Tim Washburn - Cyber Attack

“Hello? Do you watch the news?” Paige asks. “It’s a Russian company. There’s no way the FBI or the NSA is going to ask the Russians for anything.”

“They have offices here in the States,” Kent Fitzpatrick, the IT guy, offers.

“Yeah, probably to spy on us,” Paige says.

Fitzpatrick shrugs. “We’ve used them in the past.”

Paige swivels her chair around to stare at Fitzpatrick. “Yeah? And where did that get you?”

Fitzpatrick shrugs. “They’ve been very helpful to us in the past.”

“Of course they were,” Paige says, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

Hank’s phone chimes and he pulls it out of his pocket to see a message from Elaine Mercer. He unlocks the screen and reads the contents before turning to Fitzpatrick. “Would you mind steppin’ out of the room?”

“I’m not leaving the room until she unplugs her flash drive,” Fitzpatrick says.

Paige scowls. “What? You afraid I’m going to copy some of your precious software?”

“It’s my ass on the line,” Fitzpatrick says. “Unplug the flash drive if you want me out of your hair for a few minutes.”

“What if I plug it back in when you leave?” Paige asks, wagging her head back and forth with each word.

“If you do, I’ll get a notification on my phone.”

Hank feels like he’s back in first grade. “Paige, pull the damn drive.”

Paige pulls it out and waggles it in the air. “Satisfied?”

“Yes,” Fitzpatrick says, his nose in the air as he exits.

“What an asshole,” Paige mutters as the door closes. “What’s the latest, Hank?”

“Nothin’ good, that’s for damn sure. Apparently one of our navy ships decided to take out half the fleet that’s docked at Norfolk.”

Paige rears back in surprise. “Jesus. How did that happen?”

“Accordin’ to Elaine, they haven’t been able to contact the ship. They don’t know if the damn thing has been hijacked or what.”

“Which ship did the shooting?”

“The new Zumwalt-class destroyer.”

“Well, that makes sense. Talk about a piece of shit. They’ve worked a gazillion years on the damn thing and still can’t get it right. The navy is trying to implement their new Total Computing something-or-other. The entire ship runs entirely by computer with about half the number of sailors as the current class of destroyers. I guess it’s their way of saving money if you forget to factor in the billions of dollars already spent on development.”

“The computer networks control everything? I’ve seen pictures of the ship, but that’s it.”

Paige nods. “Yes, from the ship’s lights to her guns, it’s all controlled by computers. I’m sure the network’s partitioned so that the cooks don’t have the capability to launch a missile, but I haven’t seen any of the source code to know how it’s structured.”

“The structure doesn’t matter because these hackers appear to have had abundant time to map every system on the ship.”

“I think you’re right.”

Hank rereads the message from Elaine. “There’s more.”

“Of course there is. What else?”

“The Acela Express train derailed and slammed into other parked trains at Penn Station. Death toll unknown at present, but witnesses report seein’ the train acceleratin’ as it approached the station.”

Paige leans back in her chair and grabs a strand of hair and twirls it around her index finger. “Huh. Now I’m doubly confused.”

Hank leans forward in his seat, propping his elbows on his knees. “I’ve been thinkin’.”

“That’s dangerous,” Paige says. “We don’t want to get that big brain of yours overheated.”

“Funny,” Hank says, frowning. “We don’t know exactly what happened with the aircraft, the dam, or all of the rest, but one thing sticks in my mind.”

“Throw it out there. I’m game.”

“Reports from the nuclear power plant suggested a water pump failure. The recordin’ from Dulles pointed to an engine speed problem. The dam and power plants are producin’ electricity. How? Through the use of turbines. Initial reports from the chemical companies were that their systems were overpressurized. The new warship’s guns are run via computer. And witnesses say the train was speedin’ up and not slowin’ down as it should have been.”

“Yeah. I like where you’re going with this,” Paige says. “You think they’re targeting specific programmable logic controllers, such as the turbine speed controller?”

“I think so. Either that or they hacked into the SCADA systems and manipulated the controllers that way. Hell, if they’ve hacked the SCADA systems they could target not only the PLCs, but every other peripheral device connected to the network.”

“What about the stock market?” Paige asks.

Hank leans back in his chair and crosses his right leg over his left. “I think it’s a statement—a big fuck-you to America. You said it yourself. The worm here was designed for one thing—to do as much destruction as possible as quickly as possible. I think it’s the anomaly out of the group. Everything else can be tied back to the various components that caused the disasters.”

“Say you’re correct in your theory. My question is, who and why? And why now?”

“Those are the big questions. How long is it goin’ to take to create a program to delete the infected files?”

“Who knows? I need to send what I found to Natalie.”

“Give me a ballpark?” Hank says. “If you haven’t noticed, the country is going to hell around us.”

Paige shrugs. “Hours, certainly, and that could stretch into days. We have to reverse engineer the worm before we can design a program to eliminate it.”

“We need to shorten the timeline, Paige. Whatever it takes.”

Hank’s phone chimes again. He looks to see another message from Mercer. He swipes to unlock his screen.

“Mercer again?”

Hank nods as he reads through the new message. “Power’s out in parts of western New York State.”

“How long until they kill the power here in Manhattan?”

“Don’t know. Probably sooner rather than later, especially since we’ve clamped down on their malicious activity here at the stock market.”

“Can we leave before it happens?”

“That, I don’t know.”

Attica Correctional Facility, Attica, New York

For the guards at the maximum-security prison Attica, the power outage in western New York happens when they’re most exposed. With the early-dinner service under way, the mess hall is clogged with four hundred of the most dangerous prisoners in New York’s prison system. Get in trouble at another prison and you get shipped off to Attica, site of the notorious prison riot that killed forty-three people in 1971.

The Attica Correctional Facility is one of only a handful of prisons in the country that has a permanent tear gas system installed. As long as the prison has power, guards can deploy tear gas in the mess hall and a few other select places throughout the prison at the touch of a button. Corrections Officer Brandon Spicer is standing just outside the mess hall staring at the rain streaking down the windows when the power goes off. With the threat of tear gas now gone and the lights off, the inmates are on him in seconds. Spicer is quickly thrown to the floor and the inmates begin kicking and stomping him. He wonders why the backup generators haven’t started up, but before his brain can process possible reasons, several of the inmates start kicking him in the head like they’re trying to hit a forty-five-yard field goal. He curls up in a fetal position, his hands over his head, as the beating intensifies. Bones crack with an audible crunch and Spicer shouts for help from his fellow officers between his gasps of pain. He glances across the floor and discovers why help is not coming—several of the other guards are lying on the floor, dead.