Counting from Zero

by Alan B. Johnston

  “This is not your concern! And you will NOT do this in the future!” the Chairman shouted, pounding the table.

  “At least we are ready to move to Phase 2!” the man replied, trying to change the subject.

  “No, we are not,” replied the Chairman, startling everyone around the table. They looked around the table, confused. “We will continue testing the attacks. We need to fully understand the response and counter measures for each.” The room was silent for a moment.

  “OK, I will say what everyone is thinking – this is crazy! We know the attacks work, and we know there will be a response – so what? Why would we continue testing?”

  “This is not a discussion, I am telling you what I have decided. We will continue testing until I say we are ready.”

  “Is this a new direction from our benefactors?” another man asked, stressing the word. As soon as he said it, everyone in the room knew it to be true.

  “Gentlemen, times are changing. You all know the essential role our benefactors play in our business. Even with our new command and control infrastructure, we need protection against trace backs and to handle our revenue. Now, everyone must focus on the task at hand. I want regular status reports leading up to the next test. That will be all!”

  The Chairman sat alone in the conference room after the others had left. He was not without his concerns, either, but he would never have shared them with his team. He did not hire idiots; soon they would all work out the new plan, and there would be more dissent. But he knew he had no choice – to do otherwise would be even more dangerous.

  Chapter 3.

  Mick O'Malley – feels proud every time he is able to recognize Kanji using pattern matching, e.g. recognizing Tokyo as the TV set with rabbit ears and a wrapped present on a stand. (6 comments)

  The next morning, Mick found an intriguing mail in his unauthenticated folder. All of his important mail arrived signed or encrypted using PGP software. His unencrypted and unauthenticated mail tended to be spam or junk mail, messages from slight acquaintances, or clueless introductions (sometimes difficult to discern from spam). In this case, he found an invitation to lunch to discuss a potential new consulting project. The fact that Vince Della of LeydenTech did not bother to sign and encrypt his email to Mick was not good. Even a cursory bit of research on Mick would show what he expected in terms of communication and Internet security when dealing with him. Mick only checked his unencrypted folder today because he expected to hear back from a contact at a large software company in the Northwest of the U.S. whose corporate mandatory-to-use software prevented the use of PGP encryption. Otherwise, the message might have languished for days.

  He accepted the invitation and added Vince to his professional network.

  Is Vince perhaps a marketing person?

  Mick was extremely selective in choosing consulting jobs. He was very open about his selection criteria. He refused to work for the government – any government. He avoided patent and intellectual property work like the plague. He would not deal with anyone who did not meet his standards for ethics and privacy. And finally, the job had to be interesting and challenging. With Gunter’s help, he had been gradually building up his experience, despite his selectivity.

  Mick had woken up early, something easy to do while still adjusting to east to west jetlag. As a result, he had 45 minutes to read with Sam on a video link. He sent an invitation to an encrypted video session, which she accepted.

  After Sam played a new song on the flute for him, they got back to reading. They each had a copy of the book – an actual, old fashioned wood pulp and ink version. Mick read electronic books and papers professionally, but when it came to pleasure, he still preferred the physical medium of paper. They alternated reading pages to each other of The Two Towers. The precocious ten-year-old loved her namesake in the story, while Mick most admired the swift and light-footed elf. When they had read a chapter, they relaxed and chatted a bit about the story.

  “It is so sad that Saruman turned evil... And Gandalf trusted him, too...” Sam commented.

  “I agree, Gandalf must have felt terribly betrayed by his friend.”

  “Well, sayonara, Alec-san,” she replied very seriously, putting her hands together and bowing low on the screen. Mick laughed and bowed back, logging off.

  Down in the lobby, he found Lars relating a story from Tokyo to a small group of people. This time of year, Lars would always seek out the sun any chance he had during the northern hemisphere winter. He could usually be found near a window as he was now.

  Lars waved from across the crowded room, but Mick had no difficulty seeing him, as they both towered over the locals. Mick came over.

  “Mick, you've been to one of those costume cafés right?” Lars asked.

  “You mean maid cafés? With the servers dressed up like cosplay?” Mick replied, using the term used in Nihon for costume play – dressing up in costumes.

  “Yeah – I was dying of curiosity, so I went to one yesterday in Akihabara – like a bloody Hooters, which I'm sure you frequent, Mick.” Lars was joking, of course.

  “Actually, it’s not – instead of the servers being dressed and acting like girls in ninth grade gym class, they are dressed as nineteenth century maids, and act like they are nine years old... quite creepy actually,” Mick replied.

  “You're not wrong! I did learn a few things, including 'Moé Moé Kyun!' Course I don't know what it means... I also got some good reading done there – I'm half way through Barchester Towers.”

  “You were reading Trollope in a maid café? That is so...” A series of words flipped through Mick’s mind like a high speed train passing by local stations, including pretentious, incongruous, ridiculous, but none conveyed the exact level of appall he was after. In the meantime, Lars continued.

  “So much for my cultural exchange efforts. When is the next major release of your software project coming out?” he asked, knowing full well Mick's reaction.

  “Lars, I'm working on it!” he replied, taking the bait. "If a few other developers would write some code more often, it would be much sooner,” Mick said pointedly, trying to make Lars feel guilty for his recent lack of participation, but the attempt failed – Lars was already distracted, watching an attractive young woman walk across the room. It was closer to the truth that Lars, rather than Mick, would hang out at Hooters, if they had them in Helsinki.

  A little later at the conference, Mick caught sight of Liz just before she spotted him. He knew the instant they locked eyes that it was going to be a long week.

  She’s going to want to talk for sure…

  It wasn't that he didn't want to talk to her – Mick really liked Liz and enjoyed her company, but he didn’t necessarily want to converse on the same set of topics. She looked like the cheerleader he never dated in high school. Of course, Mick barely went to high school, either. Mick had had some fun together with Liz, and enjoyed her company, but the spark just wasn't there for Mick, and no amount of talking could fix that.

  “Mick!” she called out as she approached. He kissed her on the cheek and gave her shoulder a little squeeze. He smiled at her.

  “Liz!”

  “I just love Nihon – everything is so efficient here,” she continued. Mick always listened closely for the start of a Texas accent in her, but fortunately she had yet to succumb, despite having lived in Dallas for nearly four years.

  “Yeah, it's pretty good,” Mick agreed. She caught his arm and walked him in the direction she was heading.

  “Have you heard the latest from Steel Trap Computing? Ridiculous, I know!” she began as he just listened and walked with her.

  After a few sessions, Mick felt that he had the lay of the land for the conference venue. He knew where to get his espressos, where the dead spots in the wireless network were located, and some quiet places for side conversations.

  With his lunch approaching, Mick did a little research on LeydenTech, and discovered that not much was publicly available. He sent off
a few queries to find out whether it was just privately held or if it did government work. The location just outside of Los Alamos, New Mexico, tended to suggest the latter. It was no surprise to Mick to find that the company was involved in energy storage of some kind. Another tingle made him check his mobile: Vince had left him a voicemail message (non-secure calls went straight to voicemail), despite his greeting (recorded about six years ago) that said that he did not check voicemail and asked the caller to use a technology from the current century to reach him.

  What kind of dinosaur am I going to do business with today?

  He read the text of the voicemail and discovered that Vince had moved the meeting an hour earlier (elevenses?). There was just time to make it, and yet another session he had weakly planned to listen in to was blown off.

  “Dr. O'Malley, it is a pleasure to meet you – heard so much about you!” Dr. Vincent Della, Senior Vice President of Engineering at LeydenTech began after handing over his business card, doing an impressive Nihon-style two-handed handover. Mick, of course, had no cards, making him a non-entity in the business world here in Nihon. When asked for his business card, he usually mumbled something about finding his public key on the web.

  “Thank you, call me Mick. May I call you Vince? So, your company makes modern day Leyden jars?” Mick began, referring to the first electrical energy storage devices, named for the town of Leiden in the Netherlands, and used by the early experimenters with electricity, including Ben Franklin. When he first heard the name of the company, Mick recalled a sketch of tall lightning rods attached by wires to a bank of enormous foil-covered glass jars. Leyden jars were the forerunner of today's electronic capacitors, and ultimately memory storage devices used by all computational devices today. Effectively, Ben Franklin worked on the first single bit RAM (Random Access Memory) storage devices.

  “Yes, we do make energy storage systems. Let me give you a little background on the company.” Vince began and proceeded to recite the publicly available information that Mick had already committed to memory. Vince then paused and continued. “We are very interested in getting your help with a problem that we are having. Our servers have been attacked, and some of them compromised. The signature appears to be one that others haven't seen before. A few other consultants have drawn a blank.” Mick suppressed a smirk and the urge to ask if he were talking about Miles, his co-panelist. He would be able to find out later. “At your earliest convenience, we'd like you to come out to New Mexico and start work. I've had a standard contract drawn up but couldn't find a fax number or postal address for you.”

  Keeping his countenance, Mick asked for Vince's admin contact information so he could be in touch about establishing a secure shared document server for the contract and other legal and technical documents.

  “By the way, just so you are not surprised, I'll be conducting a Level 2 background check on you.” Mick began. “I will expect something similar from you, unless you have government clearance, in which case you could simply ask them about me,” Mick explained. He had his own mechanism for learning when someone was investigating him, so he always was up front with his clients in case they had similar mechanisms. One couldn't be too careful these days, Mick mused, then thought of some of his even more paranoid friends, and amended the thought to generally one couldn't be too careful.

  The conversation waned and a suitable day two weeks away was chosen for Mick's visit to New Mexico, after his trip to Seattle the following week. On the walk back to the conference, Mick stopped to examine a motorcycle parked on the sidewalk. At first, he had difficulty identifying even the manufacturer, since the bike had been heavily customized as was common in Nihon. It had a new gas tank, fenders, and seat with all branding removed. Even the wheelbase had been extended in the rear swing arm. He identified a common Yamaha type of carburetor, wide profile tire, and was able to guess the model, giving him some satisfaction. He felt an itch in his right wrist, missing riding his favorite Ducati motorcycle back in New York City. During this visit he had enjoyed seeing lots of motorcycles, although few Italian. Mick was pleased to see so many bikes that weren’t Harleys – his least favorite brand of motorcycle. A check of the weather forecast back home made him happy, as Saturday was forecast to be clear; he should be able to ride when he got home.

  Later in the day, Mick's own presentation went well, discussing some new ideas he had been exploring lately. Even though he had done it a thousand times, Mick still felt a few butterflies just before speaking and a satisfaction when it was over and he felt he had made a connection with his audience.

  Chapter 4.

  From the Security and Other Lies Blog:

  How can I make my email communication more secure? I_heart_raptorz

  Email in general is completely insecure, but using encryption software such as PGP can make it much more secure, I_heart_raptorz, and I use it all the time. Using encryption, I can send an email that no one besides the recipient can read. By checking the digital signatures on emails from my friends and colleagues who also use PGP, I can verify that they sent the email, and that the message content has not been tampered with along the way. If you have ever received an email with the phrase "Begin PGP Signature" in the message, followed by a bunch of numbers and letters, then you have received a PGP signed email. Here’s how PGP works.

  PGP software (which, BTW, stands for Pretty Good Privacy) is an add-on to your mail application. Whenever you receive an email that has been signed or encrypted using PGP, the software automatically checks the signature and/or decrypts the message. You need to create a PGP key pair in order to digitally sign emails that you send. A key pair is the combination of two large numbers uniquely generated by you. The numbers appear to be random digits, but are in fact related mathematically. You keep one number secret (known as your private key) and you publish the other number (known as your public key) in a key directory, on a web page or key server. You can also share your public key with your friends and colleagues. As long as you keep your private key secret, you can use it to secure your email. Here’s how it works:

  To digitally sign an email, PGP performs a mathematical function known as a hash to produces a message digest – a fixed length representation of the contents of the message. The private key is then used on the message digest to produce the digital signature, which is then included in the email after the "Begin PGP Signature" message. The recipient of the email can verify the signature using PGP by performing a similar operation using your public key. If the operation works, the signature is validated, and the recipient knows you sent it. Or at least the recipient knows that the sender knew your private key!

  Encryption works in a similar way. If someone wants to send you an encrypted email that only you can read, they fetch your public key, perform some mathematical operations on the message using the public key, then send the encrypted results instead of the message – it just looks like gibberish as it goes over the Internet. To decrypt the message, you use your private key, and voila! You, and only you, can read the message.

  So to use PGP, you just need to install the application, keep your private key secret, make your public key available to those you communicate with, and then get your friends to do the same.

  Good luck, I_heart_raptorz, and send me a PGP signed email when you are up and running!

  -> Your question not answered this week? Argue for your vote on the Shameless Plugging area of our discussion forum.

  Chapter 5.

  Mick O'Malley – enjoys slurping ramen in noodle restaurants. (2 comments)

  The next morning, Mick received a response from Vince to arrange the details of their upcoming meeting. This time, Vince had managed to sign his mail properly with PGP – a good sign for the future.

  Being Wednesday, it was time for Mick to change all his passwords. He thought for a few minutes then typed:

  A11urBasesDontblong2us

  Mick borrowed a butane lighter from a smoker and used it as a makeshift soldering iron to repai
r the broken Ethernet connector in the NOC, restoring full Internet connectivity and making the techs happy.

  Later, he was listening to a rather dull discussion of attack classifications when someone sat down next to him. He looked over and saw it was Kateryna.

  “Good morning, Mick,” she said quietly.

  “Good morning,” he replied evenly.

  “Enjoying the presentation?” she asked, leaning towards him. Today she was wearing white jeans with a wide belt, and a denim shirt, and looked pretty good. And, he could smell her perfume, not a common thing in this country where cigarette smoke seemed to infuse everything. He flashed a mock frown at her and she smiled at him, producing an instant reaction. “I have a couple of questions I'd like to ask you – could we get a coffee?” He said yes without a moment's hesitation and followed her out of the room.

  “I have overall design responsibility for our company’s future firewall products,” she began as they sat down with their coffees, “and I'm having trouble figuring out how they can handle new services such VoIP and video conferencing. Here’s the problem.” Kateryna launched into a description of the problems she was having.

  Mick listened to her description, occasionally interrupting with clarifying questions. He made some suggestions that he thought were fairly obvious, but, judging by Kateryna’s reaction, apparently were not. A half an hour flew by as they conversed over their coffees, and the topic wound down.

  “Wow – this has been really, really helpful, Mick. Thanks a lot!” she said with feeling.

  “My pleasure, Kateryna,” he replied, smiling at her.