the hell out of countries that don't adhere to the greedy "American way of life", and you'll need to destroy your nukes, so that you don't contridict yourself when you want to invade countries on the basis of weapons of mass destruction."

      yes to stop terrorism, lets give into the demands of people who think anyone who doesnt worship the god they do needs to die, and has murdered thousands of innocent people. GOOD IDEA.
    • tonage, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1- Nodren

      What country you live in? I am sure one that we have bailed out at one time. You ungrateful jerk. It is just pure jealousy.
    • pillfred, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I think n3td3v had a decent point not that i entirely agree, but what i want to know is what does SUV and ALE have to anything, including (values); beyond your face in the rug rationale?
    • Saintlink, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I agree on the Digg moderation system. If you don't fall into the 'party lines' of liking crazy videos, AJAX or something else that has become the 'most important' topic of the day your ideas are quickly burried and you're made out to be a bad guy. Anyone with a dissenting view is squashed. A lot of posters here on Digg need to stop abusing the voting system and deploy it only for outright personal attacks and spam links. Just because someone doesn't agree with you doesn't mean you should vote them down. Good greif, a little tolerance wouldn't kill you?
    • madmack, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0@Arramol

      a good solution to ur american problem in the middle east is to stop supporting israel. ever think how peaceful america would be ? its a country that is in the middle of the arabic land surrounded by arabic borders and haters from all over. hatred exists, and israel exists, only bcz u support it.

      i know i'm going to be dugg down, just coz i offer a different opinion. ! what kind of democratic comment posting is this ?
  • mirunit, on 10/12/2007, -6/+6Wow. This guy is pretty good.. I mean he mastered the posing of "warez" links, downloading a "keystroke logger" to her company, and can enable anonomyous FTP. Another 1337 terrorist haxxor is off the street.
  • xxS1THL0RDxx, on 10/12/2007, -4/+0singing... *Goldfiiingeeerrr*
  • Irimi, on 10/12/2007, -4/+5as I understand it, he helped al quaeda post and disseminate propaganda (like beheading videos) and logistical information and communications

    Its not like this is some kid in their mom's basement trying to download a disney movie and accidently download a beheading video

    If you actually take a second to try to learn something you'd find:

    "For almost two years, intelligence services around the world tried to uncover the identity of an Internet hacker who had become a key conduit for al-Qaeda. The savvy, English-speaking, presumably young webmaster taunted his pursuers, calling himself Irhabi -- Terrorist -- 007. He hacked into American university computers, propagandized for the Iraq insurgents led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and taught other online jihadists how to wield their computers for the cause."

    you can find that at the right-wing washington post
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/25/AR2006032500020_pf.html
    There you go.
  • bruggerA, on 10/12/2007, -7/+14TEAM AMERICA! ***** YEAH!
  • noGoodNamesLeft, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2What I don't get is, if they had sites based on domains, what was to stop the US/UK security services from fiddling with the DNS servers to point to their own web servers, then recording the originating IP of each request?

    Maybe they *did* do this, maybe they didn't, but it sounds like sloppy work on the part of "007" (cough) to me.
  • szelij, on 10/12/2007, -7/+5First..on the question of the capture of the 'hacker'. It seems clear that Scotland Yard captured him based on luck and that the investigators trying to find irhabi 007 were exceedingly incapable of accomplishing their task.

    On the second...note, when are the Americans going to stop whining about how they saved our asses in WWII? Will you be still saying that when my grandkid stops off for a holiday in a sub-orbital station? My goodness, it's appreciated and all but LET IT GO.

    WWII was over a long time ago, you don't see us parading that we won the battle of trafalgar at EU conferences do you? Plus not to mention that pretty much the whole 'free' world has been saying 'yes mate' for a long time-isn't it time enough to let go of your past glory already?

    For *****'s sake, live in the today and not in the glory of yesterday.
    • sporktek, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Who's 'living in the glory of yesterday'? You don't see people, out of the blue, dragging their soapbox to the town square and announcing to everyone 'we saved their asses in Dubya-Dubya-2'. No, that isn't what's happening. You've got people, many of whom are europeans who, to be quite honest, wouldn't be alive today, or they wouldn't live but under the rule of a fascist dictator, without US intervention, who are getting up on THEIR soapboxes and being overly critical of the exact same 'greedy American attitudes' which prompted us to enter the european theater in the first half of the 20th century. The response you get from that, the true 'we saved your ass. . .' is directly resultant from the criticism. Is the Iraq war *the same* as WWII? No, of course not. Was Saddam Hussein a hostile adversary who had proven that he was not above expansionism, genocide and assasination? Absolutely. Is the middle east less stable now than before the invasion? Somewhat, yes. It took time to rebuild europe and it will take time to rebuild Iraq. Time will tell if this was a 'good' operation or not, but remember, with all other 'good' operations of the past, time still had to tell in those situations.
  • Crazen, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1pdesmond, this isn't about the article, but I want to thank you for posting the print format, it seems like people just don't take that extra step. Thumbs up for being extra considerate!
  • Arch, on 10/12/2007, -4/+0Now that Irhabi 007 is caught, I guess Ogrish.com has 1 less video correspondent.
  • jczer68, on 10/12/2007, -9/+2Dude, who the ***** invited all these patriotic people to digg?
    • Hoamer, on 10/12/2007, -5/+1***** you- they should kill that bastard
    • tonage, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Yea, these patriotic people bother you? Sorry, there are still a few of us left. Thank goodness.
  • CoolWind, on 10/12/2007, -5/+2"It seems clear that Scotland Yard captured him based on luck" - have you heard of misinformation?
  • baltakatei, on 10/12/2007, -5/+1"The terrorists who congregate in those cybercommunities are rapidly becoming skilled in hacking, programming, executing online attacks..."

    That last one could be said of Digg's "vigilantes", no? ;)
  • laser314, on 10/12/2007, -5/+2motionb "well if I remember right, they bombed us first."
    As much as it pains me, I think Bill Clinton using two cruise (sp) missles bombed bin laden long before 9/11.
    I think (could be wrong) that was in retaleation for the USS Stark. Which was a retaleation for something else
    etc etc. etc.
  • star, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1"Whoever controls the media--the images--controls the culture."
    - Allen Ginsberg

    "The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone
    of any significance in the major media."
    - William Colby, former director of the CIA

    "We live in a dirty and dangerous world. There are some things
    the general public does not need to know, and shouldn't.
    I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take
    legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press
    can decide whether to print what it knows."
    - Katherine Graham, late owner of the Washington Post,
    in a speech to CIA recruits in 1988.
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