It's True! Your Cat Could Be a Spy Read online

  Intelligence official.

  The man in the grey suit read from his files.

  ‘Dusko Popov is a Yugoslav businessman,’ he

  said. ‘He likes wine and women and fast cars.

  The Germans wanted him to be a spy

  for them. He accepted. Then

  he came to us and offered to be

  a double agent. He could bring in a lot

  of valuable information.’

  ‘Then let’s accept his offer,’ said the

  official, whose name was Ian Fleming.

  After the war, Fleming wrote a series of thrilling

  adventures about a secret agent named James

  Bond, which later became hugely successful films.

  It’s possible that James Bond was inspired by the

  agent Dusko Popov. Popov was very good at spying

  and information-gathering. It’s a pity the Americans

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  didn’t listen to his warning that the Japanese were

  planning to bomb Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, where there

  were many US warships and planes. The course of

  World War II would have been very different if the US

  Pacific Fleet hadn’t been attacked on 7 December 1941.

  Immediately after the attack the US, which had been

  neutral, decided to join the Allies in the war against

  Japan and Germany.

  8

  CYBER-SPYING

  The heads of spy agencies around the world must

  have been thrilled when computers were invented.

  For centuries, they’d had to get their information the

  hard way – by getting people to break in, pay bribes

  and copy secret documents or smuggle them out.

  Now with computers, and computer networks, they

  could . . . well . . . get people to burgle, bribe and make copies. But the spies didn’t

  have to leave home to do it.

  No more running the risk

  of being taken prisoner or

  being forced to say

  who’d sent them.

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  All they needed now was a computer, a phone line

  and a lot of talent. The age of the computer hacker

  had arrived.

  SO, WHAT DOES A HACKER DO?

  Think of a hacker as a

  sort of burglar who sits

  at home, breaks into

  other people’s

  computers,

  and helps

  himself to

  information. If the computers have

  been networked (linked together), the hacker can poke

  around in all the computers in the network, or even

  sabotage the system. Hackers can also use viruses to

  infiltrate networks all over the world.

  Most hackers are computer nerds who like to show

  off their skills. Sometimes they are just thieves, out to steal money from bank accounts, or to steal secrets for

  a competing business. And then there are the spies . . .

  69

  THE ‘HANOVER HACKER’

  In 1986, Clifford Stoll had a job programming

  computers at a university laboratory in Berkeley,

  California. In those days the Internet existed, but only a few people used it for business. Personal computers

  were not as common as they are now, but universities,

  governments and businesses were starting to use

  networks. Computer users had passwords, but didn’t

  yet understand how important it was to be careful

  with them.

  One day, Cliff was asked to fix a small problem.

  The lab kept track of how much time and money was

  spent on computer use. Each time someone logged into

  the network, the cost was registered by an accounting

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  program. A bill was 75 cents more than it should have

  been. Cliff expected to fix the problem very quickly.

  Then he realised there was something strange

  about this ‘mistake’. He tracked the 75 cents to a user

  whose log-in name was ‘Hunter’, but ‘Hunter’ wasn’t

  on the lab’s official list. Checking further, he found

  that ‘Hunter’ had been using the log-in account of a

  worker who was overseas and hadn’t used the account

  in a year. The intruder had used the account to give

  himself ‘system manager’ privileges, which meant he

  could not only look around the computer network

  for information, but could

  make changes.

  ‘Hunter’ was definitely a

  hacker at work.

  TRACK THE

  HACKER

  For months, Cliff Stoll made a note of every ‘visit’.

  He printed out everything the hacker typed into

  the network, and even set his pocket pager to beep

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  whenever the hacker was on-line. The hacker turned

  up at all sorts of strange times, so sometimes Cliff

  slept under his desk at the lab, much to his girlfriend’s annoyance!

  It would have been easy for Cliff to block the

  network against the intruder, but Cliff wasn’t satisfied with that. If the hacker was blocked at the Berkeley lab, he’d find another entry point to the network, and then

  nobody would be able to track him. Cliff also knew

  that the hacker was using the Berkeley computers to

  get into other networks, including medical computers.

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  He could mess up records, and sick people’s lives might be at risk if he wasn’t stopped.

  When he found out that the hacker was after

  military secrets, Cliff warned the FBI and CIA,

  America’s two intelligence agencies. But neither was

  very alarmed. If no money was involved (except the

  75 cents) and no actual damage had been done, then

  they didn’t see it as their problem. Even the police

  weren’t interested.

  Eventually, with help from other computer experts,

  Cliff discovered that the phone calls connecting the

  hacker to the computer networks were coming from

  outside the US, from Hanover in West Germany.

  Now the CIA and FBI were interested. But they insisted on doing their own investigations and wouldn’t tell

  Cliff what was happening.

  Frustrated, Cliff continued on his own. Then his

  girlfriend, Martha, had a great idea: since the hacker

  wanted military secrets, why not give him false ones?

  They set up a phoney military program called SDINET

  and invented a secretary who sent and received letters

  and documents with tempting military names for the

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  program. The ‘secretary’ invited official users to write to her and ask for copies.

  Only a system manager could access SDINET, but

  ordinary system managers wouldn’t be interested in

  military secrets. If anyone wrote, it would have to be the hacker. Cliff and Martha waited . . . would their

  trap work?

  Someone did reply! But the letter for documents

  came from an American address, not from Germany.

  Cliff contacted the CIA once more and got results.

  Caught!

  The hacker turned out to be a man called Markus

  Hess, one of a group who had been selling their stolen

  secrets to the KGB (the spy agency

  of the Soviet Union). The KGB

  had asked a man working for

  them in the US to send the letter,

  to make sure if SDINET was real.

  Markus and his hacker mates

  w
ere sentenced to two years

  in prison, and Cliff wrote a

  best-selling book about it all.

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  This happened in the days when hackers and viruses

  were rare. Now the Internet is used all around the

  world. We often hear about a new virus, or someone

  caught hacking into banking or military networks

  across the world. And spy hackers are probably out

  there snooping for secrets . . . The Internet has become a hacker heaven.

  75

  9

  SHORT NINJA,

  TALL TALES

  Silent, mysterious, fast-moving figures

  in black . . . leaping over rooftops and

  running up walls, a sword at your throat in

  an instant . . . They disappear into the shadows

  unnoticed and overhear whispered secrets.

  They are the ninja – warriors, spies and assassins of

  Japan. Today, ninja arts (ninjutsu) are practised

  by people who certainly don’t lurk in the

  shadows, kill or spy on enemies. ‘Ninja’

  comes from Japanese words shinobi-no-mono,

  meaning ‘a person who hides his presence’.

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  Extraordinary stories were told about the ninja.

  People thought they had supernatural powers, but they

  were just very, very good at what they did. The ninja

  probably encouraged the stories to make

  their enemies more afraid.

  In one story, a dwarf ninja

  supposedly hid in the pit under an

  enemy lord’s toilet and stabbed him

  when he went to relieve himself!

  Probably the lord died of a stroke,

  but it’s easy to see how a

  story like this would spread.

  And it’s only one of many tall

  tales about what these skilled

  fighters and spies could do.

  Japanese warriors, the samurai, had a strict code

  of honour. Honour was challenging your enemy and

  fighting man-to-man in the open. Ninja behaviour

  was the opposite. Ninja used ambushes and surprise

  attacks, and often travelled in disguise. No wonder

  the samurai thought ninja dishonourable. They were

  tortured to death if they were caught.

  77

  Some Japanese warlords trained their own people as

  spies. Others hired ninja. After all, ninja were experts.

  If you were trapped in a fortress with enemies outside,

  you’d be glad to have ninja warriors with you, because

  they could escape. There’s a story of one besieged

  castle, and in the night a ninja slipped out into the

  enemy camp, stole their flag, then flew it from the

  castle the next day to mock them.

  STRAW DUMMIES AND

  NIGHTINGALE FLOORS

  Ninjutsu was a family thing.

  Young ninja would be trained

  from childhood in the

  different techniques of fighting,

  running, hiding,

  swimming and so on. They spent

  a lifetime perfecting their skills.

  No wonder the lords of

  warring clans took so much

  trouble to protect themselves!

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  In their castles they had traps, including squeaky

  floors called nightingale floors because they ‘sang’

  when someone stepped on them. The night guards

  would be on the scene immediately if they had

  unwelcome company.

  Ninja were expert at disguise and did their

  homework. A ninja dressed as a farmer or priest would

  certainly know about farming or the priesthood, so

  his disguise would be convincing. He’d also be able to

  speak in different local accents to fool ferrymen when

  crossing rivers. Some ninja lived and worked inside

  an enemy fortress, but they were really ‘sleeper agents’

  who were called on when needed.

  79

  Ninja history goes back a long way. In the 1400s,

  there were around 70 ninja clans on the main Japanese

  island, Honshu. Ninja specialised in espionage.

  Their leaders were called jonin. The ‘middle men’ who arranged jobs with the lords were called the chunin.

  The fighters were known as the genin. They did the spying and fighting, and often didn’t know who their

  boss was.

  Some ninja clans worked for just one noble family.

  The most famous ninja leader, Fuma Kotaro Nobuyuki,

  served a family called the Hojo, as his ancestors had.

  He led about 200 ninja who fought, spied and gathered

  information for the Hojo. Fuma Kotaro Nobuyuki’s

  most famous action was a night attack on enemy

  forces, the Takeda. He had his men fake an attack, using horses with straw dummies as warriors. Meanwhile,

  the ninja smuggled themselves into the enemy camp,

  hiding along the sides of stolen Takeda horses. Then

  they attacked. In the darkness and confusion, the

  Takeda were killing each other instead of the Fuma.

  This was the ninja way of doing things. Not

  ‘honourable’, but intelligent!

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  NINJA FACTS AND FICTION

  Some people say the ninja

  * wear black costumes

  * throw star-shaped metal knives

  * can walk through walls or ‘shape-shift’

  * can become invisible

  * can fly

  * come back as ghosts.

  Are these things true?

  Well, there is a ninja uniform, trousers and hood in black, brown or dark blue, to help hide at night (or

  white in snowy weather), but they didn’t wear it while

  they were spying. Imagine a spy walking into an enemy

  stronghold in uniform! Mostly, ninja wore whatever

  was useful, including chain mail when they fought.

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  The star-knives,

  shuriken, were used to

  help ninja escape when

  they were being chased.

  They weren’t always

  accurate, but were

  useful to scare and delay the

  pursuer. Ninja carried other

  weapons to use in fights, such as

  knives and swords.

  They couldn’t walk through

  walls, of course. In Japanese

  houses, which had lots

  of gaps and crawl-spaces,

  someone who knows the art of movement, and how

  to blend in with the landscape, can seem invisible.

  They couldn’t fly, either, but they were great acrobats.

  One ninja is supposed to have faked

  his own death so he could pretend to

  be a ghost. If people believe

  you’re superhuman, they

  might well believe you’re a ghost too!

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  Jiro’s justice!

  There’s a story about Jiro, a young boy whose ninja

  father was killed by the Lord of Kuwana. Jiro was

  determined to avenge his father’s death. First he made

  friends with the lord’s son and went inside the house.

  One day, Jiro hid in an old well and the lord’s son

  thought he’d gone home. That night, Jiro climbed into

  the roof and drilled a hole into the

  ceiling above the Lord of Kuwana.

  He lowered a silken thread through

  the hole, and he dripped poison

  down the thread – right

  into the snoring mouth

  of
the lord! He went

  home, leaving Kuwana

  to die.

  Kings, queens and emperors have always had spies.

  Today governments have intelligence agencies and big

  businesses steal information from each other. As long

  as people have secrets, there will be spies . . .

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  S U E B U R S Z T Y N S K I saw her first spy

  movie when she was eight. There was a family

  rumour that her cousin had worked for military

  intelligence, but Sue didn’t follow in his footsteps.

  Instead she writes books about monsters,

  astronauts, archaeology, women scientists,

  wheels, and fiction books too. She works in a

  school library and might be spotted at science

  fiction conventions. Sue doesn’t have a cat.

  M I t c h V a n e Code-nAMe: The Squid,

  becAuse of her use of black ink in many of her

  illustrations. Specialises in identikit Pictures,

  forgerY, and secret codes.

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  THANKS

  I would like to thank Nikki White for advice on ninja, Bart Rutherford O’Connor for help on hackers, Anne Watling for checking the text, Gary Pearl, Joanne Davis, Fiona Ellem and the students of Gandel Besen House, Dandenong West Primary School and Charleville State School.

  Sue Bursztynski

  The publishers would like to thank the following for

  photographs used through the book:

  istockphoto.com and photographers: Stefan Klein (torn paper, photo frames and folder used throughout text), pages viii, 37 Edyta Pawlowska (magnifying glass), pages i, 51 James Hernandez (paw prints), page viii Sue Colvil (Roman soldier), page 5 Maartje van Caspel (notebook computer), page 20 Dan Brandenburg (soldiers), page 28 Greg Nicholas (negative strip), page 34 George Cairns (meeting place), page 40 Clayton Hansen (dynamite), page 40 Kelly Resener (rat), page 57 Duncan Walker (mysterious man), pages 40, 74 Greg Nicholas (photo frame), page 74 Sean Locke (handcuffed man), page 82 José Manuel Ferrão (ninja), page 82 Slavolijub Pantelic (shuriken), page 83

  Bryce Knoll (notepaper), page 86 Gergely Bényi (binoculars); the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division for photographs on: page 16 Harriet Tubman [LC-USZ62-7816],

  page 23 Belle Boyd [LC-DIG-cwpbh-01991], page 28 Morse code operators [LC-USW3-035513-D], [LC-USW3-035512-D], page

  36 World War II poster [LC-USZC4-2793]; and the National Security Agency, USA for the photographs on page 41 US seal, and page 48 the Enigma, the computer Bombe.