Al-Qaeda forums downed in cyberattack

By Ellen Nakashima and Joby Warrick

Al-Qaeda’s main Internet forums have been offline for more than a week in what experts say is the longest sustained outage of the Web sites since they began operating eight years ago.

No one has publicly asserted responsibility for disabling the sites, but the breadth and the duration of the outages have prompted some experts to conclude that the forums have been taken down in a cyberattack — launched perhaps by a government, a government-backed organization or a hackers’ group.

The first Web site, Shumukh al-Islam, a primary source for al-Qaeda videos and messages, went down March 22, and since then four others have gone dark. Shumukh reappeared briefly Monday before going down again. A message claiming to be from the site’s administrators said that it would be back up “as soon as possible.”

The administrator of a second-tier al-Qaeda site recently posted a message on an online forum saying that “the media arena is witnessing a vicious attack by the cross and its helpers on the jihadi media castles.”

Officials in the United States and elsewhere have long been concerned about sites associated with al-Qaeda. Those sites have been used to call for violence against Western targets and to try to recruit Islamist extremists to carry out attacks.

There is still some uncertainty about whether a cyberattack caused the recent outages, and skeptics note that some prominent al-Qaeda forums remain online. U.S. government agencies, including U.S. Cyber Command, had no role in the outages, according to officials who would speak about the issue only on the condition of anonymity.

Still, Will McCants, a former State Department counterterrorism official who is a senior fellow at the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University, said that, given the number of sites affected and the duration of the outages, “it sure looks like a takedown.”

If it is a technical problem being addressed by site administrators, “usually they will get on another site and say we’ve got administrative problems,” McCants said

READ THE FULL STORY AT THE WASHINGTON POST

NYC probing web posting about terror threat

CNN: By Chris Kokenes

Gotham's top cop on Tuesday said authorities are looking into the possibility that an Egyptian writer may have been responsible for an online posting that pictured a New York cityscape with the words "Al Qaeda. Coming Soon Again in New York."

"The use of language indicated that," said New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly. "Its many different dialects in Arabic and our analysts thought that this was Egyptian in nature."

He said that the graphic image, which surfaced Monday on a few jihadist Web forums and featured the words in the English, did not coincide with any specific online chatter about a potential threat and that it was unclear whether one or multiple individuals was responsible for the posting.

"The Internet is, as we used to say, is the new Afghanistan," Kelly told reporters. "That's where training happens. That where radicalization happens. It's become a very valuable tool to the terrorists."

Still, FBI spokesman J. Peter Donald said that while his agency was also investigating, "there is no specific or credible threat to New York at this time."

"The NYPD Intelligence Division's cyberunit is investigating the origin and significance of the graphic," said police spokesman Paul Browne said earlier Tuesday. "Until more is learned about their origin, we take all threats against New York City seriously."

The posting comes just months after the 10 year anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks in New York, Pennsylvania and Washington

FBI releases Jet Blue/Osbon charges affidavit

(C) Steve Miller/The Reporter's Edge
LINK: FBI CHARGES

Related: The case of the JetBlue captain who came unglued at 35,000 feet has focused attention on what some aviation experts say is a flimsy system for detecting psychological problems in pilots.

During required checkups every six months or one year, airline pilots are subjected to a battery of physical tests, but the doctor usually doesn't ask about their mental state, experts and pilots say. And many pilots would probably hesitate to tell the truth, for fear it would be a career-ender.

"It's very clear to every pilot that the moment you say yes, you've had an issue, they're going to deny your license," said John Gadzinski, a captain for a major airline and an aviation consultant.

Still, there appears to be little interest in beefing up the examinations because mental breakdowns in the cockpit are extremely rare.

"Of the tens of thousands of employees" airlines have, "there are a couple that lost it," said Robert Francis, a former vice chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board. "That's hardly enough evidence to lead to new regulations."

On Tuesday, Clayton Osbon, the 49-year-old captain of a New York-to-Las Vegas flight, started ranting about a bomb aboard and screamed, "They're going to take us down!" A co-pilot locked him out of the cockpit and guided the plane to an emergency landing in Amarillo, Texas, as passengers wrestled Osbon to the floor. He was carried off the plane and taken to a hospital. JetBlue said he suffered a "medical situation."

The outburst came weeks after a distraught American Airlines flight attendant was taken off a plane at the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport for getting on the public address system and rambling about 9/11 and her fears the plane would crash. She, too, was hospitalized.

JetBlue Airways CEO Dave Barger said on NBC's "Today" show that he has known Osbon personally and that he is "a consummate professional," with nothing in his past to indicate he would be a risk on a flight.

Osbon, a pilot for JetBlue since 2000, was charged Wednesday with interfering with a flight crew. The airline suspended him.

"Clearly, he had an emotional or mental type of breakdown," said Tony Antolino, a security executive who sat in the 10th row of the plane and tackled the captain when he tried to re-enter the cockpit. "He became almost delusional."

Man tries to board plane with explosives.

A 29-year-old-man was taken into police custody this morning at the Philadelphia airport after attempting to board a flight to San Francisco while carrying items that could have been assembled into an explosive device -- a vial with a fuse, a plastic bottle filled with explosive powder and three M-80 type fireworks.

Joseph Picklo of Dallas, Pennsylvania told authorities he is a self-employed salesman who "likes to conduct experiments with explosives." Picklo told authorities he had "fooled around" with the fireworks and other materials and forgot he had them in his backpack when he attempted to board the flight.


FBI official told ABC News there is no known connection to terrorism, but authorities said some or all of the elements could have been combined to make a bomb. Picklo was detained at 6 a.m. after a suspicious item was seen in a carry-on bag at a security checkpoint as he was headed for a US Airways flight.

Airport operations were only minimally affected. One gate was closed for 20 minutes while police responded. The Philadelphia Police Bomb Squad removed the material to its range for examination.

Exclusive photo: Pilot taken off Jet Blue flight in Amarillo - by Feds

(CBS News) A police officer and an off-duty airline pilot subdued a JetBlue captain Tuesday morning aboard a Las Vegas-bound flight when the captain started pounding on the cockpit door after the flight's co-pilot asked him to leave and subsequently locked him out, a federal official told CBS News.

The captain became incoherent during JetBlue Flight 191 from New York's John F. Kennedy International, prompting the co-pilot to get him to leave the cockpit, the official said. JetBlue said in a statement to CBS News that the flight was diverted to Amarillo, Texas, "for a medical situation involving the captain."

Jet Blue flight 191 enroute from JFK to Las Vegas. The flight was diverted to Amarillo after the pilot reported an in-flight-emergency concerning an out-of-control passenger on board.
Law enforcement and FBI was summoned to the aircraft and a man strapped to a gurney was photographed being taken off the aircraft.

The man was transported to Northwest Texas Hospital for "evaluation." Another ambulance was also summoned to check on a passenger having chest pains.

-Steve Douglass


Photos (C) Steve Miller/The Reporters Edge
for reproduction rights and high rez images contact webbfeat@gmail or Steve Douglass at 806-336-7583

AUDIO OF JETBLUE DECLARING AN EMERGENCY NOW AVAILABLE HERE