BBC NEWS | Technology | US seeks terrorists in web worlds

It was inevitable that terror groups would make greater use of the internet and the possibilities that virtual spaces offered them, said Mr Jones.”There’s more a chance of things like Jihad worlds coming online in the next five years I think,” he said.

The visual richness of virtual worlds made them good places to educate recruits about techniques, said Mr Jones.

“We can see groups emerging in cyber spaces and virtual communities that would be wholly virtual,” he said. “They would organise and radicalise in virtual worlds and attack using cyber methods without becoming a real world presence in any real way.”