Earlier this week, it was revealed to the public that the downloadable al-Qaeda magazine, Inspire, was infiltrated by the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters and British MI6 intelligence hackers in 2010. The mission, called “Operation Cupcake”, replaced a lethal tutorial on ?How to Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom? with an encrypted, heart-attack inducing recipe for “The Best Cupcakes in America,” which came from the Ellen DeGeneres talkshow website.
The 67-page al-Qaeda magazine originally contained articles such as ?What to expect in Jihad,” and articles written by Osama bin Laden and his right-hand man Ayman al-Zawahiri. As mentioned before, the al-Qaeda tutorial also included a recipe showing how to make a deadly pipe bomb with sugar, match heads, and a miniature lightbulb attached to a timer – all ingredients that could be easily found in the home. As the first English-language Jihadist online magazine, the purpose of the propaganda was to attract and recruit al-Qaeda supporters throughout the Arabian Peninsula and even “lone-wolf” terrorists in the US and UK.
As humorous as the mission sounds, “Operation Cupcake” was a failure in several ways. The Inspire, run by the extremist preacher Anwar al-Awlaki, was reissued with the correct bomb recipe only two weeks later, had four additional editions that followed, and the intelligence agencies missed a golden opportunity to alter the ingredients subtly so that al-Qaeda may not have realized that the magazine was on the radar. In response to the operation, user “Symbiote” commented online, “Why not replace the bomb recipes with harmless things that look like they could be bombs, but have no chance of working? Or perhaps require large quantities of strange ingredients, to help trace where the people using the recipe are… MI6 (if this was them) should be better than this.” A similar Pentagon operation was blocked by the CIA last year because they believed that it would have exposed sources of valuable information… and they were right.
Even though today is National Doughtnut Day, if you’re at least looking to make some delicious Mojito and Rocky Road cupcakes, you know to search for “The Best Cupcakes in America” by Main Street Cupcakes.
Photo by Zack Whittaker via ZDNet