Blastered and Blacked Out; Reality Mirrors Fiction in New Novel, No Outward Sign

McLEAN,VA: “Is this [blackout] your publicity stunt?” a caller asked. “This is your book.”

Bill Neugent has no evidence his publicist was behind the Blaster worm and the Northeast blackout. Nevertheless, this week reality mirrored his fiction.

His novel (NO OUTWARD SIGN, Writers Club Press) is about a cyberterrorist attack on America and features a worm and attacks on the Northeast power grid. The story resonates with this week’s reality.

Take the Blaster worm that subverted hundreds of thousands of PCs. Press coverage stressed the damage caused, but the real story is the damage prevented by the worm. Many hackers had been working frantically and stealthily to exploit the Windows vulnerabilities. They had captured thousands of systems, which can be used to hide porn, pirated music, and attack software or to launch attacks. The worm put an end to the hacker feast and saved many systems. It also greatly reduced the damage that would result from a truly malicious worm with a destructive payload. Was the hacker who released Blaster an adversary or an ally using unconventional methods?

The blackout shut down airports and nuclear power plants. People were stuck in subways. The story dominated the front page of The Washington Post (15 August). “Authorities quickly dismissed the possibility that terrorists were to blame for the outage...” cited the lead article, while another noted that “The cause of the disruption...remained a mystery.”

“These officials think of terrorists as bombers,” Neugent said, “but cyberterrorism leaves no outward sign. A group that could cause such disruption might not leave footprints.” Neugent, a cybersecurity expert and speaker on cyberterrorism, is the chief engineer for cybersecurity at MITRE, a not-for-profit firm that advises the government.

Blaster and the blackout show the fragile foundation that underlies modern society. “Our best defense has been the fact that, to adversaries, our networks usually are worth more up than down,” Neugent added. “Even terrorists make extensive use of the Internet for credit card fraud, identity theft, recruiting, and coordination. The danger is that this public display of weakness will embolden that small number of adversaries who have nothing to lose.”

TaleCatcher™ at http://www.talecatcher.com is the company of Bill Neugent, author of NO OUTWARD SIGN. Buy the book at: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0595257496

Updated: 20-Oct-2005