The Alexandria Project: A Tale of Treachery and Technology (Frank Adversego Thrillers Book 1)

by Andrew Updegrove

  “Okay, so a company goofed up,” Marla objected. “I would certainly expect our government to be much more careful.”

  Her father raised his eyebrows, and Marla paused. “Or maybe not,” she admitted.

  Frank smiled smugly. “Unfortunately, the federal government is a lot like the credit and debit card system – it’s got thousands of locations with computers, countless types of hardware and software products in use (and changing) at any time, and millions of people who might be a little bit lazy or not well enough trained. So every government agency has thousands of points of potential vulnerability. All it takes is one careless moment by one individual, and this time it could be the Department of Defense, or the CIA, or the White House that gets the sniffer – or something more dangerous.”

  “And it’s worse than that,” Frank continued, pulling up an article on his laptop from the New York Times, describing a recent top brass meeting on how capable the U.S. might be if it had to respond to a cyber attack.

  Marla scanned the assessment, reading how the attacker would have all the advantages – no one would be able to pinpoint the country of origin, and it might not even be justifiable under international law for the victim to respond militarily.

  “So I’m getting the ‘not good’ part here loud and clear,” Marla acknowledged. “But what does that have to do with you and Rick and the LoC? And what especially does it have to do with that crazy message on your laptop, by the way? Remember your laptop? I believe it’s what I saw on your laptop we were actually talking about.”

  “I’ll get to that in just a minute,” Frank responded.

  Marla groaned and put her head on the table.

  Frank made a face this time. “Alright. I’ll move on. But just keep this part in focus: for all our wealth and strength, right now any Third World country, or even a terrorist organization, could crash an entire agency – or, for that matter, Wall Street – if they put some smart guys to work on it.”

  “Fine. I’m appropriately terrified. Now Daddy, please make your little girl feel warm and secure again. You are going to make it all better now, aren’t you?”

  Frank smiled ruefully. “That’s a tall order. But I will tell you what we’re trying to do about it, or at least the non-classified details that make their way down to someone at my level.”

  “The new administration is much more aware of cybersecurity than the old one, thank goodness, and more creative, too. They decided to take a competitive approach to the problem, so they told every single agency and semi-independent department, like the LoC, that it has to come up with its own security plan – and fast. We’ve only got until February 28 to submit our security proposal to the White House.

  “And that’s a really good idea. The thought is that if we get fifty different teams competing, we’ll come up with a lot more clever ideas than we would if we had just one design team. Even better, we should be able to use several different plans, rather than just one. That way the whole government won’t be vulnerable to a single attack across the board, or be as likely to permit a successful exploit in one agency to infect another once it’s inside the first one.”

  Marla interrupted. “And George thinks that Rick is going to be able to pull that off better than you?” She felt offended on her father’s behalf.

  Frank suddenly looked less cheerful. “Yes, and George may be right. This is one of those projects that requires getting a whole lot of people on the same page. It will take lots of meetings; lots of compromises; lots of cajoling. That’s not exactly where I shine. Last night I could have punched George in the nose, but this morning I have to admit everybody else would probably want to punch me within a week if I was in charge.”

  Marla knew her father was probably right. “Still having trouble with that ‘smartest guy in the room’ problem, huh?”

  “It’s not only that,” he replied wearily. “Yes, I’d be frustrated when some people couldn’t keep up with me. But at the same time, I probably wouldn’t focus very well on filling in all the less interesting bits that it takes to make the big picture clear, either. Plus, whoever is in charge is going to have to spend a lot of time grinding away on administrative details, and I get too impatient.”

  “Couldn’t you just get somebody else to do that part?”

  “Sure, but there are other issues. Like balancing what’s perfect with what’s practical, so that overly strict security requirements don’t bring everything to a standstill, or require people to do more than you can actually get them to do. To come up with a really good solution, you need to take into account how people really act. Otherwise, they’ll just take short cuts that leave security gaps.

  “In short, doing something like this takes lots of things I just don’t have the patience for. Or for that matter, much talent.”

  Marla gently changed the subject: “So what about this Alexandria Project thing?”

  “Ah yes!” Frank brightened considerably. “It seems that my good friends George and Rick are going to have to face a challenge that’s a lot more than either of them bargained for.”

  * * *

  3

  I just HATE it when that Happens

  Monday morning frank arrived at work early. He scooped up the office copies of the daily newspapers from the pavement outside the staff door of the Library of Congress and noticed that the Washington Times was missing. No need to wonder who arrived first today – that would be Rick, the only employee that wouldn’t bother to bring a paper in for anyone but himself.

  Sure enough, as Frank strode up the half-lit, half-high walls of the LoC’s Cube Town, there was Rick, coffee cup in hand. His face lit up as soon as he saw Frank. “Morning, Frank,” he called out. “Recovered from your big Saturday night yet?” He raised his coffee cup in a mock toast and leaned casually against his cube so Frank could barely squeeze past.

  To Rick’s surprise, Frank gave him a hearty welcome as he passed by. “Great to see you, Rick, ol’ fella! Only seventy more security-filled days until your big deadline, huh?” Rick’s smile evaporated. Frank wondered just how long it would be before Rick showed up at his cube, shamefaced, to ask for help. A week, tops.

  Frank’s smug smile faded when he snapped on his cubicle lights and saw the note waiting for him: “See me ASAP – George.” Suddenly, his smarmy email reply of the day before didn’t seem so funny anymore.

  George didn’t turn around when Frank appeared in the doorway to his office. He was clearly lost in thought, staring at the whiteboard on his wall. Frank realized that his boss had sketched out the LoC’s IT system at a high level, noting the particulars of the security defenses that stood between the jungle that was the Internet and the data resources of the LoC.

  Frank suddenly thought of the scene in Tracy Kidder’s Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Soul of a New Machine where Tom West, the legendary Data General project manager, sat alone in an office opening off of a darkened room of computer work and test benches. West’s career was on the line. His future depended on whether the “Whiz Kids” he had hired out of college would be able to debug the new computer he’d convinced management to let him design and build. Things weren’t looking good at that point, but West knew that all he could do was let things run their course without interfering and hope for the best.

  George looked old, Frank thought. George was getting old, Frank realized with mild surprise – probably past retirement age, now that he thought of it. And the members of the IT staff at the LoC weren’t whiz kids, either. George was probably worried that this project might come to a bad end, making him look bad, too. Well, that wasn’t Frank’s problem, was it?

  Frank was raising his knuckles to tap on the open door when George spoke.

  “Hi, Frank,” he said, without turning around. “Close the door and have a seat. I’ll be with you in a moment.”

  Frank sat down, wondering for how long George had been aware of his presence. Eventually, George swiveled his chair around. He leaned forward, both elbows on his desk
and folded his hands together. He looked Frank straight in the eye as he spoke.

  “You know, this isn’t a game, Frank. I didn’t appreciate your email on Sunday, and if you want to keep working here, that’s the last email like that you’ll ever send me. Understood?”

  Frank was taken aback; this wasn’t what he had expected. “Okay, George, no problem. I just wasn’t sure what you expected me to say. Who the hell has ever seen something like that before?”

  “Like what?” George snapped back.

  Now Frank was really confused. “Well, like that fiery screen, and the logo? And what the heck is the Alexandria Project, anyway?”

  George didn’t say anything, but slid his cellphone across the desk to Frank.

  Frank picked it up and looked at the screen. The email he had answered was open. What was it he was missing? “It’s the email you sent to me. What’s your point?” Then he noticed something that he’d missed before: the email wasn’t addressed to just him, but to “All Personnel” in the LoC.

  Frank looked up and saw that George was watching him closely. “Would it surprise you, Frank, to learn that you were the only one who replied to my email message?” Frank said nothing. “And what exactly were you looking for on a weekend in that particular directory, anyway?”

  Frank was annoyed rather than flustered. “For Pete’s sake, George, I was looking for the draft of the security project outline I’d been working on – that’s all.”

  “Looking for it, or deleting it out of spite? And how about the other files in that directory? Did you want to make it that much more difficult for Rick to get started?”

  “What files?” Frank responded, “Are others missing as well?”

  “Of course!” George barked. “Two of them. And one of them was Rick’s project outline – involuntarily ‘contributed’ to the Alexandria Project, whatever that is.”

  Now Frank was alarmed. “Wait a minute, George! Yes, I was ripped at Rick on Saturday night, but no – I’d never pull a stunt like that! And before you say anything, I know that the backup file for my outline is gone, too – probably Rick’s as well. But I didn’t do that, either. And I also know that it doesn’t look like there’s anything else missing, or at least not much, if there is. We had almost the same gross storage numbers Sunday morning as we did the night before.”

  “I know that!” snapped George. “Do you think you’re the only guy around here that has a brain? I’ve already run a complete scan, and there were only three files deleted anywhere in the entire system that night.”

  George leaned back. “Frank, are you aware that you and I are the only two people in the entire Library of Congress that have access to other people’s material in that directory?”

  Frank shook his head slowly from side to side.

  George gave him a humorless smile. “You should be a bit disappointed in yourself, Frank. Maybe you’re not such a security hotshot after all.”

  Frank couldn’t listen any longer. “Can the crap, George! We’ve known each other for more than twenty years. I know this looks like some kind of silly stunt, but it’s not. What would I gain by deleting documents? And hey – I’m no scholar of ancient Greek – I can’t even speak a modern language other than English. If it wasn’t for Google Translate I wouldn’t have a clue what that inscription said.”

  George was looking less certain, so Frank pressed on. “And anyway, how could I come up with something like that screen overnight – with all that fancy flash animation?” Frank was feeling more confident now. He sat back and waited.

  “Okay, Frank. Nice points,” George said at last. “But this isn’t over yet. If you didn’t delete those files, then we’ve got a real problem here. You’ve got the security clearances to know that the CIA security hotshots use the LoC as a low public-profile testbed to stress test new security protocols before they roll them out in the Pentagon, the White House, and all the other Level 1 security government agencies.

  “That means that if someone could hack our files, they could hack anything anywhere.” George looked at Frank, but Frank couldn’t think what he might be waiting for Frank to say.

  “I’m going to have to ask the CIA to check this out,” George said at last. “You and I may have known each other for twenty years, but to them, you’re nothing. They’ll be asking you a lot of questions, and if I were you, I wouldn’t get cute with my answers. Do you get it, Frank?”

  Frank nodded. “I get it.”

  “That’s all then.” George swung back to his whiteboard. Frank stood up to go, but then had a thought.

  “George…you said that there were three files deleted in all. What was the last one?”

  George replied without turning around. “The last one was my security folder.” Then he did turn around. “I really would watch my step for a while, if I were you.”

  Frank closed George’s door softly and walked back towards his cubicle trying to figure out just how concerned he should be. He barely noticed when Rick jumped up, obviously alarmed, as Frank passed by. “Hey Frank! Frank! Can I check something out with you? I just saw the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen in my life!”

  * * *

  4

  Beware of Greeks bearing Trapdoors

  Back in his cube, Frank powered up his computer and reflected on what he’d just learned, which was both not much and a lot. Not much in that he still had no idea who was behind the attack or what he was trying to accomplish. But a lot because the only people targeted besides himself were George and Rick, and because only one directory had been affected. That meant that what had hit the Library of Congress was no virus unleashed against websites generally, bent on spreading random mayhem. It was obviously an attack targeted just at their department. And once the hacker had made his way through the LoC firewall, the attack must have been directly controlled rather than automated.

  Whoever was behind the exploit also must have known exactly what he was looking for and had figured out where to find it, too. That suggested the intruder had managed to acquire some degree of inside knowledge, or at least that he had been willing and able to spend a lot of time roaming around inside the firewall, figuring out what might be of interest. Frank hoped it was the latter, since the former made it likely that an employee was either directly behind the attack, or had leaked information to whoever was responsible.

  Still, it was bad enough if the mysterious visitor had acted without inside help, since that meant there was a hole in the LoC’s defenses.

  Finding and fixing that flaw wouldn’t help now, though, since the attacker would have already created a trapdoor he could use to come and go as he pleased. Maybe as early as tonight he’d open the hatch and start creeping through the servers again. So if it wasn’t an inside job, there must be two vulnerabilities to track down and close, rather than only one – the vulnerability the intruder had exploited to get in to begin with, and the custom one he would then have created.

  All that was pretty standard stuff. The really weird bit revolved around the animated screen that he and George, and now obviously Rick, had seen when they looked for their security project files. Frank opened the cleaned up, translated screenshot again and gazed at it.

  What the hell was the name “Alexandria Project” all about? Did it refer to Alexandria, Virginia? No reason to think so; there must be tens, if not hundreds, of cities and towns with that name. And anyway, why was the message in Greek – ancient Greek, no less?

  Frank typed “Alexandria Project” into Google to see what would pop up. 44,400 hits. Hmm. He’d need to narrow his search a bit, but how? It looked like he’d need a clue to find a clue using Google. But then he noticed that most of the hits on the screen page referred to projects that involved data. Well, duh! he thought. Frank was no history buff, but even he had heard of the library of Alexandria, and also that it was supposed to have been the greatest repository of knowledge in the ancient world. Apparently, all of the founders of these projects had decided to use the same historical m
etaphor to identify their activities. That seemed promising. After all, the LoC was the largest collection of printed matter in the modern world. Maybe this was a start.

  The only other fact he knew (or thought he knew, anyway) about the Library of Alexandria was that it had been destroyed by fire. Well, that seemed to lock it down – the name on the screen he’d seen, the flames…but what about the Greek letters? Why not hieroglyphics, if he was right in remembering that Alexandria was in Egypt?

  Frank moved to Wikipedia, and typed in “Library of Alexandria.” The summary confirmed his recollection, but didn’t immediately suggest any clues:

  The Royal Library of Alexandria, or Ancient Library of Alexandria, in Alexandria, Egypt, was probably the largest, and certainly the most famous, of the libraries of the ancient world. It flourished under the patronage of the Ptolemaic dynasty, and functioned as a major center of scholarship, at least until the time of Rome’s conquest of Egypt, and probably for many centuries thereafter. Plutarch (AD 46–120) wrote that during his visit to Alexandria in 48 BC, Julius Caesar might have accidentally burned the library when he set fire to his own ships to frustrate Achillas’ attempt to limit his ability to communicate by sea….

  Okay, so he could understand if the intruder had used Latin instead of hieroglyphics, but he still didn’t get Greek. Frank tried “Alexandria” next, and there he found what he was looking for:

  …In ancient times, Alexandria was one of the most famous cities in the world. It was founded around a small pharaonic town c. 331 BC by Alexander the Great….Alexandria was known because of its lighthouse (Pharos), one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World; its library (the largest library in the ancient world); and the Catacombs of Kom el Shoqafa, one of the Seven Wonders of the Middle Ages....