Counting from Zero

by Alan B. Johnston

  “Please, call me Kat,” she responded.

  “My pleasure, Kat.”

  They passed the next few minutes in silence, as Kateryna thought hard about her firewall problem, and Mick thought hard about her.

  Then he noticed Kateryna looking past him, and turned to see Liz eyeing him with a curious look. He got to his feet.

  “Liz, come over and meet Kat. Kat, this is Liz,” he started.

  “We met earlier this morning,” Liz said as she shook hands with Kateryna. “Hi Kat.”

  “Nice to see you again, Liz. Mick is helping me with some firewall issues...” she began.

  “Really?” Liz replied, giving Mick a look.

  “Ah… why don't you join us?” Mick asked. As Liz was making up her mind, Kateryna glanced at her mobile and announced she had another meeting and had to run. She took her leave as Liz sat down and ordered her drink.

  “I had no idea you were so interested in firewalls...” Liz began. Mick rolled his eyes.

  “I was just helping her with a few issues – she did help us last night during the zero day...” he replied.

  “Sure. Whatever. Look, Mick, I’m not going to make things difficult for you. I think I have a good idea of where things stand between us,” she replied. She quickly turned the conversation to her shopping yesterday and about an industry acquisition that was announced a few hours earlier in the press.

  Is that it? Maybe this week won’t be so bad…

  After lunch, Mick spent a few hours writing some computer code for his open source project. He did it to relax, the way others might flip channels on a TV.

  Next time he checked his mail, he saw one from Kateryna thanking him for his assistance. He noticed that her PGP key had been signed by Gunter and he made a mental note to ask him about her, as he must have met her previously. She asked if he were free for dinner; he replied that he wasn't as he and Lars had plans. He almost asked Lars if she could join them but came to his senses.

  Later that evening, after enjoying their meal, Lars was detailing his latest discovery.

  “Did you see the woman in the men's toilet?” he announced much louder than he perhaps should have.

  “You mean the cleaning woman?”

  Lars nodded and continued. “I was standing there draining the lizard, and life is good, you know, when this cleaning woman walks into the men's room and right past me! She did mumble something, which might have been 'Please hide your pecker as I'm coming through' but I don't know. She cleaned the sink and worked away in the corner where there was a cabinet. When I left she was cleaning the urinal right next to some guy… What is up with that?”

  “I agree – it is strange. It’s a shock, like you feel when you accidentally walk into the wrong bathroom.” Lars raised an eyebrow. “Or so I'm told…” Mick trailed off.

  “Now she was old and ugly. If they are going to have a woman there, why not a better looking one?” Lars continued.

  “Did you see the latest security vulnerability disclosure by Maddox?” Mick asked, wanting to change the subject.

  “Yeah, that jerk only wants attention. It’s not like he doesn't know the right way to do things...” he started. They were discussing the process whereby a security researcher first reports a newly discovered vulnerability to the affected company, giving the company time to release a patch. The general etiquette of the industry was that once the company has had time to write and deploy a patch, the researcher is free to announce the vulnerability and claim the credit. Some, such as John Maddox instead flouted the rules when it suited them, announcing vulnerabilities before the system or product could be patched or fixed. When done irresponsibly, this could result in a zero day attack, similar to the one from the previous day.

  Back at the hotel, Mick and Lars were heading to the elevator when Mick spotted Kateryna in the hotel bar. He changed course, waving goodbye to Lars.

  “Hey,” he said sitting down next to her and was rewarded with a glimpse into her eyes.

  “Mick! I was just thinking about you,” she replied, “I had one or two more firewall questions... if you were still willing?”

  “Sure, fire away, and that is my last pun, I promise...”

  Mick admired Kateryna’s methodical and analytical approach that came out in the way she asked her questions. They talked on other topics, and in almost no time, it was last call, with the staff making polite noises for the last few sharing their custom to finish up.

  “Do you feel like a walk?” Mick asked her.

  “OK – I could use the exercise,” she replied.

  They set off into the night and ended up wandering for hours through the wet streets.

  “I love how safe I feel wandering around in the dark around here,” she said after a few blocks. “Nihon somehow feels both foreign and familiar at the same time.” Mick smiled to himself – someone had obviously clued her in on their little Nihon/Japan word game.

  “I know what you mean. Are you an only child?” he asked.

  “No I'm the youngest of four – two brothers and one sister. Believe it or not, I was a bit of a tomboy when I was young. Why?”

  “You a tomboy? That is hard to imagine. And you are the baby of the family – I see. I have a theory that birth order plays a major role in personality. Myself I'm youngest of two with an older sister.”

  They waited at a pedestrian crossing for the light to change. There were no cars in sight, but this was Nihon, so they waited patiently with a few other locals.

  “It's funny – you are so different from how I thought you’d be…” she began.

  “Oh, and how did you expect me to be?”

  “I don’t know, its just you are well known for your, well...” she paused for a moment, “paranoia –”

  “I'm not paranoid.”

  “I know bad choice of word – my English sometimes fails me. More like overly cautious and careful.”

  “When you know how much information is being compiled about you and by whom...”

  “Sure, sure. Privacy. Opt out. Blah, blah,” she said smiling.

  “Did you say blah, blah? Is that a technical term, Dr. Petrescu?” he replied. She smiled and changed the subject.

  “So can you speak the language here?” she asked.

  “Besides ‘konichiwa’ and ‘arrigato’… no. And you?” he asked, but she just shook her head. Despite his own international background Mick spoke no languages besides English. It was a source of shame to him, but it wasn't for lack of trying. Over the years, he had tried to learn French (two difficult years of required classes in high school), Italian (a month of night classes to impress a girl), and Irish (listening to Gaelic sporting match commentaries and hearing his father talk and swear), but none of it lasted. He also had learned a little Latin, but that was from his interest in the origins of words, not because he expected to spend time in the Vatican. Of course, as a computer geek he ‘spoke’ multiple computer languages, but this didn't count.

  “So what do you do when your mobile is off?”

  “Hmm. Well, for fun, I ride motorcycles.”

  “Ah, a big American bike...” Kateryna replied and stretched her arms out in front of her, and acted as if she were clutching at the ground while dangling over a snow ledge on a glacier. Mick couldn't help laughing.

  “No, no – I mainly have Ducatis – Italian works of art, although I do have a vintage Yamaha as well.”

  “How many bikes do you have?”

  “Seven currently, could be eight depending on how an auction goes later today...”

  “One for every day of the week?”

  “More like one for all my moods: cruiser, sport, off road, café racer. I have a large garage and work on them myself. I have a decent machine shop as well.”

  “Really? I would not have pictured you as the grease monkey.”

  “I do like getting my hands dirty. I like working on bikes because they are so small and simple. Cars today have so much computerization and emissions control that
you need a computer to work on them. I much prefer doing mechanical things such as re-jetting a carburetor or adjusting gear ratios. I've always felt the carburetor was the technological equivalent of the CPU to the Age of Petroleum or whatever they will call the twentieth century. Now that I think of it, all my bikes are from last century…”

  “I'm sure I don't know anything about any of that but I could see how riding could be fun. And the clothing seems interesting...”

  Mick suddenly had a vision of Kateryna wearing leathers, and shaking her long, dark hair free as she removed her helmet...

  “... so do you?” she repeated.

  Mick recovered, realizing she had asked about his helmet-wearing policy.

  “Of course! I'm not an idiot! So what is your hobby?” he asked.

  “I guess it is photography. I was crazy about it in my teens, although I haven’t had as much time lately for it,” she replied.

  “Wow! You’re a photographer? That's great! What kind?” Mick asked.

  “I've done it all at one time: journalism, studio, art. I love both ends of the technology spectrum: from advanced digital imaging on the computer, to pinhole photography, just like they used to do in the nineteenth century.”

  “Very cool.”

  They had walked a long way through the streets but Mick suppressed the urge to fire up his GPS. This walk would just have to take its course.

  Much later than either thought possible, they came back to the hotel.

  Why can I talk for hours with this woman yet still feel as if there were so much more to talk about?

  Saying good night to her in the lobby suddenly felt a little embarrassing to Mick in a ninth grade sort of way.

  The next morning, on his caffeine constitutional, Mick ran into Lars, who was photographing a sign in front of a store.

  “Mick, did you know that in Kanji there are the equivalent of both Serif and Sans Serif fonts? It has taken me a while, but I think I can identify the main font types now. My favorite one is the font you see on store fronts – like this one – it has rounded strokes, designed to look like the characters were drawn with a felt tip pen!”

  “Yeah, it is pretty cool here, I must say,” Mick replied.

  Mick saw Kateryna later that day after she had finished speaking. He thought her presentation was good: concise, to the point, and with a clear message. Liz had been sitting next to him – watching him for a reaction, he suspected. At the end, she had asked Kateryna a question. Mick realized that was probably the first time Kateryna had seen him in the audience, as he knew how bright the podium lights were. It was a tricky question but she handled it with aplomb. He smiled to himself, proud of her.

  That afternoon he visited the atomic bomb (or A-bomb, as they called it) museum, and Peace Park in Hiroshima. It was an emotional experience for Mick. The museum, he felt, was balanced, unlike the Yushukan War Museum he had visited in Tokyo on a previous visit. Although the museum did not discuss how the war started, it did talk about the military role of Hiroshima and about the planning for resistance against the Allied invasion of Nihon. The museum walls also detailed the rebuffed U.S. attempts to negotiate unconditional surrender in the days leading up to the dropping of the bomb. The planning of the bombing was chillingly documented with memos from the U.S. War Department and the White House, laying out the options and decision points as if it were just another policy issue. Discussions of site selection were particularly chilling with mentions of Kyoto and Tokyo Bay that shocked Mick. Also displayed were memos about the policy of avoiding conventional bombing of candidate cities – done to maximize the accuracy of bomb damage assessment, as if it were needed. Also amazing were memos expressing concerns that the price tag of building the bomb, the Manhattan project, could become a political liability if the war ended before the bomb was finished and used in battle.

  Mick wondered about the flight crew of the B-29 Flying Fortress, called Enola Gay, who dropped the bomb. He shed a couple of tears in the museum watching the film of the bombing taken from an observation B-29. A single photograph enlarged to life size conveyed what could have only been a fraction of the horror and shock of the survivors in the immediate aftermath. The second part of the museum displayed the history and technology of nuclear weapons and the efforts at arms reduction and disarmament. The third part was kind of an archaeology exhibit, with artifacts, mockups and dioramas. It reminded him of Pompeii, except instead of a natural eruption, it was the violent culmination of a bloody decade of war in the Pacific. Usually, it took centuries to produce the kind of ruins he was walking through. In this case, it took a fraction of a second, and you could meet and talk to survivors. The atomic bomb was an incredible weapon, and its use changed world history.

  There were some other westerners at the museum, although most of them seemed to be Europeans judging by their accents. The museum was crowded with school kids, normally the kind of thing that annoyed him, but not here.

  Bring more school kids, pack the place, see everything, know your own history!

  He wandered the grounds of Peace Park. He was not very impressed with the architecture and artwork but that was OK. The famous A-bomb dome building brought back the tears, a welling that made it hard to see or swallow. The skeleton frame of the dome had survived the detonation, as few structures did. This was because the center of the blast, the hypocenter, was almost directly overhead – so close the blast forces were nearly vertical, instead of the horizontal ones that knocked down the other structures a little further away from the center. Mick couldn't photograph the dome; he just felt it would convey too little. In his mind he could only see the building against the flat plain of complete devastation in the black and white photos. He didn't begrudge others taking their photographs, or the band down by the river singing Beatles love songs. This wasn't a place he could judge anyone.

  It took a bit of searching and the use of his GPS but he found the hypocenter, the spot at which some 6ØØ meters in the air, the dynamite trigger had fired a slug of uranium into a larger ball of uranium, setting off the chain reaction. He found he was able to photograph this spot because there was just a small monument covered in colorful paper cranes on a busy street next to a hospital. Nothing original remained from that day – everything had been rebuilt.

  It was so hard for Mick to imagine: all those years of secret work on the other side of the world being suddenly revealed on one fateful day, and it happened right here, where he had walked all afternoon.

  Later that evening he had dinner with Lars, Liz, Gunter and a few other colleagues. He didn't mention his afternoon visit. He forgot to ask Gunter about Kateryna. He retired early with his thoughts.

  The conference wrapped up the next day. Mick didn't talk to Kateryna again, but he did see her a few times in various sessions. On the long flight back, he found his thoughts drifting from his book to her.

  Chapter 6.

  From the Security and Other Lies Blog:

  Is it possible to make my VoIP and video calls over the Internet secure? Raptorznest

  The answer to this is a definite yes if you use secure communication software and tools!

  Just like your bank information, personal details, and passwords should never be sent over the Internet without being encrypted, your voice and video communication should not be sent so that anyone can listen, watch, or record you. This is especially critical for wireless communication. In the early days of analog mobile phones, anyone with a radio scanner could eavesdrop or record conversations in their vicinity. Unfortunately, many Voice over IP (VoIP) and video communication tools do not use encryption. I would absolutely NEVER use such services that have so little regard for your privacy.

  Secure VoIP and video services encrypt the voice and video packets over the Internet, preventing others from listening in or recording your sessions. Personally, I only use open source programs and tools built on standard protocols and algorithms. This way, I can make sure there are no 'back doors' - hidden ways for someone to acces
s otherwise secure communication. The only way to be sure is if the source code is verified.

  With a good VoIP security protocol such as ZRTP, I can even verify myself that the call is secure and that no one is listening in or recording my call. This is done by reading out a short string that is generated for each call and displayed on the screen, such as 'Clockwork Pegasus' to the other party in the session. This string is a word representation of the encryption key used for the session, is used to secure the call. If the words on my screen match the words displayed to the other party, then we know our call is secure.

  The main downside of using secure communications software is that both sides must have it. Usually, I will have a short introductory conversation with someone without it, and I will send a link to download the right software and use it for our future sessions. And of course, if your VoIP call goes into the telephone network, then any encryption will end at the gateway, and your call will be unencrypted the rest of the way.

  Also, note that no security protocol or application can protect you against a bug installed on your phone, or a listening device in the room where you are talking.

  So, Raptorznest, make sure your VoIP and video calling is encrypted, and encrypted using published standards. With the right software, you can have level of security on your personal conversations that until recently was only available to heads of state and spies.

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

  Chapter 7.

  “Can someone explain what the hell is going on here?” boomed the baritone voice. All eyes were on the man in the U.S. military uniform as he looked up and down the table, waiting for an answer.

  “Sir, have you read the report?” someone ventured.