by Mark Joseph
Chase had been among the first major banks to assess the Y2K problem and arrive at the correct conclusion. With 200 million lines of infected code spread among 1,500 different computer systems running thousands of applications, Chase had to eliminate the millennium bug from its systems or go out of business. It was that simple. There was no choice. The result was a $160 million contract with Copeland Solutions.
* * *
Others banks around the world quickly followed Chase into Copeland’s stable of clients. Money poured into the company, yet, having achieved success, Copeland discovered he wasn’t satisfied. The high wore off within a few weeks and he found himself feeling flat and bored. He wanted a new, more difficult challenge. Without realizing it, he was a crime waiting to happen.
Despite his reputation as a bold and ruthless businessman, even his old breakfast pals believed he was honest. The truth, however, was that Copeland was primed to consider criminal activity as the next step in business. After all, the line between venture capitalism and white-collar crime was fuzzy at best. All he needed was an opportunity, and one soon presented itself.
The Chase contract gave Copeland Solutions’ programmers access to the bank’s most sensitive data. Every account, record, and program had to be examined for millennium bug flaws and corrected. As this process began, it was only a matter of days before Doc started noticing discrepancies.
The bank was so big it didn’t know how much money it had or where it was. The first interesting account Doc stumbled across dated from 1985. In that year a programmer working for the bank had managed to pull off what later was to become one of the most common forms of computer fraud in the banking business. Every time one of the bank’s computers completed a foreign exchange transaction, it converted foreign currency to dollars and rounded off the number to the nearest mill. The anonymous programmer had written a tiny program that dumped each minuscule fraction of a mill into an account that didn’t show up on regular records. As it happened, the programmer was hit by a truck and died the next year, but his program continued to function flawlessly without attracting the attention of any other Chase official. By 1995, when Doc got to the account, it held more than four million dollars the bank didn’t know existed.
Doc mentioned the orphaned account to Copeland, recounting the tale as hacker’s lore.
“If we left that account alone,” Copeland mused, “how much would it be worth by the end of 1999?”
“Seven or eight million, and I’m sure I’ll find more accounts like this.”
“Adding up to how much, would you guess?”
“No way to tell, but maybe as much as a hundred mil.”
“That could be a lot of free money,” Copeland observed.
“Hell of a joke to play on the bank,” Doc said.
“If the world goes all to hell in January 2000, it would be interesting to have that much cash when everyone else was going bankrupt.”
“What are you suggesting, Donald?”
“Grand larceny.”
“Oh, you wicked man,” Doc observed.
“Just an idea,” Copeland said. “Think about it.”
“The bank has auditors checking our work,” Doc cautioned. “They’re not idiots. Chase expects us to find these accounts and report them.”
“You’re smarter than they are, Doc.”
“We’re already filthy rich, Donnie. Chase and all these other banks are going to make us even richer.”
“So what? You’ve been saying for years what the millennium bug will do: disaster, utter disaster. The world is going to come apart at the seams, and something like this will give us a comfortable nest egg when others will have nothing.”
“You’re calling a hundred million dollars a nice little nest egg? Jesus.”
“Well?” Copeland said. “You have a hacker’s heart. You’ll do it because you can.”
“That’s the problem, Donald. I have to do it. You can’t.”
“It’ll be the biggest bank robbery in history,” Copeland declared, “and the bank will never know it’d been robbed. With all the other disasters at the turn of the century, who’s going to care?”
“Chase, for one.”
“But they’ll never know, Doc.”
“You’re a greedhead, Donald.”
“Yeah. Like the man said, greed is good.”
“Are you serious?” Doc asked.
“Yes, I’m serious. I’ve never been more serious. What the hell, the bank doesn’t even know it has this money. It’s there for the taking.”
“You’re a scumbag,” Doc stated with barely disguised contempt. “We’re selling software like crazy. This company is worth hundreds of millions. And you want to…?”
“It’d be criminal not to do it if we can,” Copeland said, grinning broadly. “It’s the opportunity of a lifetime.”
2
Doc’s first inclination was to quit on the spot, but he enjoyed his work and didn’t want to turn his life upside down quite yet. To keep Copeland happy, he agreed to play along with no real intention of robbing the bank. Twisted by dreams of immense wealth, Copeland believed the ability to steal the money gave him the right to take it. That was the mindset of the economic engine running the global economy, it seemed to Doc. Situational ethics run amok. Grab what you can and why not; everybody else does. In theory, the heist was possible because no computer security system was foolproof, but in practical terms it was a less-than-perfect crime. The bank had 200 Y2K drudges working full time at the Metro Tech Center in Brooklyn, and more than a few were good enough to detect a theft of such magnitude. Who would take the blame? The chief programmer. But fear wasn’t the reason Doc wanted no part of Copeland’s scheme. Humble in his way, Doc was an honest man, a species of humanity unknown to Donald Copeland who believed every intelligent person shared his ethos of callous selfishness. Doc liked money as much as the next guy, yet he clung to the old-fashioned idea that capital could be used for purposes beyond self-aggrandizement.
Having decided to play along, he convinced Copeland that taking the money all at once during the millennium crisis was safer than milking it a little at a time. To placate the boss, he wrote a bogus program that kept a running account of mythical funds for Copeland to check every day, sometimes several times a day.
As the numbers escalated, the company’s legitimate earnings skyrocketed even more quickly. Copeland Solutions expanded rapidly, selling their Y2K software packages to commercial banks in the Philippines, Japan, Latvia, Sweden, Germany and Spain. In 1996 Doc earned six million dollars in bonuses alone—not much by Wall Street standards, but enough for him to do something meaningful.
Doc had taken on the Y2K challenge because it gave him a chance to save a small part of the world from imploding. He could write source code in his sleep and truly loved computers, but deep in his heart he believed the wanton application of computers to all aspects of daily life was often reckless and misguided.
Cybernetics had caused a radical change in global demographics, dividing populations into two camps: the technologically aware and everyone else. Each technological advance pushed the two camps farther apart. Y2K was going to be a watershed event that would transform the dividing line into a perilously deep chasm. Small companies and individuals who couldn’t afford to revamp their computer systems were going to perish while powerful companies who bought Copeland 2000 or similar programs would emerge stronger than ever. It was going to be a war of attrition, and ordinary people, the millions who went to work every day and trusted the systems that made their lives possible—electricity, phones, the subway, water—were going to be caught in the crossfire.
Ethical and compassionate, Doc thought the little guys should have a fighting chance. He’d done his bit to save the big boys by creating programs to save Chase Manhattan and the other banks, but $160 million worth of Copeland 2000 software wouldn’t help Chase if basic services shut down and New York collapsed. Doc felt the least he could do was try to save the city from itse
lf. He would use his money to fund a project Copeland knew nothing about. Even if it failed, it would be an amusing antidote to Copeland’s wild Hollywood scheme to rob the bank.
* * *
Posing the problem was easy: How do you keep the power on, the phones working, the water flowing and the subway running in New York City when the computers that controlled those systems failed? Answer: Build an alternate control center for every system, hardwire each to its original, and at midnight on New Year’s Eve 1999, seize control of the systems and run them with a computer that hadn’t been corrupted by the millennium bug.
Vital control systems always had redundant backup systems that kicked in if the primaries failed. The problem was that the backup systems contained the same Y2K flaws as the primaries. Nevertheless, it was the concept of redundancy that made Doc’s project feasible. In the first few seconds of the 21st Century, all the key computers in the city’s vital systems had to be tricked into switching over to secret alternates instead of their own flawed backups. Was that possible? It was a large and expensive undertaking, and to do it Doc needed to buy the hardware, steal the software, and find a handful of people he could trust.
* * *
“I’m building a new computer lab for a special project at my own expense,” he said to Copeland. “I’m paying, so don’t worry about it. I don’t want internal audits or anything like that, and I want you to keep out.”
“What’re you gonna do in there?”
“The world will be a mess after the century rollover. Maybe I can develop some software to put it back together.”
Copeland pursed his lips and his mind clicked over. “Telecommunications, operating systems of all kinds, things like that?”
“I’m just gonna play around with a few things.”
“I want a piece of that action,” Copeland said.
“Talk to me in January 2000, but for now, can it, Donnie.”
Reluctantly, Copeland agreed, and took off on a long tour around the world visiting clients and drumming up business. When he returned, he looked in once, asked no questions, and honored Doc’s request to keep away.
First, Doc sealed off the rear sixty feet of the third floor in the building on Nassau Street and bought a brand new IBM s/390 mainframe. He divided 9000 square feet into space for the computer, a huge air-conditioner, a half dozen large workstations with dozens of terminals and monitors, a telephone switching station, a bedroom, bathroom, kitchen and lounge with TVs, a high-end audio system, and old leather couches. When everything was in order, he started to search for people.
He didn’t have to look far to find his first recruit. Late one night he was working alone on a Chase terminal at the Metro Tech Center, scanning an electronic fund transfer program for flawed code. A window on his screen told him how many authorized users were using the system at that moment, which was zero. Around three in the morning someone logged on, but instead of transferring money between accounts, the user attempted to unlock the protocol files Doc was working on. It was an eerie moment in cyberspace. Doc promptly traced the call to a Chase commercial branch in Boston.
The next afternoon he hopped a shuttle to Boston, showed the branch manager his legitimate credentials as the bank’s chief Y2K consultant, and asked to be introduced to the back office staff.
One of the people the manager introduced him to was a thin, relaxed, 24-year-old African-American programmer named Bo Daniels. Dressed in tidy banker’s clothes, Bo stood up from his terminal to shake hands with Doc, who said, “Innumber 437 hop 22 halt bang path.”
Bo’s hand froze in mid-handshake. Doc had uttered the UNIX commands that had led Bo on his illicit mission inside the fund transfer protocol.
“Well, you lost me,” said the manager, who excused himself and left them alone.
“May I?” Doc gestured toward a chair.
They sat in silence. Bo studied his fingernails and wondered if he could crawl into his computer and disappear.
Doc turned a beatific smile on the young man, stroked his beard, and waited. He finally said, “It was you, wasn’t it?”
The programmer offered a sly smile and asked, “You gonna turn me in?”
“I don’t know yet,” Doc replied. “If I were going to commit computer theft, I’d go right to Innumber 437, just like you did.”
“I just wanted to see if I could do it,” Bo said. “If I can, then someone else can. The bank is vulnerable.”
“Did you file a breach of security report?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Bo shrugged and didn’t answer. “Tell me what else you can do,” Doc asked.
“You want to see my resumé?”
“I don’t think you’d put what I want to know in a resumé,” Doc said. “How good are you? Can you write COBOL?”
They spoke geek for twenty minutes. Doc thought Bo was more than competent. He was a wickedly bright but frustrated artist hiding behind a starched shirt and suspenders. When Doc was satisfied that Bo knew enough and could learn what he didn’t know, he offered him a job.
“Doing what? Y2K?”
“Something like that.” Doc leaned forward and quietly said, “Here’s the deal: four times the salary you’re making now, a nice bonus down the line, long hours, no sleep, no dress requirements, and whatever you need to keep you going. Sex, drugs or rock and roll, I don’t care. I’m leaving you a ticket to New York and a thousand dollars. You can show or not. It’s up to you.”
* * *
A week later Bo arrived at Nassau Street dressed like Jimi Hendrix. Doc discovered he could play a computer the way Jimi played guitar, and he was willing to play for Doc. A virtuoso, Bo could write twelve computer languages from COBOL to Java, and analyze a database management system faster than a Cray supercomputer. More than anything else, he understood how a complex series of systems worked together.
“What do you know about the generation and distribution of electric power?” Doc asked.
“Nothing.”
“That’s a good place to start because you won’t have to unlearn anything. How long do you think you’d need to understand a power plant?”
“Oh, I don’t know. A couple of years, at least.”
“How about six weeks.”
“Impossible.”
“Nothing is impossible to a willing heart. Disraeli said that. Sit down and look at this,” Doc said, ushering Bo into a chair. He turned on a terminal, and the screen came up bright blue with simple text:
CON EDISON RESTORATION ASSISTANT
OPERATOR’S TRAINING SIMULATOR
CHOOSE INCIDENT TYPE
“This simulator is where the company trains advanced operators to deal with breakdowns and blackouts,” Doc explained. “Lesson one: Bringing the power back on after a failure is called ‘restoration.’”
“How’d you get this?” Bo asked, incredulous.
“There’s only one way,” Doc replied. “I hacked it from the ConEd command center. The simulator isn’t nearly as secure as the system itself, but it contains an excellent model of the entire Northeast power grid that’s updated weekly. Once you’re familiar with the simulator and the model, we can go after the real thing because the model tells us where everything is.”
Bo blinked rapidly, his mind whirring away. “You mean you want to hack into ConEd and steal their entire operating system?”
“More or less. Maybe a hundred or so applications. Only the parts we need.”
“Need to do what?”
“Keep the power on in Manhattan,” Doc answered with a wide grin, “from here.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Correctamento, I’m crazy, but that’s a given. The question is, are you crazy enough to become Con Edison, Bo? You have two and a half years to learn every system, every application, the location of every embedded chip. You can learn to reconfigure the system, make all the Y2K corrections, and, yes, keep the lights on in Manhattan at the moment of the century rollover. That’s the i
dea. If ConEd can’t do it, you will.”
“Mamma mia. I don’t know.” Bo whistled and played a little air guitar. “Plus data, I suppose.”
“Correct. Plus data which we check for Y2K and fix, the long, hard way. First we learn how to isolate ConEd from the grid, and then how to isolate Manhattan and the four power plants on the island plus one in Queens from the rest of ConEd. We need the operating systems of each of the five plants, plus the system operation that ties them together.”
“And we’re supposed to do this by ourselves, just the two of us?”
“No. We need phones, so I’m looking for a phone freak to keep the lines open, and I’m looking for a train freak to run the subway. Maybe a few more. If you make it to January 1st, 2000, there will be a bonus of a million dollars for each of you.”
Bo didn’t need to think about that for long. “You have that kind of money?” he asked.
“It’s already in escrow. The money’s there.”
“What do you get out of it?” Bo asked.
“Sanity,” Doc replied, reaching across Bo to the simulator keyboard. He punched “Choose Incident” from the simulator menu and selected “Total System Failure.”
The screen began to flash and beep a noisy alarm.
“Just do it,” Doc said and handed Bo a Nike cap.
* * *
Over the next month Doc interviewed four more hackers who failed to meet his standards. They either didn’t know enough, took too many bad drugs, or were so anarchic and downright criminal that he’d never be able to keep them in line. Then he discovered Carolyn Harvey.
Carolyn’s idea of fun was breaking into telephone companies’ computers, stealing the phone records of prominent individuals, and posting them on the Web. Doc studied her website, “FoneFreek.com,” and followed her electronic trail to a little house in Nashville, Tennessee. A big Harley was parked out front, and Doc left a note on the motorcycle.
“FoneFreek. In town searching for talent,” he wrote, and added the number of his hotel. She called.
