Blackouts triggered by hackers causing global chaos

The chilling conclusion to be drawn from reading Andy Greenberg’s new book Sandworm, on state-sponsored cyber-hacking as we are at war, but not as have known it but all big powers are involved and the potential for cataclysm is great as the hostilities are taking place in real time, undermining a system near you.

Democracy is being undermined, as information misused by external forces. The mystery behind the a mysterious power outage that paralysed the Ukrainian capital Kyiv in December 2016, as the story revolves around Denmark, South Korea, Estonia, Russia and the US. The perpetrator of this attack is Russia, specifically the hacking team of the military intelligence organisation, the GRU.

Russia in doing so not only tested its strategy for possible future attacks against powerful adversaries but also undermined its neighbour. The virus dubbed NotPetya, caused more than $10bn in damage and spread across the world in what is to date the largest cyberattack in history.

Russia punished Estonia in 2007, for removing a monument to the Soviet Army from the centre of Tallinn and did so by disabling the internet in crucial areas, bringing down the communications of the government and the health service for weeks known as “Web War One”.

NATO’S  refusal to invoke Article 5, its mutual defence clause, on behalf of Estonia, the Kremlin took its battle south on to a new stage, after invading the Donbass region and reclaiming Crimea by old-fashioned military means, it went for Ukraine’s infrastructure.

Logistics multinational, banks, media organisations, health services and utilities across the world are attacked. It start form Copenhagen, and the Danish shipping giant Maersk, the computer systems for a company responsible for 76 ports, nearly 800 ships and tens and millions of tonnes of cargo and a fifth of world’s shipping capacity, suddenly went down as it takes weeks for the virus to be countered and new clean software to be introduced by teams in Maidenhead and Ghana.

Not only Moscow, but the Americans were also in on the act. Its Stuxnet cyber-program was aimed at the heart of Iran’s nuclear facilities, taking out its enrichment centrifuges. Physical destruction had become an acceptable rule of the game. “ In darkened rooms all over the globe, state-sponsored hackers took notice of America’s creation , looked back at their own lacklustre work and determined that they would someday meet the new bar Stuxnet had set” Mr Greenberg writes.

Cyber warfare now is the most penetrative tool in the braoder armoury of hybrid warfare.

Michael Hayden, the former head of the CIA and NSA is quoted as saying  with reference to America’s deployment of atomic bombs over Japan “ This has a whiff of August 1945, Somebody just used a new weapon, and this weapon will not be put back in the box”.

Ina recent years, security researchers have also found a web of evidence that ties the group to other more mysterious incidents which include the breach of two US State boards of elections in 2015, the cyberattack on the 2018 Winter Olympics and the hacking of the French election in 2017.

 Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin’s Most Dangerous Hackers by Andy Greenberg, Doubleday $28.95/ £22.50, 368 pages.