CypherGhost

by D S Kane

  The attendees buzzed in the background. “Quiet!” Fergusson sternly demanded. “Continue, please,” he said to the speaker.

  The spy nodded. “We’ve created a group called ‘Free Hackers Society,’ or FHS. We are the FHS and own the domain through a host of hidden holding companies, and we’ve used bots to operate it. About two hundred and fifty hacker bots, complete with individual personalities, simulating the activities of Anonymous, 4-chan, and other hacktivist organizations. Of course, we scripted the bots, and we totally control this organization. The goal of FHS is to enroll qualified black hats who we can later blame for the infrastructural damage that will occur in a hacker attack nasty enough to provoke dismay from the public and force a government reaction.”

  Fergusson interrupted the spy. “Why do you think the hackers won’t detect that you’re outsiders and not really hackers?”

  The spy smiled. “But we are hackers. This system was designed by a group of hackers, each one coding a small piece of the system. None understood how their piece fit into the system’s functioning. We paid them well, and hackers tend to need more money than anyone else. Most of these recruits weren’t from the United States, although some were. Most were black hats, but some were gray hats. So, I believe the only people who understood the system as an entity were the systems managers in charge of end-to-end testing. That would be me and several others in high-level management of this corporation.”

  Fergusson nodded. “Okay. I understand. What happens if we’re successful in totally setting up the hackers to do some real damage?”

  The spy took a few seconds to collect his thoughts. “Of course, we’ll use the mercenary division to complete the kinetic attacks. Done properly, the hackers we enroll will never even know they’ve been used until it’s too late. The kinetic events will be the types of terrorist attacks that have never before been tied to any hacker organization. The goal is to force the public into an anti-hacker frenzy. Once the government responds by passing the Anti-Terror Bill now sitting in a Congressional committee, the hackers will be defined as terrorists and the government can round up all the hackers and hold them in prison with no option for a trial. The remaining phases of this project can then be done without any hacktivist interference.”

  Fergusson kept the smile off his face. He pointed to the spy. “One question: What are the identities and current locations of the two hackers you’ve selected?”

  The spy nodded. “The most likely candidate tried to bring down an aircraft about a month ago. The hack failed because another hacker rebooted the flight control systems and the aircraft landed safely. We don’t know the name or location of the hacker who tried to bring the aircraft down, but finding both of them should become easier as the attacking hacker continues leaving a trail of devastation. We do know the name and current location of the hacker who saved the aircraft. Even better, as a result, we are developing a plan to manipulate the hacker who saved the aircraft. Any more questions?”

  Fergusson’s company, SSC, always worked for the highest bidder. Their biggest clients were two intelligence agencies of the United States government. Fergusson’s own division was responsible for projects in which computer security, psychology, and pharmacology took center stage. This meeting was important because several members of his board of directors were watching remotely from their own offices and homes using high-level crypto connections. Their access was through the videocam at the back of the conference room. The board members could also text him or call in with their questions.

  There were no questions from any of the attendees, and the spy continued with other projects in process and their current status. Fergusson felt his focus drifting, when one of the department heads asked the spy a few rapid-fire questions. “How are we following the second hacker? What do we know about this other person? And what are its implications to our company? What are the risks if this project goes sideways? Do we have any liability if this project fails?”

  Fergusson interrupted the spy and turned to the questioner. “We’re looking into it.”

  The spy muttered something about needing more data points before they could craft an analysis and then follow it with an action plan for the second hacker.

  Fergusson scowled and nodded his head.

  * * *

  From his seat in front of the fireplace at his Akron, Ohio, mansion almost a thousand miles away, SSC board member and founder Cyrus DeSpain frowned as the conference room emptied. His end of the connection was secured using crypto software, and his entire home was built as a Faraday cage. He checked his cellphone to ensure that his video recording of the meeting was now in the Documents folder in the phone’s encrypted micro-SD card. He always recorded his meetings and phone calls. When he met a contact face-to-face, the tie tack he wore had an embedded videocam he could turn on by touching his wrist watch. When he attended via Skype, the conference was automatically recorded by a DVR contained in his upstairs panic room.

  He wondered if SSC’s projects could muster enough critical mass to make the federal government stagger and fall.

  The larger plan had too many moving parts—unrelated events that had to come together for the plan to achieve his ultimate objective.

  The United States had had a good run. But recently, the poorer citizens in the country had begun doing more than merely complaining and protesting about their treatment. He’d watched the demonstrations on television as they devolved into riots. He feared an uprising—even a possible revolution.

  He stood and flipped a switch to light the fireplace. The light and heat permeated the room. He rubbed his hands.

  The government had become useless, an encumbrance to him and his corporate peers. They had unanimously decided to end the experiment of democracy.

  The previous year, both Russia and China had allied in an attempted joint invasion of the United States. Although the general public never discovered how close they had come to being turned into a slave colony, DeSpain and his corporate allies had moles within the government that had told him of the danger. No, the United States government had become a danger to even its own citizens. The time was right for a corporate replacement of the government. In fact, it might be the only way to save the country.

  What complicated the situation were the hackers. These white-hat hackers had revealed to the public how the government and private industry operated in tandem, threatening the smooth running of things. Zero-day bugs his corporate allies had placed within commercially available software were often found by the white hats before the government intelligence services could use them to secure the country. His entire plan was the equivalent of a giant zero-day bug, and hackers might discover his plan before he could implement it. The white hats had the capability to make it public knowledge.

  His cell chirped. He accepted the call and said, “Yes?”

  “Sir, we’ve received the shipment. Several large trucks filled with the things. What do you want me to do?”

  He placed his hands near the fireplace and smiled. The room was growing warmer. DeSpain took a deep breath. Phase two was ready to commence. “Ship the cartons in trucks to each of the new detention facilities. Make sure each facility has enough units to cover distribution to their entire population. Then commence phase two. Contact the Senator and have her liaise with the Congressman. Time is of the essence.” He terminated the call and faced the roaring fireplace. Soon, Washington will look like a fireplace filled with burning wood. He smiled.

  He paced before the the granite fireplace. There are still weak spots in the plan. Can one rogue hacker do all that the SSC needs? Will we need the second hacker? Might we need even more? He wasn’t sure.

  He pulled the continuous glucose monitor off his belt and scanned his current reading. Over two hundred. One hundred was normal. He punched in a command and it calculated the suggested insulin bolus to bring his blood glucose level back down to normal.

  Planning a government coup d’état was stressful, and stress made his blood
glucose levels rise unpredictably. A type 1 diabetic since he was twelve, he was already starting to see serious medical complications. Neuropathy, kidney disease, and heart problems were foreclosing his future. He had work to do, and probably not much time left.

  He missed his wife, long dead after the divorce. He missed his daughter. He’d not paid enough attention to them when he was building SSC. He wondered where his daughter was, what she was doing. He’d tried to find her but had failed. She had simply dissolved into the population after her boyfriend was arrested. The private investigators had told him it was likely she was dead. He wiped his eyes. It was too late to think about this now.

  He stared into the fireplace and thought of Washington DC, burning. And I am the only one who controls access to the fire extinguisher.

  PART II

  We face cyber threats from state-sponsored hackers, hackers for hire, global cyber syndicates, and terrorists. They seek our state secrets, our trade secrets, our technology, and our ideas—things of incredible value to all of us. They seek to strike our critical infrastructure and to harm our economy.

  —James Comey, FBI director

  In order to have greater visibility of the larger cyber threat landscape, we must remove the government bureaucratic stovepipes that inhibit our abilities to effectively defend America while ensuring citizens’ privacy and civil liberties are also protected.

  —Michael McCaul, chair, House Committee

  on Homeland Security

  CHAPTER 13

  November 30, 3:31 p.m.

  Private meeting room, Capitol Building,

  Washington DC

  In one of the sub-basements under the House of Representatives, the head of the small secret subcommittee, South Dakota’s Republican congressman Arthur Endor picked up the gavel. “This meeting of the Cyber Security Counterterrorism Intelligence Subcommittee is called to order. Note in the meeting minutes that present are Congressmen William Arborsmith, Robert Cordroy, myself, and our guest, the FBI Assistant Director for Counterterrorism, Bernhard Sicci. The first order of business is an intelligence briefing from Assistant Director Sicci.”

  Endor himself was nearly eighty years old and had served for three decades. The last three elections, he’d run unopposed, and his reelection campaigns needed to raise no funding. Oddsmakers in Las Vegas typically set odds of 1:30 or better for him each time, but given his declining health, odds of him living through another term in office were much lower.

  He thought that all he needed to do to earn another term was take care of the needs of his voters. He simply made sure they knew he would guarantee they could find employment. He was proud of his ability to limit his focus to that one issue.

  But recently, someone had discovered he had been skimming a considerable amount of cash from lobbyists’ contributions to line his own pockets.

  He had created this subcommittee at the demand of his blackmailer. He knew a few other legislators were also being compromised, but there was nothing anyone could do. Comply, or be indicted.

  Assistant Director Sicci was tall and willowy, wearing an impeccably tailored but actually inexpensive charcoal suit. He coughed as Endor passed him the microphone. “Let the minutes record that I was called here to expound on the domestic cyberwar issues that are presently becoming more important, and to inform this subcommittee on a need-to-know basis.” Sicci spoke for five minutes in terms Endor found confusing, obscuring facts and telling outright lies. Sicci claimed the FBI had drawn no real conclusions about what had happened, partially because a follow-on hacker attack had penetrated their arrest database and deleted all the records about the near-crash of the aircraft.

  As his patience evaporated Endor felt his face redden. “You aren’t being helpful. I kindly requested an explanation of the confusing terms you’ve used now and in the past. Most of us aren’t computer users and your terms need explanations we can understand. The definitions you have given us only made the confusion worse.”

  The assistant director replied, “I’ve already told you more than you have a need or right to know. Sorry. I can’t read any of you in on any more of this.”

  Endor said. “Then we’re done with you. Please leave now.”

  When Sicci had left the room, Endor looked away from the others at the meeting and mouthed the word “asshole.” He faced the microphone and said, “Our other order of business is to discuss the actions of Starborne Security Corporation. What is SSC’s current status on discovering the identity of the rogue hacker who tried to take down that aircraft?”

  Cordroy picked up a small stack of papers. “Still a work in process. Their latest report indicates they know the identity of the other hacker, the young woman who hacked the aircraft’s flight control system and saved the flight from crashing. But the mystery hacker who initiated the flight’s takedown is still unknown.”

  Endor nodded. “Will we be able to use either of these cyber criminals as examples to force Congress to pass the bill currently in subcommittee?”

  Arborsmith raised his hand. “I still am not sure this is a good idea. If word of what we’re doing gets leaked, we’ll all be facing difficult elections. Why can’t we just use what they’ve already done as evidence that hackers as a group need to be declared a special and more dangerous type of terrorist? I mean, it’s absolutely clear they need to be brought to account for all the damage they’ve already done.”

  Cordroy shook his head. “No. It’s too soon, and we need more to push the public opinion into compliance with our proposed legislation. Even if we can only get one more hacker to do something more heinous, we’ll have a much easier road.”

  Endor nodded. “Exactly. One more event we can use to publicly craft a list of them. The single event we currently have isn’t enough to begin crafting a public arrest warrant list. Of course, we already have records on over two million hackers, but there are probably many more. And right now, that second hacker may be seen as a hero, saving the lives of so many who were with her on that flight. We can’t let that happen. It would create a dialogue, not a massive condemnation. We need another event, and another hacker, before we can argue the generalization that all hackers are evil.”

  The three continued their debate for almost ten more minutes before they gave up.

  Endor called the meeting to a close. As he left the room and headed back to his office, he pulled his cellphone from his pocket. “I haven’t anything yet. It will take more time. We need more evidence. At least one more event.”

  The voice on the other side, someone he’d never met face-to-face, someone whose name and affiliation he didn’t know, someone who’d dropped several million dollars into his campaign PAC, said, “Don’t worry. I can control this.” Then his patron terminated their call.

  * * *

  The CypherGhost paced in her room at the cheapest motel in Palo Alto, which, all things considered, wasn’t at all cheap. Everything in the so-called Silicon Valley was very expensive.

  Her notebook computer sat on the room’s desk. On its Windows Command screen, in green on black, it told the story of how close the government’s captive professional white-hat hackers had come to backtracing her. She hadn’t expected their response so soon, and she hadn’t anticipated their being effective in closing in on her. They had ponied up serious money and manpower a lot faster than she had believed possible. She wouldn’t underestimate them again.

  “Too close,” she muttered. She’d need to craft another online identity and a new entire set of VPN support stubs. Tons of work. She hadn’t expected this for at least another two weeks.

  They will come looking for me. I must hurt them so bad they become unimportant and powerless before they can find me.

  She also noted the emergence of a new hacktivist group. The Free Hacker Society. She wondered if it was real or if it was one of the espionage agencies of the United States looking to entrap hackers. She’d need several new identities to explore the FHS without risking arrest. But, even if it was a front fo
r government antiterrorism efforts, she might find some like-minded hackers here. She’d have to do a deep vetting of anyone she chose to work with.

  First, I need a few backstopped aliases. She set to work, picking names from the obituaries in the San Jose Mercury News and using alternatives to the exact names for a set of twelve identities. When she was finished, several banks were Fedexing her new identities. She picked up the room’s landline and called the front desk. “Hi. I’m in room 207. Over the next three days, I’ll be receiving a few pieces of mail. Please call me when they arrive and I’ll come by to pick them up.”

  The room clerk muttered, “Okay,” and hung up.

  * * *

  Ann sat at her desk in the dorm room and carefully hacked into the Swiftshadow Consulting Group’s messaging system. Across the room, over her roommate’s bed, she examined the baby faces of a boy band that Ann had never heard of. She imagined the band forced to clean up her roommate’s side of the room, picking up her soiled panties and bras, stuffing the unfinished drafts of her roommate’s papers into large garbage bags. Her roommate was out at a party somewhere, leaving the room quiet. But Ann was struggling to concentrate. Every minute she spent hunting the hacker who threatened her kept her from her studies, and she knew soon her grades would suffer.

  She found the Drafts folder and read the follow-up notes to her discussion with Cassie, William, Betsy, and Avram. She cursed. They were getting nowhere. The two super hackers had reached a dead end.

  She had known they would need more help. Her help.

  She pondered her next move. Cassie had forbidden her to hack on her own. It took less than a second for her to decide. She slammed the desk with her fist, relieving the frustration she felt. It was past time for her to act.