Betrayed: (A Financial and Conspiracies Thriller – Book 1 in the Legacy Thriller Series) by William Wield
Authors: William Wield
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introduce you.’
‘Okay, fine. Anything else I should know about Athena as we’re on the subject?’
‘Perhaps a quick word about our first priority this weekend’ replied Angus, ‘the demonstration this afternoon.’
‘The demonstration, I’ve heard it mentioned, but what is it exactly?’
‘It’s an important part of Athena’s launch,’ said Angus. ‘To protect the City of London institutions, we need to install our cyber-attack warning system onto the computer systems of any organisation likely to be attacked – Banks in particular. The moment an attack is detected, that warning system triggers a retaliatory counter-attack from Athena and the attackers have their equipment immobilised – effectively made useless. All right so far?’ Kim nodded her head.
‘Unfortunately, a few organisations are refusing to install Athena’s warning software; without it installed there’s nothing to trigger an Athena counter-attack, and they’ll just have to rely on their own defences – and we all know how poor some of those are.’
‘Don’t know where I heard it,’ said Kim, ‘but I thought the aim was to have Athena just about everywhere in the City of London and that it would then be installed progressively throughout the world after that. Wasn’t the idea that hackers would eventually give up attacking financial targets. So, does it give you a problem if some don’t join in?’
‘Afraid it does,’ replied Angus. ‘I just need to complete my uncle’s last project, especially as he sees it as a really worthwhile legacy to the financial world. It would be Sod’s Law if the one bank that hadn’t installed Athena, was the one to be attacked brought down, wouldn’t it?’
‘But why on earth won’t they all install Athena?’
‘Most of them have agreed the installation with their Boards of Directors, but some waverers still talk of Bank of England “intrusion” – bullying them to putting our software onto their systems. They say that they know how to run their businesses, and have perfectly adequate and extremely expensive defences already.’
‘Well, they do have their own defences, don’t they?’
‘Yes, but not counter-attacking defences; I’m trying to fix this problem, however, by putting on the demonstration this afternoon. I’m hoping that it will shock the waverers into changing their minds,’ continued Angus. ‘It’ll show them what a cyber-attack could do to their businesses, how they could lose everything without Athena. It’s being televised on ITV as part of a documentary on the London Stock Exchange. When they see how Athena had achieved the almost impossible feat of hacking into a Hedge Fund who are known to be paranoid about their defences and then altered its secret trading algorithms…’
‘It’s what ?’ interrupted Kim.
‘Its trading algorithms - they’re just software instructions which run their market trades automatically. It means they can do without expensive human traders with their huge bonuses. Anyway, the authorities told us which hedge fund to use for the demonstration, and Perry and the others hacked into it and rewrote a section of their trading programmes. The result of this is that, for just one minute, the company will trade with all its safety restrictions removed, upper and lower trading limits for example; we also switched off the hedging function as well.’
‘You lost me there, what does all that mean, in layman’s language?’ asked Kim,
‘In layman’s language? In effect it will be like a bookie at a race course taking bets on the horses without limiting the size of the bets. Imagine what would happen if he also didn’t bother hedging those bets, that’s to say spreading his risk by laying those bets off and with other bookies?’
‘He’d risk going bankrupt, wouldn’t he?’
‘Exactly that,’ said Angus, ‘so we’re hoping that the waverers will understand that if Athena can hack its way into such a well-protected
‘Okay, fine. Anything else I should know about Athena as we’re on the subject?’
‘Perhaps a quick word about our first priority this weekend’ replied Angus, ‘the demonstration this afternoon.’
‘The demonstration, I’ve heard it mentioned, but what is it exactly?’
‘It’s an important part of Athena’s launch,’ said Angus. ‘To protect the City of London institutions, we need to install our cyber-attack warning system onto the computer systems of any organisation likely to be attacked – Banks in particular. The moment an attack is detected, that warning system triggers a retaliatory counter-attack from Athena and the attackers have their equipment immobilised – effectively made useless. All right so far?’ Kim nodded her head.
‘Unfortunately, a few organisations are refusing to install Athena’s warning software; without it installed there’s nothing to trigger an Athena counter-attack, and they’ll just have to rely on their own defences – and we all know how poor some of those are.’
‘Don’t know where I heard it,’ said Kim, ‘but I thought the aim was to have Athena just about everywhere in the City of London and that it would then be installed progressively throughout the world after that. Wasn’t the idea that hackers would eventually give up attacking financial targets. So, does it give you a problem if some don’t join in?’
‘Afraid it does,’ replied Angus. ‘I just need to complete my uncle’s last project, especially as he sees it as a really worthwhile legacy to the financial world. It would be Sod’s Law if the one bank that hadn’t installed Athena, was the one to be attacked brought down, wouldn’t it?’
‘But why on earth won’t they all install Athena?’
‘Most of them have agreed the installation with their Boards of Directors, but some waverers still talk of Bank of England “intrusion” – bullying them to putting our software onto their systems. They say that they know how to run their businesses, and have perfectly adequate and extremely expensive defences already.’
‘Well, they do have their own defences, don’t they?’
‘Yes, but not counter-attacking defences; I’m trying to fix this problem, however, by putting on the demonstration this afternoon. I’m hoping that it will shock the waverers into changing their minds,’ continued Angus. ‘It’ll show them what a cyber-attack could do to their businesses, how they could lose everything without Athena. It’s being televised on ITV as part of a documentary on the London Stock Exchange. When they see how Athena had achieved the almost impossible feat of hacking into a Hedge Fund who are known to be paranoid about their defences and then altered its secret trading algorithms…’
‘It’s what ?’ interrupted Kim.
‘Its trading algorithms - they’re just software instructions which run their market trades automatically. It means they can do without expensive human traders with their huge bonuses. Anyway, the authorities told us which hedge fund to use for the demonstration, and Perry and the others hacked into it and rewrote a section of their trading programmes. The result of this is that, for just one minute, the company will trade with all its safety restrictions removed, upper and lower trading limits for example; we also switched off the hedging function as well.’
‘You lost me there, what does all that mean, in layman’s language?’ asked Kim,
‘In layman’s language? In effect it will be like a bookie at a race course taking bets on the horses without limiting the size of the bets. Imagine what would happen if he also didn’t bother hedging those bets, that’s to say spreading his risk by laying those bets off and with other bookies?’
‘He’d risk going bankrupt, wouldn’t he?’
‘Exactly that,’ said Angus, ‘so we’re hoping that the waverers will understand that if Athena can hack its way into such a well-protected
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