by Mark Goodwin
Kate told him everything she knew so far, including her suspicions about Sky National Bank’s network being infected.
“I thought you said the breach was external.” Terry sat forward on the couch.
“The hacked customer PCs were external exploits, but the infiltrators got their emails from somewhere. These guys were good. If they broke into our system, there’s no way they left without injecting malicious code.”
Victoria sat with her legs crossed on the couch. “So these guys stole a few million, shut down the trains in DC, hacked some red lights, and turned off New York’s 911 service. It doesn’t really seem like that big of a deal. New York already has their emergency call system back online.”
“It’s a pretty big deal. If criminals knew people couldn’t call the police, just think of how emboldened they’d be to do bad stuff. But in Sky National’s case at least, every one of the compromised PCs had a unique bug. It’s not just one virus somebody can write a patch for. It’s literally like a swarm of locusts. You have to kill every one of them individually. That attack represents capabilities no one has ever seen before. I don’t know that New York and DC are connected, but if they are, the situation is even worse.”
“Can’t you just spray locusts with bug spray?” Vicky shrugged.
“Yeah, the cyber version of that would be turning off the internet,” Kate answered. “We’d go back to the 1800s.”
“Would that be so bad?” Vicky inquired.
“Gas deliveries, grocery stores, banks, credit card companies, planes, trains, and electricity function with or are controlled via the internet. We don’t have the infrastructure from the 1800s. So we might not last too long without it.” Kate’s expression was grim.
The doorbell rang. “That must be the pizza finally. I’ll go get it.” Vicky seemed more concerned about the attacks than she had been moments earlier.
Terry watched his daughter go up the stairs. “That’s a fairly gruesome prognosis you just gave. Were you just trying to scare some sense into Vicky?”
“No. I think this is bad.”
Terry motioned to the television. “They seem to have fixed the worst of it.”
“For now. We don’t know anything about these bugs. This could have been a test run. Think about it. The attack proved they have access to critical infrastructure and the banking system. The hackers could literally hold America hostage.”
Terry leaned back on the couch. “Fortunately, we have the world reserve currency and we can print our own money, so the US is capable of paying whatever ransom they ask for.”
“Unless it’s an enemy country or terrorist organization who is more interested in our absolute demise than our money.” Kate twisted her mouth to one side nervously.
“What are you thinking?” Terry asked.
“I don’t know.” Kate shook her head. “Gavin said he was going to stock up on some extra food and take his money out of the bank.”
“That sounds extreme.”
Kate sighed. “That’s what I said. He pointed out the fact that if he’s wrong, he could put his money back in after the smoke clears. He said he’d eat the food anyway.”
Terry tapped his lip with his index figure pensively. “His obvious implication is that if we’re wrong, we’ll have no such opportunity to rectify our misjudgment.”
“Yeah.” Kate bit her thumbnail. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know.” Terry thought quietly for a while.
Vicky came bounding down the stairs with the pizza box, some paper plates, and canned sodas. “I brought you a Coke, Aunt Kate.”
“Thank you.” Kate placed coasters on the coffee table.
Terry placed a slice of pizza on a paper plate and passed it to his sister. “Kate, why don’t you pack a bag with a couple weeks’ worth of clothes and keep it over here. I’ll stock up on a few extra canned goods.”
Vicky chewed quickly and washed down her food with a gulp of soda. “What did I miss?”
Terry shook his head dismissively. “Nothing. Just if this hacking thing continues, Kate might feel more comfortable staying with us for a few days.”
Kate held the plate and stared blankly at the lukewarm pizza. “Sure, thanks.”
“What are your thoughts?” Terry bit into his slice.
She looked up slowly. “Maybe we should take some things up to the cabin.”
“What? Are you serious?” Vicky spoke with a mouthful of food, veiling it only slightly with the back of her hand. “I’ve spent more than my share of Thanksgivings in that place and have to spend every Christmas break up there. Why would you want to go to grandpa’s musty old cabin?”
“It’s not musty.” Terry scowled.
“Waynesville has a low population density,” Kate said. “People act crazy enough as it is. If they start losing stuff because of a wide-spread computer hack, things could get hectic; especially around a city as big as Atlanta.”
Vicky put her plate on the coffee table. “No way. Mom will never go for it.” She spun around and looked at her dad. “Where did you say this hacker guy lives?”
Terry shot her a look that said Shut up.
“Charlotte, right?” Vicky snapped her fingers at Kate. “Waynesville is closer to him than Atlanta.”
Kate glared at Terry. “What is she talking about?”
“Come on, don’t act like you don’t know.” Vicky tilted her head to one side.
“You are officially out of the circle of confidence.” Terry glared at Victoria and made a circular motion with his hands. “The circle is now closed. We’re inside the circle, and you’re outside the circle.”
Vicky waved her hands. “Whatever. If it means leaving my friends and going to the woods, I don’t want to be in your crummy old circle anyway.” She looked back at Kate. “You’re so pretty, Aunt Kate. I mean it. And Atlanta is full of guys.”
“Really, Victoria, this has nothing to do with a guy. I wouldn’t drag you off to the wilderness just so I could have an excuse to be near a guy. I can’t believe you think that about me.”
Vicky looked at her plate remorsefully. “I’m sorry. But I have friends at school that I’d like to be near.”
“Yeah, I heard.”
“You heard what?” Vicky snapped her head around.
“That you’ve got guys calling the house.”
Vicky pointed at her father. “You are out of the circle of confidence!” She spun her finger in a circle around her head. “The council has spoken, the circle is closed, please leave the island now.”
Terry fought a grin and looked at Kate as if he were pleading for empathy. “See what I’m going to have to go through?”
Vicky resumed eating her pizza. “What about Uncle Boyd? Are you going to invite him to the cabin?”
Terry clinched his jaw and looked at Kate. “I can’t imagine he’d want to come.”
“Oh, if the world is falling apart, you don’t think he’d want to hide out with us?” Vicky gave her father a stern look.
Terry answered bluntly. “Uncle Boyd gets drunk and breaks stuff. He’s not the best company to have around if resources are stretched thin.”
“But he’s your brother. He’s family, Dad. You can’t just abandon him.” Vicky looked to Kate for support.
Kate lifted her shoulders. “He’s our brother, but your dad has to do what he thinks is best for his family. He’s responsible for you, Sam, and your mom. Boyd is responsible for himself. Part of being responsible is not doing things and saying stuff to your family that makes them not want to be around you.”
“You’re turning your back on him, too?” Vicky crossed her arms. “Grandpa left that cabin to all three of you.”
Terry commented, “And Boyd wanted to sell it so he could go on a drinking tour of Europe. I bought Boyd out so the rest of us could enjoy the cabin and Uncle Boyd could go drinking.”
“I hope Sam never abandons me like that.” Vicky puckered her brow.
Terry tightened his lips. �
�If you threaten the peace of Sam’s family by getting drunk at every holiday gathering and saying horrible things to his spouse, I hope he does. Family will always be family, but sometimes you have to quarantine the cancerous elements to protect the integrity of the healthy relationships.”
Vicky grabbed her plate and stomped off toward the stairs. “It doesn’t matter. Mom will never agree to run off to the woods anyway.”
Kate waited for the cauldron of teenage angst to leave the room then looked kindly at her brother. “I certainly don’t want to make trouble between you and Penny. Do whatever you think is best. I should get going.”
Terry stood to hug Kate. “Bring a bag over for now, and I’ll pick up a few extra dry goods tomorrow. We’ll stick a pin in the idea about taking supplies to the cabin. Let me know if you find any bugs in the system at work.”
CHAPTER 7
Yea, they made their hearts as an adamant stone, lest they should hear the law, and the words which the Lord of hosts hath sent in his spirit by the former prophets: therefore came a great wrath from the Lord of hosts. Therefore it is come to pass, that as he cried, and they would not hear; so they cried, and I would not hear, saith the Lord of hosts.
Zechariah 7:12-13
Kate removed her glasses and rubbed her eyes. She’d been staring at the computer screen since 6:30 Thursday morning. She glanced at her watch. “One o’clock. I’ve gotta get some lunch.”
“Sure, go ahead,” Mendoza said from his desk.
“Mind if I come along?” Albert invited himself.
Kate put her glasses back on. “Sure. Why not.” She glanced back at the screen while she collected her purse and phone.
Albert walked over to her chair. “Do you want to go to Oak Wood?”
“Sure.” Kate studied one last line of code.
“Mr. Mendoza, would you like us to bring you anything?” Albert offered.
“Hang on.” Kate put a finger in the air. “Albert, what does that look like to you?”
Albert looked at her screen. “It looks like an alien language. I wrote code for six years prior to working here. I’m something of a digital polyglot when it comes to computer languages. In addition to SQL, I know C, C++, PHP, Python, and Java, but I’ve never seen anything that looks quite like that.”
Mendoza walked over to look at Kate’s monitor. “It’s strangely familiar, yet altogether different.”
Kate studied the line longer. “At first glance, it looks like SQL, enough so that it doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb, but when you look closer it’s nothing like any SQL code I’ve ever seen.”
“The bugs you found on the PCs, were they written in traditional C++?” Mendoza looked at her.
“It was an odd variant of C++, but I would still call it C++,” she replied.
“Like Go?” Albert asked.
“No. Not exactly like Go either,” Kate clarified.
Mendoza rubbed his chin. “You think an AI program could have generated the code on the PCs. Do you think the same program could have written this?”
Kate stared at the lines of letters, symbols, and numbers. “Yeah, I do.”
“What do you think this code does?” Mendoza gazed at the characters.
“Something bad. We should extract it immediately,” Albert said.
“I’m not so sure about that,” Kate said. “We should prep a sandbox in an offline machine and run the code to see if we can figure out what it’s trying to do.”
“What if this thing is getting ready to transfer all the bank’s money to Russia?” Albert asked.
“Then we better skip lunch and order Chinese.” Kate copied the code to a document file and printed it out.
Two hours later, Kate peered at the fourth computer, which Mendoza had brought in to use as a sandbox for the virus. “It’s essentially a logic bomb. But whatever the command is, it’s only designed to send a signal to another program. I’m guessing that it functions like a dead-man switch. If we try to remove this line of code, we’ll probably trigger some other command. If we take the entire system offline that will also trigger it.”
“But we have no idea what that command is?” Mendoza looked over her shoulder.
“I may have just found the other program. Look at this, it’s a massive block of code. We’re talking ten times bigger than Stuxnet.” Albert looked up from his computer.
Kate and Mr. Mendoza quickly walked over to Albert’s workstation.
“Where did you find that?” Kate asked.
“I was searching through HR’s applications. They keep tons of resumes scanned as PDFs. This was nestled inside them. It’s an EXE file but was masquerading as a PDF. The really bad news is that it’s running right now.”
Kate looked at Mr. Mendoza. “We have to take our network down right now.”
“You said that could trigger the logic bomb.” His face looked stressed.
“Yeah, but whatever this thing is designed to do is already happening. We don’t know what this program is capable of. This could be the cyber version of a nuclear bomb. We have to shut it down before it infects anything else,” she pleaded.
“Maybe we could pull the plug but connect the network to a false internet connection to trick the logic bomb into thinking we’re still online.” Albert turned to Kate.
“Could that work?” Mendoza asked.
She frowned. “Theoretically, yes. But I’m not sure the program would fall for it. We could loop internet traffic, like looping a few seconds of security footage so a security guard doesn’t know his camera is down. It’s a gamble. We’re basically betting on the virus being a lazy, complacent security guard.”
“What are the odds of that?” Mendoza inquired.
“Given the complexity of this code?” Kate nervously twisted her mouth. “Slim.”
“I’m going to call Xavier. I think it’s time we alerted the authorities.” Mendoza pulled out his phone and walked toward the hall.
Kate, Albert, and Zachery Mendoza worked frantically looking for more malicious code while they waited for an agent from the FBI’s Cyber Division. Soon, the speakerphone on Mr. Mendoza’s desk sprang to life. “Mr. Mendoza, Agent Ulasen is here to see you.”
“Thank you, Janet. Send him in.” Mendoza stood to receive his guest.
Ulasen was young, early thirties, Kate guessed. He was thin and looked more like someone from DefCon than an FBI agent.
Mr. Mendoza made introductions and explained what the team knew so far.
Ulasen looked over the massive piece of code which Albert had identified. He shook his head. “What is that? It’s not C, it’s not C++, and it certainly isn’t Go.”
Kate felt relieved to not have an agent who was completely in the dark about what he was looking at. “We believe it’s some derivative language that is compatible with other object-oriented languages.”
“Who wrote it?”
“We think it could have been written by an AI program.” Kate watched the agent.
“How would the other programs understand this code if it’s not in a recognizable language?” He looked perplexed.
Albert answered, “It could still issue commands in C or C++. It’s just here to inflict damage. It doesn’t need for the other programs to be fluent in whatever this babel is. Kind of like if you went to Mexico to buy drugs or weapons. If you had a pocket full of cash and knew a few keywords, you could accomplish your mission without having a perfect command of the Spanish language.”
Agent Ulasen glared at Albert as if he thought that was a very peculiar choice of analogies. “Drugs or weapons?”
Kate immediately stepped in. She pointed at the empty Chinese food containers. “Or Kung Pao Chicken; none of us are fluent in Mandarin, and the folks at the restaurant have broken English at best, but we can still make specific transactions.”
“I suppose so.” Ulasen turned away from Albert and seemed to dismiss the ill-conceived metaphor. “Given the recent string of activity, I’m going to call in someone from NSA to
advise us on how to proceed. I don’t feel comfortable taking your network offline.”
“How long do you think that will be? This thing could be infecting other computers. These are all zero-day exploits. Our network is communicating with every other bank in America, all the major credit card companies, the Federal Reserve, and the SWIFT system.” Albert sounded pushy and demanding.
Kate’s issue was social anxiety, which caused her to be extremely reticent around people she wasn’t familiar with. Albert Rogers, however, seemed to lack any sense of reservation whatsoever and was liable to say anything, to anyone, at any time, regardless of whether he was acquainted with the individual or not.
Ulasen seemed perturbed by Albert’s petulant outburst. “I’m sure they’ll have someone here within the hour, Mr. Rogers. We are well aware of the threat we’re dealing with here.”
Mendoza shot Albert a gruff look then turned to the FBI agent. “Can I have Janet get you a bottled water or a cup of coffee?”
“Coffee would be fine,” said Ulasen.
When the team from NSA rolled in, it couldn’t have been more different from Agent Ulasen’s arrival. Ten agents came into the room as if they were performing a no-knock raid. Kate, Albert, and Mr. Mendoza were all separated like they were suspects in a major terrorist plot.
Two agents escorted Kate to a separate room where she was aggressively debriefed. One of the agents acted as the liaison and the other was obviously from the tech side of the operation.
“When did you first recognize anything suspicious? Why didn’t you notify the authorities immediately when you suspected you had an infection? How long have you been working with the bank?” The big, intimidating NSA agent fired out question after question to Kate. This treatment immediately caused her to have a panic attack and she clammed up, almost unable to speak.
“I . . . I . . . I . . . don’t know. You’re frightening me!”
“This is a serious situation. That’s a normal response. But you need to tell me everything you know.”
