Terrorist thieves in you email inbox

Washington Post:

The global jihad landed in Linda Spence's e-mail inbox during the summer of 2003, in the form of a message urging her to verify her eBay account information. The 35-year-old New Jersey resident clicked on the link included in the message, which took her to a counterfeit eBay site where she unwittingly entered in personal financial information.

Ultimately, Spence's information wound up in the hands of a young man in the United Kingdom who investigators said was the brains behind a terrorist cell that sought to facilitate deadly bombing attacks against targets in the United States, Europe and the Middle East.

Investigators say Spence's stolen data made its way via the Internet black market for stolen identities to 21-year-old biochemistry student Tariq al-Daour, one of three U.K. residents who pleaded guilty this week to a terrorism charge of using the Internet to incite murder.

Much has been written about radical Islamic groups' use of the Internet to propagandize and recruit new members. The U.K. investigation, however, revealed a significant link between Islamic terrorist groups and cyber crime, and experts say security officials must do more to understand and confront cyber crime as part of any overall strategy for combatting terrorism.

Investigators in the United States and Britain say the trio used computer viruses and stolen credit card accounts to set up a network of communication forums and Web sites that hosted everything from tutorials on computer hacking and bomb-making to videos of beheadings and suicide bombing attacks in Iraq.

"In a sense, these guys were operating an online dating service for al-Qaeda," said Evan Kohlmann, a counterterrorism expert who runs GlobalTerrorAlert.com. "They were among a very small group of individuals who had successfully made the leap from ad hoc terror cell to something close to al-Qaeda simply by using the Internet."

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There is much more in this long report by the Washington Post. These guys appear to have been a conduit for jihadi propaganda as well as an organized crime ring stealing identities and money. It will be interesting to see how shutting them down will effect al Qaeda's information operation.