MI6 Fights Cyber-Terrorists With Cupcakes

Hacking these days generally means taking down Sony's servers and/or whipping out all of its subscriber data to sell on the black market, but it can also be a force for sugary good. MI6 has attempted to bring delicious, peace-making cupcakes to the terrorism-torn Arabian Peninsular, The Telegraph reports, by replacing a recipe for building a DIY pipe-bomb in an al-Qaeda digital magazine with instructions for making, along others, Mojito Cupcakes and Rocky Road Cupcakes.

The digital magazine – written in English – is believed by intelligence services to be al-Qaeda's latest ploy to recruit would-be terrorists by giving radicals instructions on how to create bombs. The cupcake recipes were borrowed from Main Street Cupcakes in Hudson, Ohio, having been written for Ellen DeGeneres' US show.

They replaced a feature "Make a bomb in the Kitchen of your Mom" as well as articles entitled "What to expect in Jihad" as well as features by prominent al-Qaeda figureheads including Osama bin Laden. Apparently both US and British intelligence agencies planned cyber-attacks on the magazine download, though the US project was called off after the CIA argued it could disrupt a potential intelligence source.

[Image credit: Mandi Crocker]