‘Plenty of time for all that, Dad,’ she said through a mouthful of food. ‘I’m only twenty and I have cyberspace at my feet. Once I’ve conquered that, I’ll explore the real world.’
Her mother laughed, tilting her head back as she did so. The sound had a purity about it that made her look even more beautiful. Shireen caught her father looking over, smiling. It was clear in his eyes just how deeply he still loved his wife. Her mother turned to her. ‘If this were twenty years ago we’d have been looking for a husband for you by now,’ she joked.
For all their middle-class, left-leaning liberal secularism, her parents still identified with their Muslim culture. Shireen found this poignant and somehow comforting. Persians were stubbornly proud of their rich history, sometimes infuriatingly so. But then they did have five thousand years of history to call upon. Anyway, Shireen had not found the right time to tell them that they should give up any hope of having a son-in-law. One day, Iran would truly catch up with the rest of the twenty-first century and then her parents might get themselves a daughter-in-law.
‘If it’s OK with you, I’d like to pop out later. I need to talk to Majid about a coursework assignment for next week.’ The part about meeting Majid, at least, was true.
‘What time is your first lecture tomorrow?’ her father asked. ‘It’d do you good to have an early night for a change.’
‘I don’t have a class until my advanced algorithms at eleven.’ The new maglev meant her daily commute from Ray on the outskirts of Tehran to the campus in the centre of the city took less than twenty minutes. She could afford a lie-in tomorrow.
She saw her parents exchange exasperated looks and decided it was best to change the subject. For the rest of the meal they discussed the growing concerns about the threat from the Sun and whether governments were keeping any information back.
After dinner, Shireen helped her mother carry the dishes through to the kitchen, stepping over the cleaner bots heading in the opposite direction to suck up any stray grains of rice on the floor underneath the table. Her mother could see she was eager to escape and waved her away. ‘Go, go. Say hello to Majid for us.’
Majid had been Shireen’s friend since childhood, and since they were now both studying on the same course, he was one of the very few people – no, wait, scratch that: the only person – whom she could trust entirely. And even then, she didn’t feel able to share her latest project with him completely – mostly for his own safety. Plus, he’d probably tell her not to be so foolish. So, she would have to be careful how she elicited his help. Majid didn’t have her intuitive feel for navigating through the dark web, nor her brilliance in quantum information theory. He certainly lacked her sixth sense when it came to knowing how to probe for weaknesses in multi-layered encrypted data.
It was a clear, chilly evening when she left the house. She felt a thrill at the thought of how close she was getting to a real breakthrough. Her small car was parked in the drive. She jumped in and voice-activated the destination. ‘Majid’s house’ was all it needed to know. Slumped back in her seat while it reversed itself onto the road, she wondered how much she could confide in Majid.
The car weaved its way silently and unerringly through the early-evening Tehran traffic and Shireen stared out of the window, impatient to get to her friend’s apartment, not taking much notice of the familiar sights and sounds of the city rushing by outside. Soon, the car turned off the highway and travelled along quieter tree-lined avenues. Shireen ran through in her head how she should tackle Majid without alarming him, or insulting him. It wasn’t his views or advice that she was interested in eliciting, but the use of the quantum computer he had recently acquired – or rather that his father had bought for him. Strictly speaking, she didn’t actually need a quantum computer to hack into a quantum key distribution repeater system, but the firewalls around it were impregnable. There was no way they could be watching her watching them – whoever ‘they’ might be.
She felt confident that running her algorithm on his machine would be the final phase, when she would at last gain access to files that had been better protected than anything she had encountered before. She still had no idea what those files contained, but the way they had been encrypted and hidden bore all the hallmarks of ultra-sensitive government secrets, probably Chinese in origin – red rag to a bull for any self-respecting cyb. Now, after months of effort, she was approaching the endgame, even though she hadn’t given any thought to what she would do with the information once she had it.
For Shireen, being a cyb was more than a hobby. She sometimes tried to convince herself that hacking was just an intellectual challenge, like solving a maths problem or completing a tough jigsaw puzzle. But the truth was that she was addicted to it – her desire to break an unbreakable code was no different to the obsession of an old-fashioned safe-cracker. And the dangers of getting caught were just as real.
With her thoughts already on abstract lines of coding, Shireen watched the world go by – couples wrapped up against the chilly evening air, out for an after-dinner stroll, and late office workers eager to get home after a long day, overtaken by joggers in colourful kit preferring the fresh evening air to their virtual-reality treadmills.
She didn’t ping Majid until her car pulled up outside his apartment. That way he couldn’t make any excuses about wanting an early night or being too busy.
‘Hey, Hajji. I’m outside. Can I pop up for an hour? I need the use of your new toy … and you know how you just live to make me happy.’ ‘Hajji’ was her term of endearment for her friend, who had been on a pilgrimage to Mecca with his grandfather when he was ten. He hated the nickname, which was why Shireen enjoyed using it.
‘Yeah, OK. But not for long. I’ve got a class in the morning.’ She heard the sigh of resignation in his voice. He buzzed her in. ‘Thanks. I promise I won’t outstay my welcome.’
When Shireen got to his floor, the door was already open. She breezed into the apartment to find her friend standing in the hallway. He had a slight frame and was no taller than Shireen. His carefully barbered goatee beard, which he was convinced added gravitas and compensated for what he lacked in physical stature, was a source of constant teasing by Shireen.
She gave him a tight hug. ‘And don’t you dare give me that “class in the morning” shit. You forget: I know our timetable.’
‘Whatever. I could still do with an early night. What was it you wanted? Don’t tell me it’s to do with your Trojan horse attack algorithm, whatever the hell that is, because if it is, I really don’t think I can help much.’
Shireen gave him a wink. ‘Don’t worry, it’s not your acute intellectual powers I need right now; it’s your hardware.’ Majid’s recently acquired solid-state giga-qubit quantum computer – a matt-black cube the size of a shoebox that now had pride of place in the middle of his desk by the large window overlooking the street – had, in theory at least, the processing capacity of a human brain, but until someone figured out how to write the software to get it to think for itself it was still just a dumb machine.
Majid’s apartment unashamedly betrayed his family’s wealth. It was an interesting mix of old and new, decorated with luxurious drapes and classic, almost gaudy furnishing. But to the expert eye, the trappings of mid-century technology were integrated everywhere, with sensors and microchips in every appliance and fixture, communicating with each other and ready to adjust or go into action on command. Shireen often joked that a man who even needed his socks to have their own IP address, so they could remind him when they needed washing, wouldn’t last five minutes in a post-apocalyptic world. ‘And don’t expect me to be there to help you survive,’ she would say. ‘You know you’d only slow me down.’
Majid went over to his desk and placed the ball of his thumb on its black glass surface. There was a hum and ripple of light as a keyboard and colourful array of function keys appeared. Shireen stood behind him, rested her chin on his shoulder and murmured in his ear. ‘Thank you, Hajji.’
Majid looked like he had resigned himself to letting her do whatever she needed to because he walked away from the desk in silence and collapsed onto the sofa to watch. But no sooner had he sat down than he bounced back up again and said, ‘OK, before you get too lost in code, would you like me to order pizza?’
‘No thanks, I’ve eaten,’ she replied without even turning to him. ‘But you go ahead. I’m hoping this won’t take too long anyway.’ Her fingers darted around the smooth surface as she tapped the keys, then she spoke a few commands into her wristpad to allow the computer to identify her. When she was satisfied she was connected, she wandered over to a chair, picked up the hololens visor and haptic gloves she’d brought with her and put them on. Sitting down, she tucked her feet underneath her body like a meditating Buddha.
After the briefest of pauses while the computer connected with the new hardware, her vision was filled with a glowing display screen and her retinal AR was relegated to a tiny icon in the bottom left corner. Using her gloved hands to control the display, she quickly accessed her files and, within seconds, was floating in the reassuringly familiar three-dimensional virtual reality of her dark-web space.
Right then, this is it. She felt a surge of adrenalin as she contemplated what she was about to do. As she always did when she was concentrating, she began to talk through the steps she needed to follow, providing herself with a running commentary as she worked.
‘You’re mumbling again,’ she heard Majid say.
‘Hmm?’ She was no longer really paying attention to the real world outside.
‘I said you’re doing that thing again … you know, where you talk to yourself.’
Then, after a brief pause, he added, ‘Reenie, I don’t need to know what you’re up to, but can I just check that whatever it is won’t be traced back here?’
It hadn’t occurred to her just how much she was asking of her best friend, but something in his voice betrayed his nervousness and she suddenly realized that she wasn’t the only one taking a risk. Of course, she would make sure all traces of having used Majid’s computer would be thoroughly erased, but maybe she did owe him some explanation.
Her concentration broken, she paused to think about what she should do. How much could she afford to tell him? Wasn’t it more sensible, and safe, to keep him as much in the dark as possible? No, that wasn’t fair.
She tried to push away what she realized were her true motives for revealing what she was doing to Majid. If she was honest, it was really more about her. Opening up would be a mixture of a boast and a confession.
She felt full of nervous energy at the prospect of sharing her ideas with another person, even though she guessed he would struggle to follow all the details. She took off her visor, untucked her legs again and turned to face him. He was staring at her like an affectionate puppy. Under all her bravado and tattoos, Shireen was well aware, because she had been told so on many occasions, that she was elfishly attractive; and she also knew that Majid had feelings for her that went beyond friendship. But they had an understanding, and he knew those feelings would never be reciprocated.
‘OK, Majid, I’m going to let you in on my little project.’ She pulled off her gloves to signal that she was going to devote all her attention to him for the next few minutes. ‘You know I’ve been trying for ages to find a way through those new encryption protocols I told you about?’
‘Yes, but just last week you said—’
‘I know …’ interrupted Shireen eagerly. ‘Last week I said that was impossible, right? Because the Chinese had increased the number of their Sentinels protecting the repeater stations.’ She knew that Majid was familiar with the basic science, but unlike her he was less than comfortable with the whole subject of quantum key distribution. He sometimes confessed to her that he should never have chosen computer science as his major at university. Why couldn’t he just have opted for a simpler subject – basically anything that didn’t involve the counterintuitive ideas of quantum physics.
‘Well, that was last week. I think I may have found a back door,’ Shireen continued. ‘There’s been some rather busy traffic recently between the Chinese authorities and other governments, and all the communications have been locked with unusually high levels of encryption, so I’m pretty sure there’s something big going down that is being kept very hush-hush.’
‘“Something big”?’ Majid almost shouted. ‘Are we talking international espionage? Or just your crazy conspiracy theory shit?’ He chewed his top lip and ran both hands over the back of his shaven head. Two years ago, they had both been arrested during the student anti-corruption riots. Luckily his father had sufficient influence to get the charges against them dropped. But the incident meant they had needed to be more careful. Shireen tried to reassure her friend. ‘Don’t look so worried. You know that I know what I’m doing, right?’
‘I know you think you know what you’re doing. And OK, I don’t know any cyb smarter than you. But how can you be so sure you’re not biting off more than you can chew this time?’
‘Because …’ Shireen jumped out of her chair with renewed excitement and onto the sofa next to Majid. ‘Because … I think I’ve found two weaknesses. The first, which I’ve suspected for a while, is a vulnerability in the repeater control system that allows me to hack in to it. The second – and this really is quite beautiful – is a weakness in the cloning algorithm in the repeater, which means I can make a copy of the quantum key without it affecting what’s sent on to the genuine recipient.’
Majid was gaping at her.
‘All I need is for a window to open up for a few seconds. I can get in, copy the key and get the hell out again.’ She sat back and looked at Majid’s reaction, then looked over at the black box on his desk containing the quantum computer. ‘And that’s why I need your new toy.’
However, Majid looked anything but reassured. He leaned forward and grabbed her by the shoulders. For a brief moment she wondered whether he was going to try and shake some sense into her. Instead, he said, ‘But the whole point of quantum key distribution is that you can’t eavesdrop without giving yourself away! I may not be as smart as you, Reenie, but I know enough from my quantum cryptography classes that this is the whole fucking point of the system. Any attempt to break the code disturbs the delicate quantum entangled state and sends an alert to the source, which then immediately switches to a different encryption key. Wasn’t that the subject of last week’s lecture – something about the Ekert 91 protocol?’
Shireen grinned, suddenly feeling even more pleased with herself. ‘I know, foolproof, right? And you know as well as I do that every cyb in the world is looking for new attack strategies that target vulnerabilities in the system. And if you ask any of them they’ll tell you that the obvious man-in-the-middle attacks and the photon number splitting attacks don’t work. In fact, government and corporation sites don’t even bother following up on these cyber alerts any more. And that’s the beauty of it; they’re so cocksure their encryptions can’t be broken that no one is watching me.’
‘And that’s what you think you’ve done, is it? You’ve found a way of getting hold of a quantum encryption key without detection … a window where the laws of physics are no longer in control?’ Majid’s curiosity had now seemingly got the better of his nerves. He leapt to his feet and paced around the room. ‘OK, how?’
‘This, my dear Hajji, is why I will one day rule the world, while you will simply exist to wait on me hand and foot and serve me bastani and faloodeh until I get so big I explode. You see, I’ve found the one weakness in the system that plays them at their own quantum game: my very own Trojan horse code. It’s so quiet, so imperceptible, that no one will ever know I’ve been snooping.’
‘OK, your majesty,’ he said, placing both hands on his chest and bowing, ‘but … surely if—’
Shireen interrupted him, realizing she would have to try harder to explain. ‘OK, listen. Quantum Information Theory one-oh-one – well, more correctl
y, basic communications engineering – says it’s not possible to completely eliminate errors in electronic communications because of factors like noise and signal degradation, right? Well, early quantum encryption systems allowed for key exchanges where the error rate could be as high as twenty per cent. They felt that was acceptable since any eavesdropper would be too loud and clumsy and so give themselves away. But then ten years ago those new phase-remapping “intercept and resend” attacks meant things had to tighten up.’
‘OK, please stop patronizing me, Shireen.’ She could tell by the impatient look on his face that he still hadn’t heard anything he didn’t know already. ‘I know that when cyberattacks suddenly grew a few years ago it was because eavesdroppers got so good they could intercept a tiny fraction of the signal sent during a quantum key exchange while never pushing the error rate over the twenty per cent threshold. So, their attacks were hidden in the noise. But once the authorities discovered this, they worked to bring that error threshold down.’ He then added for good measure, ‘Correct me if I’m being too slow-witted for you.’
Shireen ignored her friend’s indignation. ‘Exactly. So now only error rates below three per cent are accepted as noise and ignored. Anything above that and you’re screwed. The problem has been that no one can eavesdrop quietly enough not to trigger much higher error rates than three per cent.’
Shireen left a dramatic pause to maximize the impact of what she was about to say. ‘Well, no one, that is, until it was figured out by yours truly.’ She grinned broadly. ‘You see, I’ve found a crucial chink in the armour. It’s a weakness in the quantum cloning algorithm. If it wasn’t so cool, I’d be thinking of writing a paper on it. But why tell the rest of the world when I can have a bit of fun first?’
But instead of the unadulterated admiration she had expected, he just stared at her.
Sunfall Page 6
