Cyber Terror Read Online Free

shoulder. “We’ve only got ourselves to blame. We rely far too much on technology. What happens is, you spike a chip with a hidden circuit that does nothing until you send a trigger
message. Then it blows the chip. Easily enough to screw up a plane’s flight and control systems.”
    Jordan said, “What’s the trigger?”
    “There are a few. The only one that makes sense for attacking planes is activating the Trojan with a radio signal.”
    “How close would you have to get?” asked Jordan.
    “I’m not sure,” Raven replied. “You’d probably need to be near enough to have a direct line of sight to the target.”
    Kate was puzzled. “Wouldn’t the chip have to be sabotaged where it’s made?”
    Raven nodded.
    “But if someone makes a few Trojan chips,” Kate said, “how does he get them where he needs them – like into a plane he wants to bring down?”
    Jordan wondered if he’d already figured out the answer. He leaped in before Raven could respond. “Aren’t almost all chips made by one company?”
    “Yes,” Raven said. “Worldwide, eighty per cent are from the same source.”
    “Well, if he worked there, he’d be pretty sure his chips would get into almost everything. Planes included. He’d just have to sneak a rogue circuit into the design.”
    “I suppose so,” Raven replied, taken aback by Jordan’s quick reasoning. “The company would churn out millions of them without knowing a thing about it.”
    Kate nodded. “It makes sense. That way, he’d have a few sleeping Trojans in most IT systems across the planet, waiting for him to wake them up and cause havoc. What’s this
company?”
    “HiSpec. Short for HiSpec MicroSystems.”
    “So,” Kate suggested, “Jordan could be looking for a HiSpec worker with a whopping gripe of some sort.”
    “Something like that.”
    “Could I have some of these dodgy chips in my head and arm?” Jordan asked.
    Raven nodded again. “You, the Unit Red computer network, your car, almost anything.”
    “Where’s the HiSpec factory?” he asked.
    “Ah,” she said. “It’s a multi-national business, I’m afraid. You’re going to need a big net. They’ve got manufacturing units in China, the USA, Japan
and here – in Cambridge.”
    Jordan didn’t ask her about the third possibility of cyber warfare. He knew someone else who could tell him all about hacking into important systems. Someone with practical experience.
Instead, Jordan changed the subject. “Have there been any other electrical blackouts – before Ecuador? Nothing huge or it would’ve been on the telly.”
    Raven looked at him oddly for an instant. “How do you mean?”
    “If I wanted to crash a plane by turning its engines off, I’d practise on something smaller first.”
    “Got you.” Raven thought for a moment. “I don’t know. I’ll trawl through a few things and let you know. But...”
    “But what?”
    “Bringing down a plane isn’t hard. You just stop its engines and it’ll crash. It’d be much harder to crash, say, a boat. Stop its engine and it just floats till someone
fixes it. No one gets hurt. Just because a plane’s bigger doesn’t make it more difficult. Quite the opposite. To crash a boat or a car or something, you’d have to take control of
its steering. That’s much trickier.”
    “Okay,” Jordan said. “Thanks.”
    Leaving the room, heels clicking on the shiny granite floor, Raven smiled at Kate, but she merely nodded at Jordan. There was a fleeting hint of suspicion – maybe even dislike – in
her expression.
    After the door closed, Kate gazed at Jordan and said, “How are you feeling about this?”
    “Like I’m in Lower Stoke Boys, about to take on Manchester United.”
    Kate’s quiet laugh was laced with nerves. “Make that both of us. But at least we’ve got people like Raven and Angel on our side.”
    The curtains slid slowly across the massive window, as if possessed by an unseen presence, cutting out daylight and the view