Counting from Zero

by Alan B. Johnston

  “I have! But it is so full of CYA bull that I couldn’t follow it. I want someone to succinctly explain the situation, to make sure we are all on the same page. This committee needs to get to work!”

  “Well, sir… during their preliminary investigation of last week’s web server outage, UBK found evidence that their servers and networks were being targeted by the zero day.”

  “UBK, the subcontractor?”

  “Yes, for years they have been subcontracting all kinds of government services including prisons, call centers, and even some postal functions. Recently, they took over the IT operation of all U.S. non-secret government computers, data centers, and security.”

  “Why did their infrastructure fail so completely? Why is it so vulnerable?”

  “They claim that everyone in the industry was taken by surprise by the worm. It was an un-patched vulnerability that had been in the software for years, but this zero day attack exposed it.”

  “And we have outsourced all our IT infrastructure with them alone?”

  “Yes. The transition has taken eighteen months but is essentially complete. They are currently rolling out on-premise security for all government contractors.”

  The General swore.

  “Didn’t anyone point out the risk of this kind of outsourcing of critical government functions? If UBK can’t keep our IT systems up due to attacks, how will the government function? Don’t tell me, some did but they were ignored in the name of cost savings and smaller government, right?” The General paused and looked around the room. He desperately wished for some sunlight; he had been underground all day. “So what do we know about the attacks?”

  “Not much at all – it was a zero day targeted at web servers. We’ve asked UBK for their intrusion logs. It seems it was some kind of worm that spread incredibly quickly. An independent consultant named Mick O’Malley apparently found the root case and wrote a patch that fixed it. UBK claim they are currently at 97% deployment of the patch.”

  “Who do we think is behind the attacks?” the General asked. When no one answered, he continued. “The usual Russian groups?” No one responded. “The Chinese?” he ventured.

  “I don’t think so, sir, as it doesn’t have their usual signature. We need to analyze all the logs to know more. I wouldn’t count out the Russians, or their network of companies.”

  “Get logs from all the Internet Service Providers as well,” the General ordered. “Get everyone working on this. I can’t stand just sitting here waiting for the other shoe to drop. Dismissed!”

  The room quickly emptied out, leaving the General alone with his thoughts. He was not looking forward to briefing the National Security Council, but a cyber attack of this magnitude directed against the U.S. Government was not something that could be ignored.

  Chapter 8.

  Mick O'Malley – wonders when he will be finished lying awake in the single digits of the morning. Of course, he is enjoying using that time for brainstorming and general re-evaluation of his life to date. (1 comment)

  Mick squeezed the clutch and downshifted into first gear as he came up the hill to his workshop. He cut the motorcycle’s engine as he crossed the threshold of the garage. He put out the kickstand, turned the fuel petcock to the horizontal position and lifted his leg over the bike. His face felt a little flushed as he pulled off the helmet and placed it on the stainless steel counter top. His heart rate was slightly elevated, although still under the norm. His resting heart rate was nearly as low as a marathon runner's, and as a result he wore a tag around his neck to let emergency personnel know this fact. In short, he was very happy with his ride. He glanced at the GPS track stored on his mobile and shared it with his social network.

  It was a nice ride on his 1965 Ducati 25Ø Mark 1, café racer style motorcycle. It was one of his favorite bikes because of the way it rode with its short and low handlebars, and also for the bright orange paint. It felt good to be back home in the East Village, even if his bio-clock had not yet adjusted to New York City time.

  Deciding to have a shower later, he sat down in his office and swiveled in his chair. Two giant flat screens lit up and came to life. He received a message indicating that a package had arrived for him. Mick didn’t have any snail mail or package deliveries to his apartment – it all went to a service in a different neighborhood. The paper mail was automatically opened, scanned, and securely emailed to him, but he still had to pick up packages. He looked over the image of the shipping label, noticing the Australian customs declaration, filled in and signed by his uncle. His uncle was a serial inventor, and was always sending his latest and greatest to Mick to try out.

  Wonder what it is this time?

  Mick began the next day with his usual swim. When he started sailing small dinghies as a teenager, he had taken swimming lessons. These days, he was a strong swimmer, often swimming a few kilometers in a session. On the way back from the pool, he picked up the package from his uncle. Opening the package, he carefully removed a set of small round devices. Mick found a link to the code in the device which he followed. After examining the crypto for about an hour, he was satisfied.

  Not bad, Uncle, never know when I might need one of these.

  Later, he was pleasantly surprised to find himself invited to join Kateryna’s social network – he had been ‘friended’ by her. He reciprocated and was then able to peruse her profile and friends’ network.

  His first stop was her pictures. There were some nice ones of her and lots of other photographs, presumably that she had taken, including a few pinhole photographs. There were mainly travel pics which showed an interest in history, and an excellent eye for composition. There were very few pictures of her with other people – friends, family, etc. Mick realized this was true of his profile as well.

  In her friends’ network, he saw a few people he knew, including Gunter and Liz. Her postings read just like her conversation, although she seemed somewhat preoccupied with unusual combinations of foods – those postings seemed to generate the most comments and approvals.

  What would she conclude looking at my profile?

  Mick brought up his own profile and looked it over for a few minutes but without forming any conclusions. He was interrupted by the alerting of the secure telephone on his desk. It was his sister. They had a close relationship, and no matter how busy he was, Mick made the time to stay in touch with her.

  “Hi Jocelyn!” he answered.

  “Hey Alec,” she replied. “How was your trip?”

  Jocelyn was happy to hear a couple of stories from his trip. She made him promise to call his niece Sam again soon. When he hung up a few minutes later, he placed one more call to a local motorcycle dealer friend to make a few important arrangements for the week after next.

  Early the next week, Mick snaked his way through the JFK airport security line, heading to the gate for his flight to Seattle, Washington for yet another security conference, an invitation-only event for industry insiders and select security professionals. This was the first year he had been invited to speak, so Mick was excited.

  In the past, Mick had found airport security lines vaguely erotic – all that undressing, dressing, removing of belts and shoes. These days, though, the full-body searches by security personnel were well beyond erotic…

  As long as he could remember, Mick had always loved airports. Everyone there is on his or her way to somewhere exciting, or heading home to family and friends, bursting with stories and souvenirs. There are welcomes and reunions by the baggage claim. Husbands and wives picking each other up; the short kiss in the car perhaps just a prelude to a longer welcome home later in the evening after the children are asleep. Even the sometime tearful goodbyes at the security checkpoints didn't get Mick down – often it is a place where normal emotional reserve is abandoned in favor of a decent public display of affection. For some, perhaps it is a rare chance to find out how someone really feels about you, albeit as they are leaving... He had all kinds of happy memories of fligh
ts between London and New York, and flights to Melbourne to visit relatives. These days, he flew all around the globe for business. This morning, he was looking forward to the cool air of the Pacific Northwest – Seattle was one of his favorite cities.

  Through security, he camped out at his gate, waiting for the connecting flight to Chicago to board and take off.

  Regardless of the destination, Mick looked forward to flying – the longer the flight the better. Where else could he be guaranteed a certain number of hours of reading, thinking, and relaxing? He enjoyed the lack of interruptions, unless he sat next to a talker, but then he would pretend to speak very little English. He could usually finish a book on a short flight. On his longer transatlantic or transpacific flights, he would sometimes go through a couple of books. Despite their bulk and weight, Mick still preferred paper books over electronic books for his personal reading, although his friends thought he was slightly mad. He just liked the distinction it made between his professional reading, which was exclusively online and electronic, and his personal reading.

  Of course these days he always got upgraded to first or business class, but he loved flying even back when he always flew coach. His noise-canceling headphones, used to listen to music, separated him from the world.

  A few minutes later, as the plane accelerated down the runway, the overhead flat screen showed the groundspeed of the plane at 188 mph in archaic units. (For Mick, these units for speed were only slightly less out of date than his favorite – ‘furlongs per fortnight’.) Doing the mental math, Mick realized this was almost exactly the same as the top speed of his Shinkansen ride just ten days ago. Thinking of Nihon made Mick think of Kateryna, which made him smile to himself.

  Over the next few hours, the farms of the northeast gave way to the plains of the Midwest.

  The short stopover in Chicago was uneventful. Mick caught up on some technical journal reading he had been putting off. In seemingly no time, the plane was circling SeaTac Airport and preparing to land in Seattle.

  Having finished his reading, Mick relaxed and shut his eyes for a few moments. He thought about the security logs from the web server zero day the previous week. Besides his personal mobile and computing devices, Mick kept a couple of his own personal servers in data centers which he used to backup his files and manage his communication and mail. Besides the ‘Carbon is Poison’ web server compromise, he did find another one of his servers that had been compromised and had been acting as a spambot – a spam sending robot – automatically sending out hundreds of thousands of spam emails per hour into the Internet. Mick had not yet been able to figure out how this had happened.

  On the ground, he caught the light rail train to his hotel downtown. Mick very rarely rented cars – he almost exclusively used public transport, although he occasionally made other arrangements.

  Mick had expected Gunter to attend the conference, but Gunter had announced he was staying in Europe this week. Liz had corporate meetings while Lars was lying on beach in the Maldives. It would apparently just be him and Kateryna.

  For Mick, visiting Seattle was a caffeinated adventure. He always came away wishing some other local coffee brand had gone global instead of the one that did. Mick checked his location software, then headed for a café near his hotel. It was just an average coffee house for Seattle, but it was still better than any he frequented in New York.

  He found Kateryna sipping a cappuccino, and joined her after ordering an espresso.

  “Mick!” she called out, looking up at him. He really liked her accent, and the way she said his name, making it sound similar to ‘meek’. Mick enjoyed accents, and especially loved to listen to women speak in Nihon. He had a definite weakness for the sound of a southern Irish accent in a woman. And of course, the every-statement-is-a-question intonation of Australian women also drove him crazy. Then he wondered at this long list and whether he had some kind of aural fixation.

  “Hey Kat! Long time, no see.”

  “Yeah, this is getting to be a habit!”

  “What are you up to?”

  “Just putting the finishing touches on my presentation. I’ll show you mine if you show me yours?” she asked, suggestively flashing the screen at Mick. He chuckled and looked it over. It was a good presentation: clear and concise. The views didn’t exactly coincide with his own, but they were reasonable and well argued.

  “Very nice,” he replied. “Here’s mine.” He pulled up his own presentation, which was shorter, blunter, and somewhat controversial. Mick was determined to make the best of use of this platform. Besides, if he didn’t speak his own strongly held views, whose views should he speak?

  “Wow! You don’t pull any punches do you?” she asked, smiling at him as she leaned back in her chair. “I like it!”

  “Thanks!” he replied, and he meant it.

  They talked for a while about industry events as the sun went down.

  “Do you have any dinner plans?” Mick asked her. When she said no, he suggested a few good seafood places within walking distance, and they picked one and set off. Over the meal, Kateryna switched the conversation to more personal topics.

  “I was looking over your CV the other day. Unless my math is off, you started university pretty young, didn’t you?” she asked. Mick looked up from his plate.

  “Yep. I was fifteen when I started at Columbia. Due to my age, I was given permission to live at home instead of a freshman dorm.”

  “That still doesn’t quite add up – if you are twenty-four, and have three years industry experience after completing your doctorate…”

  “Well, I completed my undergraduate Comp Sci degree in three years, then my PhD in another three.”

  “So you really were a Wunderkind?”

  “Not really, I just found something I’m really, really good at.”

  “When did you move out from your parents’?”

  “I didn’t really. My parents died in an auto accident when I was fourteen. I was lucky that my sister was willing to be my co-guardian, so I lived with her.”

  “I’m so sorry – I didn’t know.”

  “Of course you didn’t. It seems like a long while ago. I’m really lucky to be so close to my sister. Even when she got married we have stayed close. We have lots of relatives in England, Ireland, and Australia, but here in the U.S. we only have each other. Are you close to your siblings?”

  “Not really, one still lives in Romania, the others are in Montreal. I’ve been living in San Fran for nearly two years now. I saw you were the founder of a startup – how did that happen?”

  “It came out of my research – my thesis advisor and I came up with some intrusion detection heuristics – basically algorithms that enable a business or government to tell if someone is attacking their network. I thought they were fairly obvious, but they weren’t, so we patented them and founded a startup to commercialize them.

  “We worked for nearly a year and had a product ready to ship when we were bought out. It was the CEO’s idea to shop the company even before we launched – I was against it. I made a lot of money, but the software never got deployed or used.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, two factors. There was a competing in-house product at the company that acquired us – their management made sure our software didn’t steal resources from their group. And the other was a series of patent lawsuits that competitors filed. They were all bull in my opinion, and I spent six months of hell with patent attorneys, giving depositions and answering questions. The net result was that I quit and I’ve been consulting ever since. It has been difficult getting established, as my views are seen as somewhat ‘alarmist’ as you know, but I think people are starting to realize what is out there, and what they need to do to protect themselves. Oh, and I just recently landed a really good consulting job that I am hoping will be the start of many.”

  “Congrats!”

  “Thanks! I can’t wait to start it – I’m off to New Mexico for at least a week.” Mick was amaze
d at how much he had opened up to Kateryna.

  Why am I telling her all this?

  “Well, I’m very impressed – our industry could use more people like you. My work must seem a bit boring and antiquated to you, but I enjoy it.”

  “No not really…” Mick began, then catching her eye, changed tack. “Well, a bit, yes. But your take on it is refreshing – I’m sure you are a bit of a loose cannon in your company.”

  “Loose cannon?”

  “Yeah, an old naval analogy – one of your own cannons, not properly secured, can cause a lot of damage below decks, even sink the ship,” he explained.

  “I get it. Yes, in my own way, I guess I am a bit of a loose cannon,” she replied happily.

  The conference went quickly the next day, and both Mick and Kateryna received positive feedback on their presentations. Mick hardly had time to think about anything besides all the business contacts he was making.

  “Are you OK?” Mick asked. He waited for a response from the blonde haired youngster sitting in the chair across from his. Mick was enjoying a not half bad espresso at a café when he heard the boy’s head hit the table with a thunk!

  “Yeah, yeah. I’m fine.” the boy mumbled, looking up, unfocused.

  “You don’t look fine…” Mick continued. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “I don’t know… Can you turn back time?” Mick resisted the urge to bring up special relativity.

  “Tell me what’s up,” Mick said instead, trying to encourage him.

  “OK. I just got this really awesome job, and it’s going great. The only thing is, my boss has this new idea that he wants to 'connect with employees using social media'…” he replied, using a funny voice as he imitated his boss.

  “He friended you?” Mick asked.

  “Yep, and he wants to know why I haven’t reciprocated yet… Dude – I’ve been railing on him to my friends since I started on the job. If he reads my posts, I’m doomed! Epic FAIL!” His head fell to the table again.