According to a report in London’s Sunday Times, March 11, 2007 edition, last year Scotland Yard disrupted an al-Qaeda plot to attack the Internet infrastructure in Britain (source). Evidence recovered from a raid last year on suspected jihadists in southern England indicated that al-Qaeda affiliated operatives were plotting to infiltrate and possibly blow up the headquarters of Telehouse Europe, a central hub of Internet traffic in London.
It is interesting to note that the suspects sought to attack the Telehouse Europe facility via conventional means rather than launching a complicated cyber attack. As detailed in the associated graphic, it is easier to successfully attack and damage a digital target with conventional means than it is to attack and damage a digital target with digital means. The decision to rely on conventional tactics may reveal a dearth of skill in the information warfare domain within the jihadist movement, or may simply be the product of the suspects recognition that the use of conventional tactics will yield a greater possibility of success.
Previous Discussions Targeting the Internet
While the goals of the suspects are unclear, it has been speculated by the media that the would be terrorists sought to disrupt Internet traffic in Britain and by extension damage the country’s business and financial services industry (source). The broad parameters of this purported plot have been previously observed on various salafi jihadist web sites. For example, a thread posted on in February 2006 outlined a plot to disrupt worldwide Internet traffic (Previous Report). Additionally, a separate thread on the same salafi jihadist forum posted in November 2006 proposed disrupting the U.S. economy by attacking the Internet infrastructure of Wall Street (Previous Report).
Insurgents and Terrorist Embrace Systems Disruption
Although it is unclear whether the plotters arrested by British security services were connected to the authors of these posts or were inspired by the plots outlined online, it seems apparent that the plotters and the authors of the posts both embraced the ‘systems disruption’ model of terrorism. According to John Robb, the systems disruption model “consists of simple attacks (using ad hoc weapons) on critical nodes of infrastructure — oil, gas, electricity, water, etc. These attacks, if properly targeted, can cause cascades of failure that sweep entire systems. The result is a paralyzed economy that produces an impact that far outstrip the costs of the attack.”
Iraqi insurgent groups have embraced the ‘systems disruption’ model as they have mounted a successful campaign against the country’s electrical power grid and have effectively choked the supply of electricity to Baghdad (source). Al-Qaeda leaders Osama bin Ladin and Amyan al-Zawahiri have also endorsed the systems disruption model via calls for attacks against world wide oil production facilities. The recently released issue of Sawt al-Jihad also noted the importance of oil production to the US economy and called for attacks against oil production facilities around the world (Previous Report).
As a result of the systems disruption model success in Iraq, as well as bin Ladin’s endorsement of these types of attacks, it should be expected that salafi jihadist groups will continue to embrace these tactics in both the physical world as well as cyberspace.
