Counting from Zero

by Alan B. Johnston

  It was a frosty morning, and Mick saw the sun rise over the fields as he hiked towards town. He came over the crest of a hill and Penzance opened up below him. He recalled a long weekend getaway in Penzance with his parents many years ago; the happy memories warmed him up even more.

  Mick didn’t need the GPS to find the main street in town.

  As Mick walked through the streets, he soaked up the English cityscape: the shops, the buses, the smaller cars zipping along on the “wrong” side of the road to his Americanized eyes. There were also lots of motorbikes, scooters, and taxis. Feeling a little cold, he stopped at a small shop and bought a warmer hat and gloves. In another shop, he bought two prepaid mobiles with data plans. He activated the phones then removed their SIM cards. He added them to his small collection – about two dozen all together. He put the SIM card in his mobile, reprogrammed it, and was online again. He planned to switch SIMs every day or so to make his wireless Internet access more difficult to trace.

  Mick took a moment to send a mail to Ian saying “The eagle has landed,” their non-original phrase to indicate he had made it safely ashore, along with the coordinates of the buried wetsuit and gear.

  At a bookshop, he flipped through various motorcycle, racing, and sailing magazines. He was killing time before he caught his train to London, and he needed to get his ‘land legs’ back.

  Stopping at a café, he sat at a table by the window and sipped tea. He never drank tea in America – it just wasn’t safe. Here, however, he knew it would taste just like his mother made it: hot, strong, with lots of milk – not weak, strange colored or tasting, or with lemon!

  He continued walking down to the waterfront. There were some other visitors and couples strolling, as well as some Korean tourists. He saw various working vessels and ships moored there, and a couple of pleasure boats as well. Mick wondered how Ian and Mariana were doing in Plymouth, just a few kilometers up the coast. They were hopefully moored and through all their customs paperwork. Perhaps they were planning for a night out at a pub. He already missed being aboard Gypsy Moth with his shipmates, but didn’t dare visit them; they had done him a huge favor by bringing him here, and he didn’t want to risk getting them into trouble.

  Sitting in a nearly deserted park, he decided to finally contact Kateryna. He knew from her social network that she was traveling in Northumbria in Northern England.

  “Mick! How are you?” she asked, her face filling his mobile screen. The quality was obviously inferior to their usual desktop video setup, but it wasn’t bad. As his video was also lower quality, Kateryna knew right away he was traveling as well. “Or should I say, where are you?” she added.

  “Would you believe Penzance?” he replied. The quizzical look on her face made him continue. “In Cornwall… England?”

  “No, really? How did you? Really?” was all she could reply, making him laugh.

  “Yes, really! I’ll be in London tonight. I’ll see you at the conference!”

  “OK, so forget the conference, congrats on getting your No-Fly problem sorted!”

  “Actually, I haven’t… I didn’t fly. Would you believe, I sailed? I set out twenty-eight days ago from Charleston on my friend’s cruising catamaran, and voila! Here I am,” he explained, enjoying himself. Kateryna was speechless. After a short pause, he continued, “So how do you like the North? Did you visit Lindisfarne yet? It is well worth a visit!”

  “Ah, I like it a lot... you sailed? You sailed the Atlantic Ocean to get here? Just for the EuroSecurity conference? You truly are crazy! Did you have any problems with customs and immigration?” she asked.

  “Let’s just say it went swimmingly. And yes, I came here for the conference, but also I’m meeting someone here about my latest project... I’ll explain when I see you in person.”

  “Wow – that is amazing! I can’t believe I’ll be seeing you tomorrow night, Mick.” Mick hoped the flush he felt going through his body at her mention of his name didn’t show over the video. He reminded himself that he was still upset with her over her deception.

  “Me, neither. Well, I’ll let you get back to your holiday. By the way, don’t tell anyone else – I want to surprise everyone!”

  “Of course! Liz was just telling me the other day how much she was going to miss you at this conference... Everyone has been talking about you. It seems you are some kind of fixture... or mascot.”

  “Thanks… I think?” Mick replied. “Until Sunday, then!”

  That afternoon he walked to the Penzance train station and caught a First Great Western train to London. He found the trip was very civilized and comfortable. The English countryside felt very familiar to him, but he knew London would feel almost like home. He wondered if perhaps later in the week he would have a chance to visit some cousins and family friends.

  Mick knew from his social network where Lars was staying and which pub he was frequenting tonight. Alighting at Paddington Station, he transferred to the Tube, the unofficial name for London’s underground railway. After studying the map for a minute, he noticed the font and made a mental note to ask Lars about it. He rode to Piccadilly station, where he emerged into the crowded streets for the short walk to where Lars was hanging out.

  He noticed a large percentage of the traffic was cabs. The congestion tax that had to be paid to drive a car into central London seemed to be having the desired effect of reducing traffic. He surprised Lars who was leaning on the bar with his elbow.

  “Bloody hell, I can’t believe you are here!” was his greeting from Lars.

  “Yeah, great to see you, as well!” he replied. “Hey, I don’t have a room to stay in. Can I camp out in yours?”

  “Sure, Mick! You are lucky my room got upgraded to a suite with two beds in it or you’d be on the floor…”

  “And you think you got that complementary upgrade by chance?” Mick asked, grinning at Lars. “I upgraded your reservation for you…”

  “No way! You are too much, Mick!” Lars replied, shaking his head. “So what’s up? I thought you weren’t coming?”

  “I’ll explain as we walk,” he promised, but he only told Lars half the story. He left out his ‘interview’ with the government, his financial difficulties, and Turing. He would have like to tell Lars, but he didn’t want to involve him in any further.

  At the hotel, he asked Lars to check with reception to see if anything had arrived. Lars returned with a bag and a puzzled look. Mick was pleased to have his luggage, which had been sent on by Ian. Up in the room, he was excited to retrieve his computer, which had nothing on it besides the operating system. He had performed a disk wipe on the solid state storage before he packed it on Gypsy Moth. He knew that a disk wipe was much more secure than reformatting, as it writes new data to every storage location, multiple times, making recovery of information virtually impossible. Just deleting files on a disk does nothing more than removing a pointer from the disk directory index – all the information is still on the disk, and can be retrieved by a data recovery expert. Mick was not willing to risk his private information falling into the wrong hands.

  He established a secure connection to his servers on the Internet and restored all the files and folders on his computer from a disk image backup. Less than an hour later, he was up and running again. He looked over the latest decrypts from the botnet.

  Mick checked in with his social network, giving what he hoped was a final less-than-truthful posting. He learned Liz was flying an ever-so-long Dallas-Heathrow non-stop flight. Kateryna was still traveling south on the train towards London. There were no recent postings from Gunter.

  Lars had already picked up his conference registration badge, so Mick was able to make a reasonable facsimile that would give him access to most conference venues without having to register, or pay. It felt wrong, but he couldn’t take the risk.

  The next day, Mick took it easy and fully adjusted to life on land. He had a nice video call with Sam. Instead of reading, she asked Mick for stories about England and
London, and about their relatives. By the end of the conversation, she had moved England up two places on her list.

  The fun Mick had in the evening surprising everyone at the pre-conference social event almost made all his No-Fly difficulties worth it. Liz had screamed and then hugged him. Kateryna did a good job of acting surprised to see him. He felt a little like the prodigal son. Even his nemesis Miles came over to talk and was strangely pleasant. All the while, Mick kept a lookout for Turing, hoping that he hadn’t heard that Mick wasn’t coming. Of course, with all the attention Mick was getting, he couldn’t really tell if anyone in particular were watching him, as nearly everyone was, just out of curiosity.

  It’s a shame I can’t present on my current project – that would generate some buzz! Hopefully, after it is all over, I’ll be able to share the work. Or not.

  Although he really wanted to get back to his decrypts, Mick agreed to go to a pub with a group including Lars. They set off walking down Oxford Street until they found a street with a sufficient density of pubs to commence their crawl. Mick had yet to detect any signs of surveillance, which either meant there was none, or it was being done very professionally. He knew it was risky being in public, and that eventually the U.S. Government would learn he was here. However, right now making contact with Turing was more important. And for that to happen, he needed to be seen to be at the conference. For a few minutes, he reflected on his electronic trail since departing Manhattan; he could not find any obvious mistakes that would make it easy to track him. This thought reminded him to switch SIM cards in his mobile again.

  Mick mused that there were few places as good as London for a pub crawl, although perhaps Melbourne, Australia was close. Mick bought his ‘shout’ or his round of drinks early, thus allowing him the freedom to leave when he wished. To leave a pub before taking his turn of buying drinks for the whole group was an unforgivable breech of etiquette that Mick couldn’t possibly commit. A little later when he told Lars he was retiring early, Lars followed him out of the pub and into the street to talk.

  “Stay a while longer, Mick. There’s a lot I want to tell you...” Lars began.

  “Yeah, like what?” Mick replied.

  “Well, for one thing, I’ve been trying to track down Jasinski – you know, the one that helped figured out the mail server zero day we worked on? Well, this guy must be a Halloween ghost or something. I haven’t been able to find out anything about him or find anyone who knows about him. You and I know that someone with his skills doesn’t just come out of nowhere. I’m puzzled, but I’m going to keep searching.”

  “That’s interesting, Lars. Keep me posted on what you find out.”

  “Will do, mate,” Lars replied.

  “I really do need to turn in,” Mick replied.

  “OK. Well, I’d better get back to my drink! Have a good evening – I’ll try not to wake you when I return!” Lars saluted, turned, and held open the door for a group of chattering young women who were entering the pub. He winked at Mick, and then followed them in.

  Mick enjoyed the walk back to his hotel. London really felt right to him. Despite living in the greatest city in the world, he could still miss London at times like this.

  The next day, there was the usual slew of industry announcements, gossip, and rumors making the rounds at the conference. Unlike Hiroshima, Seattle, or Vegas, this conference had an exhibition floor where various vendors and companies showed off their latest hardware and software products. Mick did a quick tour through to see whether there was anything new or exciting, or any good giveaways. He avoided the booths that were scanning barcodes; his barcode looked legit but would never validate. Besides, he got enough spam. At the very least, the show floor was usually good for a laugh, to see what the clueless marketing types had come up with to hock their wares.

  He spotted Lars across the hall and waved. Lars was hanging out at a booth that, coincidentally, had the most attractive women handing out literature.

  He was heading out of the hall when he was surprised by Miles.

  “Mick – got a second?” Miles began.

  “Sure, what’s up?” he asked warily.

  “Umm… let’s talk in the speaker’s lounge,” Miles suggested, and they walked through the crowds, sitting down at a table in a small room.

  “Take a look at this,” Miles said, handing his mobile to Mick. Mick quickly read from the screen:

  ... Because of this appalling state of affairs, I am forced to take action. In three days I will demonstrate a series of zero day attacks against a variety of open source Internet applications. Some may think this irresponsible, but perhaps this will finally get the community to wake up and take action!

  Mick O’Malley

  He looked up at Miles in confusion and anger. Mile’s software showed that the digital signature validated – according to the crypto, this was an authenticated email message sent by Mick!

  “Did you –” he began.

  “Definitely not!” Miles interrupted. “I received it this morning as an attachment from an anonymizer service. I think whoever sent this wants me to distribute it for them.”

  “And are you?”

  “No, of course not. I know you didn’t write this! I knew you didn’t write the ISW mail either, but that one was mostly harmless. This… this mail could get you a trip to Scotland Yard!” Miles explained. Mick nodded, somewhat surprised by Miles’ admission. Mick always assumed their antagonism was personal, but apparently, not this personal. “Do you have any idea who is doing this to you? Or why?”

  “Well, I have some clues... it relates to a contract I took on a while back.”

  Another private key compromise! Unbelievable!

  “Mick, there’s more,” Miles began, pausing for a moment.

  “More?” he asked.

  “Take a look at the forwarding mail... the full set of headers,” he paused while Mick examined the mail that had forwarded the forged note. It took him a moment, but he saw what Miles had seen.

  “What the hell!” he cursed, louder than he intended. He immediately stood up as others turned to look at him.

  “I know,” Miles began. “I’m really sorry, Mick. Don’t worry, I’m not going to do anything with this mail except archive it...” Miles was still talking as Mick left the room and sprinted down the hall. He stopped at the technical support desk for the conference. There was no one getting helped, so he was able to talk straight away to the young woman with bobbed dark hair.

  “May I borrow a small flathead and a Philips screwdriver, please?” he asked, catching his breath.

  “Sure, love. Here you go,” she said pulling two tools out of a case.

  He threw his computer on the table, flipped it over, grabbed a tool, and set to work removing the tiny screws on the case. He held his palm against the end of the driver and rapidly spun it around with the fingers and thumb of his other hand in a rapid motion, as if he were a mechanic in a Formula 1 pit stop. With all the screws out, he slid the other screwdriver between the join in the case and pried it open. In another moment, he had the keyboard disconnected from the motherboard – the main circuit board of the computer. He swore again, this time under his breath, staring at a tiny, evil-looking circuit board that was crimped onto the keyboard connector – a hardware keylogger. He ripped it off, dislodging the keyboard cable. Glancing up at the girl, he slipped it in his pocket. He removed the motherboard, extracted the sold state drive, then smashed the motherboard across his knee, bending and splintering it.

  The woman stepped back, aghast.

  He composed himself, then asked “Do you have a rubbish bin handy?” She lifted a trash can up from behind the counter, and he dropped the pieces into it, holding onto the case and the screen.

  “Sorry about that,” he replied. “I just really hated that computer!” he explained, then turned and walked away.

  Having removed the keylogging circuit, Mick knew that his computer was most likely secure again, but he just didn’t want to take
a chance his firmware or other chips had been tampered with. Plus, it had felt good to take out his anger.

  Who put the keylogger on my computer? And when?

  Whoever put it there knew everything he had typed: all his carefully chosen passwords, every mail, and every line of code he had written! This must have been how they stole his private key. The thought of it made him crazy with anger again.

  Mick now needed a new computer. Buying an off-the-shelf computer in a shop was obviously out – how could he be sure it didn’t also have a keylogger or other malware built into it? Mick located a few computer parts stores on his mobile. He ignored the closest and most obvious shop and instead chose one a little further out.

  Is my paranoia getting the best of me?

  He plotted a route there on the Tube and set out.

  Mick arrived nearly an hour later and set about building a new computer from scratch. He had kept the screen and his old case. The case was a one-off custom CNC case he designed himself last year, and was machined from a block of aluminum.

  First, he selected a motherboard. He chose the fastest processor ignoring the usual speed/battery life tradeoff. He selected RAM (Random Access Memory) and a flash drive – no hard drive needed. The video card was the hardest choice. He studied the specs for a few minutes before selecting one that seemed to have the right resolution for his screen. A keyboard (sans keylogger!) completed his new computer. He skipped the battery isle. Mick pushed the now full cart to the checkout.

  “Someone’s getting a fab new computer!” the checkout guy said, wowed by the set of components chosen by Mick. Mick didn’t really hear him as he handed over some pound notes. Mick asked whether he could use a work bench for an hour. The clerk nodded, and after completing the sale, took Mick to the back.

  Mick unpacked the components. He attached an anti-static guard to his wrist to ensure no static electricity buildup that could damage the sensitive electronic components. He worked quickly and completed the build in about half an hour. When he turned around, he was surprised to see a small crowd of employees on their lunch break watching him work. They scattered quickly.