British forces practise cyber attack big enough to black out Moscow

BRITISH forces taking part in war games have practised carrying out a huge cyber- strike to black out Moscow – in revenge for any future online attacks by Russia, it emerged yesterday.

Whitehall officials want to develop the capability to ‘turn out the lights’ in the Kremlin with cyber experts hacking into power plants from thousands of miles away.

It is understood defence chiefs have rehearsed the scenario amid heightened tensions with Russian leader Vladimir Putin in the wake of the Salisbury poisoning plot, which almost killed a former double agent and his daughter.

Sources stressed that troops have not gone as far as actually trying to hack into Russian power plants. It came as culture secretary Jeremy Wright yesterday said British spies and troops have already thwarted a number of cyber attacks on the UK by Russia – but would not give further details.

The war gaming was carried out as military chiefs concluded that the only other way of hitting back would be to use nuclear weapons.

Senior security sources fear that successive cuts have left the Ministry of Defence with too few other weapons to meet Kremlin aggression short of firing a Trident nuclear missile.

It was claimed yesterday that the exercises had left officials ‘ashen-faced’ at the speed with which confrontation with Moscow could escalate. One senior source told the Sunday Times: ‘Russia will continue to try to undermine our western democracy. They won’t probably go to conventional war, but there are islands off Estonia they could take to test Nato’s commitment to article 5 [an attack against one ally is considered as an attack against all allies].

‘This is why cyber is so important – you can go on the offensive and turn off the lights in Moscow to tell them that they are not doing the right things.’

A cyber strike could be used if forces attacked UK troops or threatened Britain’s new aircraft carrier. It may also be unleashed if Moscow attempted to intervene in Libya to gain control of oil reserves and create a new migration crisis in Europe. Tensions are at boiling point between the UK and Russia after the use of a nerve agent on British soil.

Last week British and Dutch spies exposed an operation by the GRU, Russian military intelligence, to disrupt an investigation of the assassination plot against Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury.

The identity of a second suspect in the attack will be revealed in the Houses of Parliament next week. Spies have been developing a ‘cyber deterrent’ for at least a year. Russian hackers have previously tried to attack Britain’s national grid and telecoms companies such as BT.

Meanwhile, military chiefs from Britain and the US fear Putin is prepared to target vital undersea cables across the Atlantic.

The allies have stepped up their monitoring of Russian submarines between the two countries.

Undersea communication cables carry nearly all of the world’s internet traffic and severing them could cause financial chaos.

Experts say Russian submarine activity in the North Atlantic has reached a 25-year high.

RUSSIAN hackers tried to steal the card details of consumers who purchased items on Cancer Research UK’s charity online gift shop, it emerged yesterday.

They planted malicious code into the website to siphon off card information but were not successful, the Sunday Telegraph reported.

The hack attack in June 2016 was blamed on Magecart, an anonymous group of cyber criminals.

‘Turn out the Kremlin lights’