Last week the US and UK announced new restrictions for airline passengers from eight Middle Eastern countries, forbidding passengers to carry electronics larger than a smartphone into an airplane cabin.

The move seemed bizarre as it still allowed mobile phones to be used. According to the Guardian the ban was prompted in part by a plot involving explosives hidden in a fake iPad.

It looks like the terrorists thought that if they bought explosives stored in an iPad the security officers would not dare stop them. Everyone knows that iPad users are the chosen people whose devices never explode. Security officers will be too busy praising the devices to be arresting the terrorists.

While it is a step up from a shoe bomb, we would have thought that the iPad was a little obvious. Everytime we have taken a laptop or similar through security it has been scanned so however good the fake iPad would be revealed because it would lack internal gubbins.

Other details of the plot, such as the date, the country involved and the group behind it, remain secret.

An explosion in a cabin - where a terrorist can position the explosive against a door or window - can have much more impact than one in the hold where the terrorist has no control over the position of the explosive, which could be in the middle of luggage, away from the skin of the aircraft), given passengers and crew could be sucked out of any subsequent hole.