NewScientist - US seizes Osama bin Laden's hard drives

The US Navy SEAL team that found and killed Osama bin Laden on Sunday have recovered a number of computer drives and disks, dubbed "the mother lode of intelligence" by one US official speaking to Politico.com. Intelligence operatives are now apparently sorting through the digital haul, but what might they find?

It all depends on whether or not bin Laden's data is encrypted, as modern encryption techniques are mathematically uncrackable if used correctly. Data encoded using the AES-256 encryption scheme would take longer than the age of the universe to crack, which is why the US National Security Agency (NSA) endorses it for protecting documents classified "Top Secret".

We don't know whether bin Laden or other al-Qaeda members used AES-256, but it's certainly possible. Last year the organisation supposedly published a magazine called Inspire that contained an article on using a piece of encryption software known as Asrar al-Mujahideen 2.0, which uses AES-256 along with other encryption methods.