There appears to be some sort of asymmetric warfare going on in Western nations. The aggressors in this war could be anyone from agents of hostile or adversary states, jihadis who have found another method of disrupting our societies less kinetic than suicide bombing, political extremists of either end or nihilists who just want to watch the world burn.

We’ve already seen cyber attacks on food shops that have exploited networked commercial freezers and fridges to set them to defrost mode thereby destroying all that was being stored in them. This has cost companies millions, disturbed a tightly organised chilled and frozen food distribution chain and caused some food availability problems for customers of some European supermarkets.

Recently we had a series of bomb hoaxes aimed at the air travel industry that has resulted in aircraft having to make emergency landings so that the aircraft can be checked over by security forces of the nation where they are forced to land. This has caused delay and disruption to passengers and also I would guess, due to increased security procedures brought in because of the hoaxes, the air freight system that is a lifeline for Europe’s industry and commerce. In none of these incidents was a real bomb found. The threat did all the work as the aviation industry has to treat every threat, even those that might not amount to anything, as if it was credible and that planes had a live bomb on board them.

France has also seen a separate attack on refrigeration and freezing systems at three of their regional blood bank. The French authorities are saying that because of staff vigilance no blood or blood products were lost. The French were lucky this time but they might not get lucky next time. All it takes is for a member of staff, maybe a harassed and busy one, to miss a temperature check on the equipment and disaster might ensue.

I don’t believe that we’ve seen the end of such attacks or actions. I do not condone such disruption but I will say that whoever or whatever are behind these actions can see that making hoax bomb threats to the aviation industry and attacking weakly defended commercial and industrial equipment is having an effect. It’s causing disruption on a scale out of proportion to the effort needed to create such disruption. After all some may think that why go to the effort of making a bomb when a hoax bomb threat will create just as much panic and fear as a real bomb might Why get your political, ideological or religious compatriots to tool up and get out on the streets when a few lines of code can create many more problems for a nation than say a riot would?

In the West we’ve created a complex society relying on complex systems in order to make them work. Industry often relies on ‘just in time’ inventory management practises as does retail and healthcare. Energy distribution both conventional and otherwise depends on vast amounts of data flowing to and fro. This data is used in order that fuel can be delivered to garage forecourts, to those agencies like the NHS or the Emergency Services communications networks that have emergency electricity generating facilities and to run the national electricity grid.

Disrupt these systems and the problems caused to society will be a whole lot greater than the loss of some meat in a supermarket. Shops will not get deliveries of goods, drugs will not arrive at hospitals from remote pharmaceutical suppliers, petrol and diesel supplies will be disrupted as would gas for power generation. If Britain suffers a regional blackout and that is coupled with cyber attacks on essential infrastructure systems then we could all be in a great deal of trouble indeed. Whilst large hospitals have diesel back up generators up to 1 megawatt power output and police radio base stations also have back up diesel or propane power, these generators rely on being able to access fuel constantly if there is no grid power. If Britain has an extended grid outage that cannot be quickly overcome, that is one that is more than 6 days or so and which is caused either through bad planning or adversarial action then if such an outage it is combined with cyber attacks on logistics services then the country is in very deep shit indeed. I doubt whether either the emergency services or the NHS has more than a week’s diesel or propane generating capacity to run their essential systems and if we have a combination of a cyber attack on logistics and blackouts things could collapse very quickly indeed. We’ll probably see what’s left of Britain’s Army having to attempt delivering fuel to essential users and maybe having to fight their way through throngs of angry, hungry, fuel-starved and desperate Britons in order to do so.

We in Britain have built complex but often fragile systems and relied upon them for every need. We rely on them to deliver us the drugs doctors need to cure and keep alive patients, for the food we eat, for the fuel we need to operate businesses and lives. But these systems might be more vulnerable than we might like to think.

I’m not going to speculate as to who what or where is behind the current wave of cyber attacks and disruptive bomb hoaxes but I would suggest that whoever has done them has treated them as ‘feeler’ attacks. Whoever or whatever is behind these incidents has now got a much better idea of the effect of their actions and the responses of various states. The bomb hoaxers now know much more than they did before about the response of various states to these hoaxes and have an extra window into security procedures and responses. The attacks on refrigeration systems has shown that commercial and industrial equipment is vulnerable to disruption and revealed the response of various states and supranational organisations to such disruption.

If I’m correct in my assumption then whoever or whatever is behind these incidents is not going to stop where they are. There’s going to be more disruptive activity from whoever or whatever is behind them and they may move onto many more tests of security along the lines of the bomb hoaxes most likely in my view against transport infrastructure and hack into ever more crucial systems such as retail and logistics. The damage, social, personal and financial that such disruptions will cause is going to be astronomical and at worst possibly put the nation in a potentially difficult to recover from position. In Britain, a place with increasing social and political tensions, all that would be needed to metaphorically toss a lighted match into the powderkeg that the nation has sadly become, would be to cut the power and disrupt retail and logistics and engage in activities that stretch an already poorly resourced emergency services sector. I hope and pray that those who are tasked with keeping power on and the systems running smoothly know what they are damned well doing and are one step ahead of whoever the adversaries are in this situation because if they are not then we are all in a very large amount of trouble.

Links

GB News on blood bank attack

https://www.gbnews.com/news/world/hackers-france-blood-banks-cyberattack-europe

GB News on bomb hoaxes

https://www.gbnews.com/news/world/plane-bomb-threats-emergecy-landings-europe

An example of the sort of generators that are supplied to the National Health Service

https://cps-generators.com/nhs-healthcare-generators/