Anyone with an email account receives numerous virus-ridden files and requests to give away their personal details, but this is just scraping the surface of what is known as 'cyber crime'. As 'traditional' organised crime is waking up to the huge potential of cyber space, Cyber Alert investigates both where they will strike next, who is trying to stop them and how we can protect ourselves.
At the time, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his team of close
advisers had plenty to keep them occupied. In early 1999, barely two
years into the new government’s first term, issues of health, education
and crime were looming large, exactly how to handle the problematic
subject of the Millennium Bug was causing headaches and United
Nations weapons inspectors had just withdrawn from Iraq: in hindsight
the start of a slow countdown to war.
However, soon Blair and his security staff had one more pressing
issue to deal with.
It happened by chance, during a routine monitor of the complex
computer network. The high-tech security team could scarcely
believe their eyes, yet here was the proof in front of them. The security
apparatus on the computer network registered an intruder
alert. Someone had been hacking Downing Street, the heart of
British government, and for some time, too. This wasn’t some
random computer joyride by a ‘script kiddie’ as young hackers are
sometimes disparagingly known. This intruder, whoever it was,
knew just what he was doing and knew how to lie undetected for
some time.
But now, with lightning speed, the attacker had cut like a laser
through the expensive and complex encryption system that was supposed
to deter such assaults and homed in on the target. Before
anyone had been aware of it the intruder had rapidly downloaded
some files and then vanished back into the black hole of cyber space
just as quickly as he had arrived. The security guards who had discovered the intrusion were not sure
what astonished them most: the sheer audacity and boldness of a fullfrontal
attack on a computer in Downing Street; the speed with which
it had evidently occurred; the fact that the intruder had escaped detection
for so long; or the remarkably easy way in which the attacker had
overcome the encryption system. Could this be an inside job?
Within minutes of the discovery a full-scale internal inquiry was
launched, though details of the unprecedented security breaches
have remained a closely guarded secret until now. Among those
involved were, of course, the security services (notably specialist
staff at GCHQ from Cheltenham), Downing Street officials and
senior staff at Cable & Wireless, who were managing the Downing
Street communications network.
Their initial attempts to trace the source of the hack proved unsurprisingly
fruitless, the trail running cold when it was found the attacks
had been launched from a computer using a mobile phone line. The
investigators later found that the cyber assault originated somewhere
in the former Soviet Union, probably Russia, though even now details
about this remain sparse. The information apparently seen and taken
by the intruder was not sensitive, though its loss was hugely embarrassing;
and there were still some more red faces to come. During a
massive overhaul of security of the supposedly impregnable Whitehall
network that followed this incident in early 1999, investigators found
that fibre-optic cables linking directly into the secure system had been
left sticking out of a hole in the ground on a street.
Yet more experts – including a former hacker – were called in from
the world of computer security to run so-called penetration tests to
make sure that the Downing Street and Whitehall networks were safe
once more.
To this day no one is quite sure what lay behind this mysterious
and sophisticated hacking attack.
About the Author
Peter Warren is a freelance television and print journalist specialising in investigations, who has worked for BBC 2, The Sunday Times, Observer, Sunday Express and Scotland on Sunday and is an expert on computer security issues.
