Recent chaos on the railways was just down to comforting old bumbling British inefficiency and nothing to do with Russian cyber attacks, according to a government spokesman.
‘It’s definitely not a cyberattack by a hostile foreign state. We are so well-prepared for that, it’s not true. Definitely. Not true.
‘Investigations are underway. We expect the problem is down to some agency staff member in IT who missed out a minus sign. Or spilt their tea on the server. Or forgot to do the back-up. Or somebody cut through a critical power line. Or something overheated. Or because key software is running on Windows 3.1, or a ZX81 or something. But not a Russian hack. Definitely.
‘I must protest about the media frenzy that claims this is down to foreign hackers. There’s an effing D notice on that, for god’s sake. It’s just an ordinary, boring, every day cock-up. All those ThikTok people are trying to whip up another stupid QAnon/AlAnon/OnAnOn conspiracy theory. It’s all TikTokTosh. NOT A HACK. Got that?’
We approached Great British Railways for a comment, but their phones were down.