On December 8, 2002, the owner of a large financial services firm in Minnesota saw that Al Qaeda was using the website to claim responsibility for the attacks on an Israeli airliner and a hotel in Kenya. (See: Kenyan hotel bombing)
He guessed the answer to the secret question of the MSN Hotmail account of Julliou Armani, the man listed as the contact for jehadonline.org
The cracker proceeded to take Jehad.net and Jehadonline.org (configured to the same site) from the terrorist organization.
Al Qaeda had earlier posted an audio message containing a threat to attack the United States in July of that year. October 2002 was the month when Al Qaeda posted on the website a claim of responsibility for the attack on a French oil tanker in Yemen. See: Limburg tanker bombing