Ken Hyder

Hack Attack is a 21st century fast-moving thriller exploding in a massive global cyber-terrorism meltdown.
Set in the period before the Snowden NSA revelations showed just how much state-hacking was going on, the book illustrates how criminal hackers can also hold countries to ransom.
In Siberia, Kolya hacks an American oil company for revenge. They bought up a whole engineering institute in the science-city of Akademgorodok, plundered the existing research, then sacked everybody – including his father.
In Kent, Adrian, the son of a top career-criminal has been trying his hand at being a junior hacker. He comes across a team of slightly older, more experienced hackers, and with his father’s encouragement, he approaches them. He suggests a partnership where his family selects targets for cyber-extortion and launders the money and the Guildford-based team of hackers does the intrusions.
They successfully hack banks and other big financial institutions who pay up large sums to stop them destroying their systems and making clients’ data public.
After a string of successes, they decide to lie low for a while. Then an item appears in a hackers’ chat room. An organisation is looking for top-rate hackers to do a job.
Kolya replies because he wants money to set himself up in business and to provide a good home for his girlfriend who wants to leave Siberia – which he loves – for the bright lights of Moscow. And the Guildford team reply because they are bored with the lay-off and want some more excitement.
The organisation – everybody is hidden behind anonymised email addresses – appears to be a terrorist group. They want freelance hackers to attack the US infrastructure, taking out air-traffic control, electricity and communications.
The hack-attack begins, and large parts of the US are brought to a standstill. Meltdown.
After September 11 2001, the US is panicking. The attacks keep coming and eventually the US asks MI5 for help. Their expert is a Scottish cyber-security consultant, Norrie MacGregor.
Can one man stop the attacks and track down the hackers and uncover their paymasters?
But what Norrie discovers is unexpected – and for some governments, inconvenient.