Cyber Terror Read Online Free PDF Page B

operating the Jaguar from a short distance. He transmitted the first code.
    The men looked round as the car came to life with a slight growl. Unsure, they glanced at one another.
    When Jordan sent the code to reverse, the car began to move towards the group.
    Panicking, they ran off.
    With a grin on his face, Jordan stopped the car, unlocked it with a thought and got in.

 
5 BEFORE ECUADOR
    Raven looked up from her monitor and said, “I’ve been scouring databases, the internet and every news outlet I can think of, looking for unexplained downtime or
known cyber attacks before the Ecuador spectacular. I’ve been ringing round as well, but most organizations won’t admit anything’s got through their defences. It’d be like
advertising a weakness, so they keep quiet. Private companies are the worst. They want everyone to think their security is foolproof.”
    “But you’ve got something, right?” Jordan replied.
    “A few things. There was one very public breakdown. The National Lottery computer died a death on live TV in January. It could have been a glitch. It could have been Short Circuit, I
suppose. The Commission won’t talk about it. That’d tell other geeks it’s fun to target high-profile computers.”
    “As if they didn’t know,” Jordan muttered.
    “Norton – the anti-virus people – had an unexplained evening offline. So did Amazon.” Raven scanned the notes on her screen. “Here’s a horrible one. A woman
in Felixstowe Hospital died when she was undergoing brain surgery. A robotic arm was destroying cancer tissue when it suffered a mysterious fault. It doesn’t bear thinking about. The laser
fired off in all directions instead of keeping to the tumour.”
    Jordan asked, “Who was she?”
    “A woman called...” Raven glanced down at her monitor again. “Paige Ottaway. Married, mum of three. There was an inquest. One of the motherboards in the robot packed up so it
was put down to equipment failure, but it could have been a cyber attack.”
    “Anything else?”
    “Someone hacked into NatWest’s central computer and disabled it for hours. The bankers lost a day’s pay. That’s an annual salary to you and me. Trinity College Dublin and
a Scottish power station got stung as well. A few councils have been attacked. And those are just the ones I found in Britain and Ireland. There’ll be quite a few more keeping quiet, ones I
didn’t spot, and plenty overseas.”
    “What about us?”
    “Us? Unit Red?”
    Jordan nodded. “Yes.”
    “Never had a problem. No incursions at all.”
    “Would you admit it if we had?”
    “Within Unit Red, yes. No one outside knows about us anyway, so they wouldn’t ask. Or target us in the first place.”
    “Okay,” Jordan said. “Did you try Zone-H?”
    “Yes. It’s where hackers show off about defacing other people’s sites. There’s probably a good dose of exaggeration in there. It lists thousands of attacks. Too many
really, but nothing jumped out at me. All it did was confirm the strikes on the National Lottery, Norton, quite a few councils and the NatWest Bank were malicious. I’ve put everything in a
file for you, but...”
    “What?”
    Raven shrugged. “They might not have anything to do with Short Circuit. Some’ll be kids flexing their virtual muscles.”
    “I know.” Jordan sighed and then added, “Can you try something? It might be daft, but... There was the crash in Edinburgh and, before that, the plane from Quito to Amsterdam.
Short Circuit asked for the money in Kingston and he sends his sound files to Manchester. Can you do an internet search on Quito, Amsterdam, Edinburgh, Kingston and Manchester? I’m wondering
if there’s a connection, but I don’t know why there should be.”
    “All right,” Raven replied.
    In a third of a second, the search engine came up with an answer. None of its finds contained a reference to all five places. The first page of results was mostly about flights and tourism.
    “Let’s