Scotland Yard has uncovered an Al Qaeda plot to take the internet offline in Britain, not by hacking into the servers or infecting them with viruses, but with an old-school Denial of Service attack.

SCOTLAND YARD has uncovered evidence that Al-Qaeda has been plotting to bring down the internet in Britain, causing chaos to business and the London Stock Exchange.

In a series of raids, detectives have recovered computer files revealing that terrorist suspects had targeted a high-security internet “hub” in London. The facility, in Docklands, houses the channel through which almost every bit of information on the internet passes in or out of Britain. The suspects, who were arrested, had targeted the headquarters of Telehouse Europe, which houses Europe’s biggest “web hotel”, containing dozens of “servers” , the boxes which contain the information that makes up the web.

A senior Whitehall security official said the internet plotters appeared to be planning to infiltrate the “hub”, possibly to blow it up from the inside, according to evidence on a computer hard drive seized in raids on the homes of terror suspects in southern England last year.

“The Telehouse facility was the subject of intense reconnaissance. The evidence suggests that it was one of a range of options considered by the suspects,” the official said.