Whoever planned and carried out the deadly bombing of the Boston Marathon may have had plenty of help, experts say, from the Internet.
"Every aspect of a terrorist attack is now managed or researched" in some way using the Internet, said Scott Borg, director and chief economist of the U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit, an independent research institute that assesses cyber threats.
"That's where people figure out what their target is, how to go after the target, it's how they learn how to make bombs, it's how they coordinate their activities with each other," he told NBC News' Lisa Myers in an interview.
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But he adds that the same websites and chat rooms that would-be jihadists use in their planning can also be a hunting ground for the U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials looking for whoever built the Boston pressure cooker bombs.
The intelligence community is already at work there, experts say – watching for signs of imminent attacks, but also sowing disinformation and altering recipes for bombs.
"Law enforcement actively attempts to post content on these websites," said Esposito. "They use all the investigative tools that are now available to them to thwart the terrorists online."
So far, those methods have been very effective. And experts say the easy availability of bomb-making formulas does not seem to have increased the frequency of attacks. But they worry it may be making the successful ones more lethal.
