War with Russia

Berry indicated the four individuals sitting at the conference table opposite the two generals. Walker, sitting at the back and keen now to hide his resentment at the obvious put-down, took in the group, all in their late twenties. Two of the three men had half-grown beards, spiky hair and were earringed and T-shirted: typical geeks. The third was bespectacled, wearing a tweed jacket and looked like a 1950s physics student. Allenby, the one woman, looked attractively self-confident, especially given her age and considering her audience. In fact, she looked positively sporty; more a young, high-flying corporate financier than someone who was planning an attack on Russia’s nuclear systems.

Allenby was explaining how nuclear command and control covered everything required to maintain a nuclear weapons capability: personnel, equipment, facilities, organizations, procedures as well as the chain of command. “Given the need for mobility, multiple launch platforms and redundancy—a back-up system in case the primary system fails—the Russian system is inherently vulnerable,” she went on in her clipped, precise tones, a legacy of what could only be an expensive education. “We looked at the issue and decided we wanted two results. First, we looked at how we might take down the entire Russian General Staff communications system.”

Kydd, sitting opposite her, growled. “Now you’re talking my fucking language…”

Allenby looked him in the eye. “General, there’s no need for that in here. Thank you.”

Kydd squirmed and Walker smirked to himself as he watched the soldier’s evident discomfort. Great to see the cocky bastard put down, he thought to himself. This girl’s sussed him out and put him firmly in his place. That’s more than the PM’s managed so far. He caught her eye and gave her an encouraging nod.

Allenby ignored him and continued, “But, more specifically, we also wanted to get inside the nuclear command and control system and take control of that… I’ll come back to that in a moment.”

“So, what can you do about the Russian General Staff command and control system?” The Prime Minister was intrigued but also, Walker knew, on a very tight timetable.

“Our tactic was no different from hackers anywhere looking to achieve what’s known in the trade as Distributed Denial of Service—DDoS. That involves taking control of multiple computers by installing a worm these guys invented.” Allenby gestured to the three young men on either side of her. “Once Rasputin, that’s the name we’ve given our particular worm, is inserted into one computer in a botnet—that’s what we call multiple computers linked together under illicit control—it spreads like wildfire. As it spreads, the computers in the network come together to shut down websites or portions of the network by flooding the servers with data requests. This massive flow of data requests causes buffer overflow, jams the servers and makes them unusable.”

“So, effectively what you are doing is using the computers in the network to block the network,” said Little slowly, but looking somewhat confused; as well he might, thought Walker.

“Exactly, Prime Minister,” replied Allenby crisply. “But the really clever thing about Rasputin is that we can activate it when we want to. Most worms go into action as soon as they enter the system. But Rasputin sits in their system, dormant, until we want it to create chaos.”

“OK… So how do you get into the network in the first place?”

“Good question, Prime Minister,” GCHQ Director Berry intervened. “Initially we tried to mount an operation with the CIA and MI6 to break into the servers of Russia’s National Defense Control Center, the NDCC, while it was being built. However, to give them credit—and the Russians are seriously good at this sort of thing—we failed. One reason is that their servers are Russian-made, which maximizes their resistance to our offensive cyber capabilities. That by the way, Prime Minister, is another conversation for another day, about our own foreign-built servers… but I digress… Anyway, any defense is only as good as its weakest links. And Nicola here found a way in.” He smiled like a magician producing a rabbit from a hat, before pointing back to Allenby and so inviting her to explain.

“You’ll appreciate, Prime Minister, that any computer connected to the internet is susceptible to infiltration and takeover. We had to find a way to access a closed network like the one used by the Russian General Staff. So we looked for an individual with access to the closed network into whose open-network computer we might be able to install a virus.”

“And… ?”