Buzzworm (A Technology Thriller): Computer virus or serial killer?

by Theo Cage

  “Unless the killer was a south paw.”

  “I have a chart on that too if you’re interested.”

  Emile grunted. “What about stomach contents?”

  I read from Suzuki’s report. “Demerol. Over 1500 milligrams was found in his stomach and evidence of at least that much again in his blood. Looks like he ingested more than twenty pills. Estimate was that he took the Demerol about thirty minutes before death. Also found the remains of at least four slices of pizza.”

  “Prescription?”

  “No. The pizza was over the counter.” Emile didn’t break a smile. I thought I had him that time. I was wrong. “I checked this morning on the pills. Nothing under his name. He must have bought it off the street.

  “Or someone else did and gave it to him.”

  I flipped a page on the report. “There was an empty two liter bottle of Pepsi found in the room, but no residue of the drug in the bottle. So no one snuck it into his pop. We did find some remnants of the drug between his teeth, so Rick thinks he swallowed them intentionally. After the pizza.”

  Emile rubbed his boot once more. He was thinking again. "I'll tell you, Greggy. This stiff sure wasn't a planner."

  "What do ya mean?"

  "If you're going to do yourself, you think about it for a while. First build up some nerve. Then you go figure out the best way." He tore up a page of notes and tossed it into one of the lower drawers of his desk. Emile had no wastebasket. The cleaning people emptied the two bottom drawers of his desk every night.

  "Some like to jump. Jumpin's bad," he offered. I wanted to ignore him. I knew where he was going. "Ever see what they look like when they land? Like they came apart halfway down. No one wants to see that shit." I nodded. I’d seen a lot of jumpers in my day. They all looked the same at the bottom, a sack of limbs. They were the saddest looking corpses in the morgue. Not a good ending for anyone.

  "Lots use a gun. It's quick. Almost no one likes pain. Messes up the decor though. You can't invite company over for at least a couple of days."

  "Except your girlfriend," I added.

  "She can't help it. Chaos makes her horny.” Emile grinned. “Why d'ya think she goes out with a cop?" He had both feet up on the desk now. He was swiveling them in the light, admiring the way the leather glittered under the fluorescent light. "This stiff? I bet you he gets a letter or a phone call just before he dies. Was having a late night junk food snack at work. Probably done it many times before. Sure as hell wasn’t a health fanatic. Then, boom, he gets the word. And does the nasty deed."

  I swallowed that one. I hated it when Emile cut to the chase with anything even close to resembling accuracy. I made a suggestion. "He was on his computer. Could have received some kind of message, like an email or something."

  “Maybe he got a tweet from the devil. Come on down for a cold one. Don’t be late.”

  “Yeah. I guess that would add some urgency,” I added, still having no idea what you say to someone to make them commit hari-kari.

  Emile absorbed that. "Something bad enough to make him want to eviscerate himself with Craftsman number three?"

  I shook my head. No matter how you sliced it this came down to what would make a guy kill himself on someone else’s schedule. People who are planning to die don’t eat a stomach full of pizza. People who are afraid of pain will take Demerol though, which does add up. And what was the CIA connection?

  Emile rubbed an imaginary blemish off his right boot. “So did you check out his priors?”

  “Yeah. Kind of interesting. The only thing I found on his record. Arrested five years ago. A sex crimes case.” Emile hiked up an eyebrow. That much brow had a dramatic visual effect. “Charged with molesting a young girl in his neighborhood. Here’s the weird part. Sicko never went to trial though and got pleaded out to a misdemeanor.”

  Emile frowned. There went the unibrow again. “Pleaded out? You’re shitting me. You don’t plead out sex crimes against kids.”

  He was right. There was no way a prosecutor in his right mind would risk the publicity. “Yeah. I know. Sounds totally messed up. You know what my guess is? That the CIA spooks pulled some strings or something. To protect their employee.”

  Emile scoffed. “This Scammel guy doesn’t sound like some kind of secret agent. He was what they call today a knowledge worker. We used to call them clerks. You think the CIA is going to risk bailing out a staffer who gets hauled in on some sex crimes felony bust?”

  I thought about that for a second. I had no idea what the CIA would think was reasonable. Maybe Scammel was so good at what he did, they couldn’t bear to lose him. He would also be a serious security risk with that kind of baggage so he could also be easily compromised or blackmailed.

  I threw in an idea for the sake of argument, “Unless he had something on somebody. Something on Vice. Something on the CIA.” I slammed the top drawer on my desk closed. Anger was bubbling up again. Just once, a simple case without a dozen knots to untie. I had no patience anymore.

  “Who was the arresting officer? “ asked Emile.

  “Wishnowsky. In Vice.”

  “Wishnowsky. I’ve heard of this guy. He’s sick or something isn’t he?”

  Everyone had heard rumors about Wish and his cancer. He also looked like he had lost twenty-five pounds in the last few weeks. “Death walking from what I hear. But he’s still working.” I closed the file. I should go pay a visit to Vice Detective Wishnowsky. See what kind of twisted story he has to tell.

  CHAPTER 10

  Roger remembered a favorite science Prof in University who was very fond of Darwin. He would often use the dynamics between predators and prey to explain his theory of co-evolution.

  Co-evolution is where a predator evolves longer teeth — and prey responds by evolving tougher skin. Wolves learn how to run faster, so rabbits develop a better zigzag technique. It’s a never-ending arms race.

  The battle between hackers and security experts was no different. With every improvement in a firewall or system protection came more sophisticated techniques by hackers to break through. Before Roger arrived, the attacks on the CIA were random. Everyone and anyone was a target. Over the past few days, since he had arrived, tactics had changed. The Buzzworm virus had declared war on him and the rest of the team he had assembled to smoke the culprits out.

  Med had reported that attacks on her group had gotten particularly nasty which was a problem because the computer system they used was not supported by CIA staffers, but by the outside company that did the installation. And because of the high level of security around her project, he wasn’t allowed in. He complained to Vienna, but she brushed it off. Med’s project was minor. Don’t worry about it, she said.

  There were other issues. Roger’s scans of the CIA’s network were being monitored. He was certain of it. He would start a search, and his computer would just freeze up. He ran every test he knew and couldn’t find a problem. On day two, just as he was finishing a search within the surveillance database, the power in his office went down. Normally that wouldn’t affect his laptop, which ran on batteries, but for some reason his system shut down anyway. He was instantly suspicious and furious at the same time. This was getting personal.

  As a kid, he had learned how to backdoor other people’s computers. He couldn’t remember ever having more fun as a hacker. Being able to control and monitor a stranger from hundreds of miles away, without them even knowing what was happening, was pure mischievous joy for a fourteen-year-old. He watched people as they went through their private email, answered letters and visited truly depraved websites. He would interrupt them at their work, adding or changing the content of their letters or documents, crank up the volume of their music at two in the morning or change their screensavers. He had never felt the helplessness of having someone else control his computer until now. Nothing was more frustrating.

  He had pulled an all-nighter, poring over his computer and the CIA's network to find any trace of Buzzworm’s intrusion. Now he
was cranky and red-eyed, but still had turned up nothing. This was personal now. Like it wasn’t personal before? Roger would be lying if he said it wasn’t. This cat and mouse game of hacking consumed him like a dangerous addiction.

  Roger decided he needed more background. He had some intel from Jo and some color commentary from Med. He didn’t have a case yet though. Who better to give him a run down than the geeks on Jo’s team, the one’s who had applauded the introduction of his skull to a steel office divider.

  Despite a rough introduction on day one, Roger felt instantly at home in Sub 3. This was the world he had grown up in — tiny gray cubicles that stretched around the central core of the building, staff with their heads down, the only sound the tattoo of programmer’s fingers on dozens of keyboards. A no-talking zone. If a visitor didn’t know better, they would guess these people were in some state of bliss. Roger knew they were all deep in the zone. Or wishing they were.

  One IT company recently had researched how long it took for a programmer to get back to being productive after being distracted. The answer was four hours. Roger was about to rob someone of his or her focus — and that was a serious affront. He took a random shot and stopped at the cluttered cubicle of a Jacob McLean — his nametag professionally etched out of stainless steel. Jacob didn’t look like the stainless steel type.

  “Jacob?”

  Jacob kept typing. Roger waited. He understood. Complete the thought. When he did, he looked up, not happy with the interruption.

  “You’re the virus consultant, right?” He looked bored with the idea of conversation. Roger could tell that code was still flying around in his head, looking for a place to land.

  Roger tried his best to appear collegial. He wasn’t sure he knew how. “I was hoping you might have a couple of minutes to talk about Buzzworm.”

  Jacob looked puzzled. “You mean like now? Or beers later.”

  Roger laughed. “Well, I’m good with beers, but I need some analysis now. Before I flip out and start throwing things. Know what I mean?”

  Jacob shook his head. “I don’t think I can talk to you without Jo’s permission, man.”

  “She hired me to do this — to analyze the situation by talking to people who work here. You work here, right?”

  Jacob looked past him. “OK. Down there at the end. By the whiteboard. You’ll find a pop machine. With some couches and chairs. Go cool there, and I’ll be done in ten.”

  Roger looked down the aisle, then back at Jacob. He could just be flipping him off. He looked sincere enough though. And what choice did he have?

  “Great. My name’s Roger. See you in ten.”

  Winding his way through the cube farm, he noted that there were no personal items posted on the cube walls. Probably company policy. Everything else though was open season. There were snatches of printed code, project charts, virus lists, even a few periodical tables. Organized insurrection. Not breaking the word of the rules, just the spirit.

  At the end of the aisle was a gathering area – a rec zone. There were three couches, not sloppy and worn out like he was used to in college. These were modern and clean, but at the same time hardly comfortable. He could still imagine someone sleeping there over night, which he knew happened often. He sat in the middle couch and waited.

  Fifteen minutes later Jacob showed up with two other young men. He introduced them as Rupinder, a team lead, and Kyle, who worked the support desk. They both grabbed Cokes from the machine then sat down opposite from him. Jacob started.

  “Kyle supports our staff and has some freaky virus stories for you. Rupinder is the guy who grabbed your video off the system yesterday. I figured you’d want to meet him.”

  “Thanks for making me famous,” said Roger, rubbing his temple. “Next time show it when Dodge isn’t in the room.”

  Rupinder smiled shyly and nodded his appreciation. “How did you grab it?” Roger asked

  Rupinder gathered his thoughts and spoke softly. “I have this screen capture program that I use to grab YouTube vids, so I can burn them onto DVD. I brought it in hoping I could catch Buzzworm in action.”

  Roger squinted at Rupinder, who knew immediately why he was being glared at.

  “Yes. It’s unauthorized,” answered Rupinder. “But if I didn’t install it, we wouldn’t have a single thing to show you.”

  “How did you install it then? You don’t have system permission.”

  Rupinder looked at Jacob and Kyle then sighed. “We had a coder quit a few weeks ago. He left all the routines he was working on locked up in his personal directory. I got admin to give me access.”

  Roger whistled, looking serious. “I guess we have our Buzzworm then. You’re a coder, you know the system and you had unauthorized access.”

  Rupinder sat up, instantly offended. “And I guess we can add racial profiling to the list of offenses.”

  Jacob stood up to defend his team lead, but Roger stopped him before he could speak. “You guys aren’t taking this seriously. Washington Homicide is dying to make a quick arrest for Scammel. If they were here right now, they’d be frog marching Rupinder out in handcuffs. Wouldn’t be a great career move.” Jacob sat down, looking deflated. Roger knew that any kind of criminal activity would end their jobs at the CIA.

  Jacob pointed at Kyle. “Tell him about the problems.”

  Kyle held his hand up and touched his first finger. “There are three kinds of clusters happening here and all over the CIA. The first are the typical kinds of stuff you see with new users. Can’t find a file. Forgot their password. Went to print a report and got twenty-five copies. I don’t count those as Buzzworm-worthy. Basic DFOs.” Roger knew the term from friends who had worked in computer support at one time. DFO stood for Dumb Fucking Operators.

  Kyle checked off the next finger. “The second type you get from more experienced users. Program bugs that crash a system. Phone problems. Access issues.”

  Roger heard something that interested him. Med had said the phones were acting up. “What do you mean by phone problems?”

  Kyle sat forward on the couch. “Our phones are voice over IP. In other words, they use the Internet. Since they are internet-based, they can’t be tapped. Which the CIA loves. But anything that runs off the all-mighty Internet can be attacked by a mobile virus. We have been having escalating problems over the past two years.”

  Jacob smirked. “Escalating. That’s help desk speak for I don’t know what the freak is going on.”

  Roger ignored Jacob. He was beginning to irritate him. “What kinds of problems?”

  “SWS. Some weird shit. It started with phones ringing to the wrong extensions all the time. So you get a basic filing clerk answering a call from the Deputy Director. That makes everyone look stupid. Or a phone rings and when you pick it up you are patched into a confidential call, and no one else on the call knows you’re there. That’s been happening a lot, but almost no one reports it.”

  Roger interrupted. “I don’t understand.”

  “Think about it. We're an intelligence organization. We live in a covert world. Most of us don’t even tell our friends we work here unless they beat it out of us. So I get a call one day, and I pick it up and I’m now privy to some high-level security meeting. Who am I going to tell? If I reveal that I know something I shouldn’t, then I’m a security risk. And how do I explain why I was in on the call?”

  “Shit,” was all that Roger could say.

  Kyle tipped his Coke up and emptied the can. “Like I said, I don’t get a lot of those reported. My guess is it happens every day.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Just about everything you can think of. Printers that mangle important reports minutes before a top level meeting. I know, it sounds crazy. But it happens with such regularity, it can’t be random. I don’t even know how to hack a printer.”

  Roger looked doubtful. Kyle continued. “See? If the four of us sitting here are doubting this, then how do we convince management — people who think a
“server” is someone you tip in a restaurant — that this isn’t just run-of-the-mill technology glitches. Cause it isn’t happening to them.”

  “It’s not?”

  “No. Buzzworm is very selective. Nothing at the Director or Deputy Director level. Yet. So these guys think everything is just fine. Except, of course, the level three threats. They are starting to hear about those.” Kyle pointed to his third finger.

  “Go ahead.” Said Roger.

  “Level three threats are serious enough that they’ve been passed up to the Deputy Director for Science and Technology. I guess that’s why you got called in. This organization loves technology. But there’s always that love-hate thing happening. When your smart phone decides to re-boot right in the middle of a firefight and people could die, you start to hate your dependence on high-tech.”

  Kyle nodded at Roger, “You saw your video? There have been dozens like it. Someone’s playing a nasty psychological game. If you’re an employee with a secret addiction to gambling, then Buzzworm will throw up a new poker site on your screen every morning. With lots of noise and flashing lights so everyone around you knows what’s happening. How does the virus know you have a gambling problem? I have no idea. Maybe human resources had a talk with you about it once and entered it in an employee file. But that kind of detail is supposed to be confidential.”

  “Has that happened?”

  “Yeah. Another employee had a drinking problem. No one is supposed to know about it, of course. But Buzzworm does. Some pictures of her that were posted years ago on Facebook by a quote unquote friend suddenly showed up on screensavers all over the department. Pretty nasty stuff. Her laying drunk in a flowerbed somewhere, half naked, covered in vomit. Hey, maybe we were all there once when we were younger. But I wouldn’t want it showing up on my boss’s computer every morning.”

  Kyle tossed his pop can into the recycling bin. “She quit after that. Too bad. She was cute.”