Maryland man hijacks al Qaeda website

CTV News Staff

A patriotic Maryland man has successfully hijacked al Qaeda's official website, prompting the terrorist network to demand its immediate return.

Internet entrepreneur Jon Messner seized control of the site www.alneda.com on July 16 as al Qaeda officials were in the process of transferring its domain name registration from a computer in Malaysia to a new host in India.

"It was a slippery bastard, but I've got it now," Messner told Wired magazine in an interview. "I own Alneda.com."

The site, whose name means "The Call" in Arabic, had been used as al Qaeda's official home on the Internet since at least March 2001.

It contained editorials by major al Qaeda leaders, some of which contained calls for action and justification of terrorist activities, including Sept. 11. The site's message board also contained innocuous messages believed to be coded signals to sleeper cells around the world. It also offered a library of videos and pictures of Osama bin Laden.

Messner first hatched his plan following Sept. 11. "I was going to use every skill I had to screw up the terrorists' communication in any way I could."

His chance came earlier this year when he learned the site was about to be moved from Malaysia, and thus would be vulnerable for only a matter of minutes while the registration was moved.

He accomplished the hostile takeover by using a combination of freely available software and the services of a domain registration company -- all perfectly legal.

Messner hired a Washington, D.C. company called SnapNames to monitor the domain and register it in Messner's name the second the transfer was started.

"After they pushed it out of the Malaysian registry but before it entered the Indian registry, in that split second the domain became exposed," Messner said.

Technically, the site had no owner for the period of time it was being transferred, allowing Messner to reserve it for himself.

But instead of tipping his hand that the takeover had occurred, Messner left the site unchanged except for special Web scripts which allowed him to track every visitor.

"For five days I could trace back to nearly every hostile Islamic message board and website on the Internet," Messner told Wired.

Eventually, his cover was blown when al Qaeda noticed it no longer owned the site.

When the jig was up, Messner replaced the home page with a picture of the Great Seal of the United States and the phrase, "Hacked, tracked and now owned by the USA."

A short while later a man from Cyprus called Messner telling him he wanted the website back. Messner never returned the call and still has control of [url]www.alneda.com[/url] .

The FBI visited Messner shortly after the takeover but told him not to disclose what they had discussed.

Hacked, tracked and now owned by the USA

Quoted:
Absolutely Fantastic!

I think our government should hire the best, most ruthless hackers in the US and turn them loose on Al Queda.  If one guy could do this, just imagine what thousands of pre-pubecent computer nerds could do.  Internet service in the Middle East would virtually stop.

Hell, just a few DNS attacks on key websites would disrupt their communications for a while.

HACK ON!

Quoted:
Bravo Zulu to that guy!!!   [beer]