Cyberstrike by James Barrington (best memoirs of all time TXT) 📕

too far away. What’s caused this particular high-level angst-fest is the bloody French. And the bloody Germans, in fact.’

‘Not planning to invade, are they?’ North asked.

‘What do you mean “invade?” The buggers are already here, but that wasn’t what I was driving at. Here’s a quick general knowledge quiz for you. Who owns British Gas?’

‘That’s something of a non sequitur,’ Angela Evans said, ‘but I’ll take a wild stab in the dark and say we do. The British, hence the name.’

‘Correct. It’s a subsidiary of Centrica. How about EDF?’

‘I think you’ll find the clue there is also in the name,’ Morgan said. ‘EDF – Électricité de France. Which means it’s ultimately owned by the French government, because that’s the biggest shareholder in EDF.’

Dame Janet nodded.

‘What about E.ON and Npower?’ she asked. Nobody replied as she looked around the table. ‘Both German. Here’s an easy one, or rather an easy two. ScottishPower and Manweb. You should know about Manweb, Dave. It supplies North Wales, not that far from your usual stamping ground up around Hereford.’

‘Not a clue,’ North replied. ‘Presumably not British, so maybe they’re French?’

‘Nearly right. Spanish, both of them.’

‘Is there a point to this?’ Morgan asked.

‘There’s a point to everything I say or do, Ben,’ Dame Janet replied. ‘You should know that by now. Now, I personally happen to believe that every nation should have control of its essential utility companies, but of course decisions about ownership are taken by politicians whose only interest is in getting elected and keeping their seats and who are, by definition, totally unqualified to govern and in most cases have about the same level of intelligence and attention span as a fruit fly. And to save any of you asking, yes I have had something of a run-in with a couple of members of our alleged government in the House, both of whom demonstrated a lack of knowledge about the dangers this country faces that would have been frankly embarrassing if they’d been expressed on a street corner by a homeless wino.’

Nobody responded. Dame Janet’s critical and somewhat strident views on politicians in general were well known to all the members of C-TAC.

‘The short version is that over the last ten days both EDF and Npower have suffered attacks on their corporate networks.’

Ben Morgan immediately looked interested. Cybersecurity and cyber warfare were his speciality.

‘In fact, not so much attacks as intrusions,’ Dame Janet continued. ‘But however you describe or define what happened, a third party managed to get inside one supposedly secure system, and neither of the two idiots I spoke to today in Westminster seemed to think that was much of a problem.’

‘Which it certainly is,’ Natasha Black said.

‘Obviously. One of the two MPs kept wittering on about zombie servers and—’

‘Zombie servers?’ Morgan interrupted. ‘Really?’

‘Yes. Hang on, Ben, I’m getting there. He talked about zombie servers and Tor and the dark web, so he’d obviously picked up a few buzzwords from somewhere. Eventually I played the “I’m just a simple woman and I don’t know what you’re talking about so please explain it all to me in words of one syllable” card and it turned out he knew some words and names but not what they meant. As you all know, I’m not an IT expert, but when he told me what a zombie server was he was actually describing a proxy server, and he knew that Tor was a browser but he had no idea what the name stood for. I even gave him a clue. I asked him if he’d ever heard of The Onion Router and he just shook his head. That should give you some idea of the calibre and level of ignorance of the sort of people I have to deal with at Westminster.’

Dame Janet slumped back in her chair and shook her head.

‘I’m more interested in these attacks or intrusions than I am about what a couple of typically completely clueless politicians think,’ Morgan said. ‘What happened? What was the source?’

‘I had a conference call with the security people at both companies. The ostensible source of both attacks was Vietnam, and you know as well as I do that means about the only place they couldn’t have originated was that country. They’d have bounced the origin around the world before using the software.’

‘Did they crack a legitimate password or hack into the system using some vulnerability?’

‘You’ll need to talk to their security people for chapter and verse, Ben, because this stuff is well outside my comfort zone. But I gather that in both cases the hackers first tried cracking passwords using tools called JTR and Cain. I suppose you know what they are?’

Morgan nodded.

‘John The Ripper and Cain and Abel,’ he replied. ‘They’re both password crackers often used by White Hat hackers doing pen testing.’

‘Pen testing?’ Angela Evans asked.

‘Sorry, shorthand. Penetration testing, to see if a system is vulnerable. I presume that’s not how they got in?’

‘No. Then they looked for system vulnerabilities,’ Dame Janet confirmed.

‘They probably used something like Nessus or Metasploit,’ Morgan suggested.

‘Yes to both of those, and also something called Sniper.’

‘The program’s actually spelt Sn1per, with a number “1” rather than a letter “i”, and it’s often used with Metasploit. And they found a way inside?’

‘Oddly enough, no.’

‘No?’ Morgan echoed. ‘But I thought you said—’

‘As I said, Ben, I’m getting there. The attacks weren’t simultaneous but consecutive and repetitive, and because of the hacking tools that were used, and the way that they were used, it looks as if the same person or group of people were involved. I understand that most hackers have preferred suites of tools they’re familiar with and that do the job, and they tend to use them in much the same way each time.’

‘Just like anyone who uses a computer,’ Morgan agreed. ‘Or like any other tradesman, in fact, would use a tool.’

‘Right. What I didn’t tell you was that both these attacks failed to breach the firewalls and counter-intrusion systems and get inside the servers. The hackers tried