Motivation for Cyber Attacks against al-Qaida Websites

In a classic example of how little is known about the motives of (potential) politically motivated cyber attacks, The Guardian newspaper reports on recent cyber attacks against al-Qaida websites and provides a string of speculation on potential motives including:

• "...governments are targeting them in a shadowy new front in the "war on terror"


• "...the websites have fallen victim to Shia groups engaged in tit-for-tat sectarian cyber warfare with Sunnis"


• "technical problems"


• "...al-Qaida sympathisers closed the forums themselves because they were too good a source of intelligence for their enemies"


• "[I]nternet vigilantes"

Cyber-attack theory as al-Qaida websites close