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In the hours after a suicide bomber killed more than 20 young concert goers in Manchester, Islamic State made a mistake.
It published not one, but two claims of responsibility and one contradicted the other.
The first, on its platform nasheed, described the attacker as a "soldier of the caliphate", but in a second claim on the ISIS news agency Amaq, it referred to a "security detachment" being responsible.
Rukmini Callimachi, the Islamic State correspondent for The New York Times, told Lateline the stuff-up could indicate a communication breakdown within the terrorist group.
"[The second claim] was almost immediately deleted and replaced by another one that once again referred to a single attacker," she said.
"This is unusual for ISIS. They tend to be quite disciplined across their different platforms and at least in the details of how they describe the attack, they tend to be consistent from platform to platform.
"It's unclear what this means, if this is just a run-of-the-mill mistake, or if there is something more to it."
According to one former FBI official, who has been involved in a number of terrorism investigations, it could mean there has been a breakdown in Islamic State's overall media apparatus.
Ms Callimachi said there are also signs the 22-year-old suicide bomber, Salman Abedi, was radicalised some time ago.
The imam from Abedi's family's mosque has reportedly told news outlets that he had delivered a lecture criticising the ideology of Islamic State and Al Qaeda, to which Abedi looked at him with "eyes of hate".
"That points to radicalisation that happened some time ago. [But] we don't know if he travelled to Syria, we don't know if he was in direct contact with ISIS," Ms Callimachi said.
Three types of Islamic State attacks
Ms Callimachi described the three categories counter-terrorism officials use to distinguish ISIS attacks.
At one extreme, there is what's known as a directive attack:
"These are attacks carried out by core personnel of the Islamic State, who are trained either in Iraq and Syria or Libya and who are then dispatched back to carry out acts of violence," she said.
At the other extreme is the inspired attack:
"These are attacks by gunmen and other types of attackers who have no contact at all with the Islamic State but have been imbibing the ideology of the group [online] ... and decide to commit an act of violence on their own," she said.
In the middle, there is the enabled attack:
"These are attackers who are living in western countries, many of them have tried to go to the Islamic State but were turned away. They are able to create a digital connection with the terror group and there they are coached by the group into putting together a plot," she said.
Ms Callimachi said an example of this was an attack on a church in France by a man originally thought to be a lone wolf, but who in fact had been in direct contact with Islamic State.
"[Islamic State] arranged for the weapons he was going to use to shoot a church to be left in the boot of a car parked in a suburb of Paris. They gave him the exact address, they gave him the make of the car," she said.
"They were literally micro-managing him.
Ms Callimachi said this category is the most dangerous.
"It's not setting off the trip wires that officials are used to looking for in order catch these perpetrators. They're not travelling to Iraq and Syria, they are usually speaking through encrypted apps," she said.
It's this category that is likely to become more common, since Islamic State changed tactic a year ago.
"Up until that point the message was always come and join the caliphate," Ms Callimachi said.
"It was before Ramadan of 2016 that the spokesman of Islamic State announced that if you try to travel to Syria and you are barred from joining the Islamic State, then go ahead and do jihad at home."
Topics: terrorism, unrest-conflict-and-war, world-politics, england, united-kingdom
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