Steel, Titanium and Guilt: Just Hunter Books I to III

by Robin Craig

  That would take it a while. Once she had it working away she could stop to think.

  They knew that someone had corrupted the video. The questions were who and how?

  Sam’s assurances aside, the most likely possibility was their original theory of signal interference. While nobody knew quite how it could be done, the thief did appear to have an arsenal of unusually advanced technology at her disposal. The video corruption wasn’t the only example. She had bypassed locks, suppressed alarm systems and otherwise got in, done her work and escaped unscathed where it might have been considered impossible if she hadn’t so clearly done it.

  If not that, then the recording rather than the signal had been corrupted. The most obvious candidate for that was Delaney himself: he could have made the AI do it then forget it had done so. It wouldn’t be easy to do without leaving logs and other traces, but she supposed it could be done. But the main question was: why? And if he had done it, why draw attention to it? Nobody had realized there was more to the video than static, so nobody had considered it a clue until Delaney himself had offered it up unsolicited. Delaney gave no sign of being the kind of egotist who liked to taunt his opponents with his superior cunning.

  The person with the clearest motive for subverting the AI was again the thief. But the thief was the one with the least ability to do it, for all the reasons they had already considered.

  In either case, if the AI was involved the next question was why corrupt the video anyway? Why go to the trouble and risk of obscuring the video with noise when it would be simpler, safer and more permanent to just erase it entirely? Then there would have been nothing from which to reconstruct even a blurry image of the perpetrator.

  So the very existence of the video favored the interference theory, as then complete erasure was not an option. And if not perfect it had certainly been effective: it was only by chance that anyone had bothered to analyze the video and discovered there was something to see. Perhaps the thief thought there would be nothing left to see; perhaps at last he had made a mistake.

  But where did it leave them? Sam had found that they could get no more out of the video than they already had. But the implication was that what they had was a true image, which meant Katlyn was not the thief. Yet Katlyn was a thief. And there were too many similarities, too many coincidences, for the crimes to be unrelated. That implied at least two thieves working in concert, and Miriam’s blood ran cold at the memory of Tagarin’s question: what if there are more of them? Miriam shook her head. God, what have I got myself into? she asked herself. How many more of these things are out there?

  So the video, poor as it was, provided an important clue. Again it made more sense as signal interference: that it was a clue showed just how risky it was to leave any evidence if you could avoid it. Everything else the thieves had done seemed almost superhuman: if they could destroy the recording it made no sense to merely degrade it.

  Then suddenly she stared, struck by a sudden thought: is that really what they had done, exactly? “Hellfire!” she cried. She stared inward at the pieces falling into place in her mind. The thief had not deleted the video for a very simple reason, she thought. With a corrupted video, they all believed the thief had some unknown jamming technology, advanced but not beyond the realms of possibility, like her other tricks; better than your average thief but not fantastically so; annoying rather than dangerous. But if the video were deleted, they’d know the thief was able to take over an AI. And if she could take over an AI to do that, what else could she do while she had it in her power?

  Miriam went cold. What indeed? For starters, not merely corrupt a video but change it to hint at a normal human, in case anyone looked into it that deeply. And that’s just the least of it.

  Suddenly Miriam very much wanted to know if it was in fact possible to take over an AI and exactly what you might be able to do with it once you had. She examined the contact Sam had given her. Well, Dr Neubold, she thought, it looks like I’ll be paying you a visit sooner than I thought.

  ~~~

  Dr Arthur Neubold owned an IT company specializing in systems development, software security and complicated-sounding computer fields Miriam had never heard of; much of his company’s income came from military contracts. He had readily agreed to an interview when Miriam mentioned Sam’s name.

  Miriam was led along a corridor by an assistant who made no attempt to hide that he had better things to do with his time. She went past rooms filled with mysterious equipment and past people hurrying along on equally mysterious tasks, until finally she was delivered to Neubold’s office. Her guide then receded, like waves after they have deposited driftwood on the shore.

  “So, Ms Hunter, what can I do for you? You mentioned an issue of AI security?” He retained an obvious if faded British accent.

  “I was discussing a puzzling case with Dr Allende, and she thought the most likely explanation is that our criminal can infiltrate an AI and gain at least partial control over it. I can see why she thinks that, but everything else indicates it’s impossible, at least without leaving glaring evidence behind. But there is nothing. The AI involved seems perfectly functional, normal and untouched.”

  He frowned. “Can you tell me why you suspect such an unlikely event?”

  “All the explanations are unlikely. I’d be happy to eliminate any of them! The main piece of evidence is a thoroughly corrupted video record. The only possibilities we can think of are jamming of the data feed or corruption of the recording, and neither seems technically feasible. While jamming seems the most likely to us, Dr Allende assures us that the detailed characteristics of the corruption implies it was done after the fact.”

  “Ah,” he said. “Tea, Ms Hunter?”

  A slender young man had entered carrying a silver tray inhabited by an elegant teapot, a pair of fine china cups and some crystal containers. Miriam nodded, somewhat bemused, and the young man gracefully poured her tea in an artistic arc from the pot. He indicated the milk and sugar, in a manner of perfect politeness that nevertheless implied she would be uncouth to corrupt his tea by their use, and bowed out of the room.

  “My assistant,” Neubold explained. “He makes a fine cup of tea, a most civilized relic of the once great British empire. Now where were we? Yes, your data corruption as evidence of AI corruption. Are there any other features of the case I should know?”

  “Whatever he or she did, the thief appears to have done it quite quickly, and has probably done it more than once, possibly several times.”

  “Interesting. That would indicate someone using a general tool rather than just a person with inside knowledge of a particular system. Hmmm. Yes.” He thought about it, sipping his tea. Miriam could see the feelings chasing each other across his face: concentration, puzzlement, faint alarm, skepticism then more alarm. Finally he put his cup down and gazed into the distance, looking more like a man wondering whether to tell her something he already knew rather than someone trying to solve a puzzle. He appeared to come to a decision.

  “What I am going to tell you must remain in strictest confidence, and not leave your confidential police files. Preferably not even make it into the files. I am only telling you because if I am right, somebody has managed to steal some very sensitive intellectual property of ours. I would very much like to see them caught and stopped if that is the case. Even so perhaps it is better if I say nothing.”

  “I must emphasize the importance of the case I am working on, Dr Neubold. To trade my own confidential information, the implications might extend all the way to the President. I really need to know what I’m dealing with.”

  Neubold’s eyes studied his teacup and then her face.

  “All right, Ms Hunter. I can take the risk. I have deniability if you leak what I tell you but it proves to have nothing to do with your case, whereas if I have actually been robbed I will have more problems than mere embarrassment. Besides, if it proves to be ours I think I would be wise to show how cooperative I am, eh?”

&
nbsp; “Thank you. You can count on my discretion and I won’t tell anybody who doesn’t need to know. Please go on.”

  “In the past we did in fact work on a tool for infiltrating AIs, secret work for the military. It is currently in limbo because it ran into privacy problems in government committee: while the tool is intended for military use, some people just don’t trust it to stay there. We had made a lot of progress: most commercial AIs and many custom-built ones based on similar algorithms were vulnerable. With such a tool, your thief could plausibly have done what you say.”

  Miriam sat up straighter. “What exactly are its capabilities?”

  Neubold grimaced. “That depends rather on which version was, er, acquired. As a work in progress, obviously later versions were more capable. The problem with sophisticated AIs is that they need many flexible data inputs – vision, sound, text, any number of electronic communication bands, etc. I cannot tell you details, but I can tell you that is how we get in. If an AI is vulnerable then the actual process is quite fast. A few minutes at most to gain complete control.”

  “And what can you do then?”

  He spread his hands. “Practically whatever you like – fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your perspective. The AI has no idea it has been coopted. It believes everything it is doing is perfectly reasonable and part of its normal operations. It may well hide what it is doing from its true owner – that is after all the whole point – but it sees nothing odd about that. It believes it is like any other internal process the owner doesn’t need to know about.”

  “But looking in from outside, can you tell?”

  “Not really. Usually AI diagnostics are done by the AI itself, and it will report normal functioning. And don’t forget this is military software: just like a human agent, we don’t want it falling into enemy hands and we prefer the enemy to never even know it was there. If it detects any kind of intrusive probe our infiltrated second mind erases itself, leaving no trace. The AI will never be aware it was there and no external search will find it either. Furthermore the usual mode of operation is to take control for a limited time, perhaps as short as minutes, perhaps as long as weeks, then erase itself once its purpose is achieved. Just that extra margin of security, you see? I am afraid that the only evidence one is likely to have is if the system can be proved to be the source of a leak of information, an explosion in a research facility or some other such hostile action. But even knowing the compromised system was involved there will be no trace of how. It is more likely one of its operators will be shot for treason than the AI itself suspected. Unfair on the operator but in the nature of warfare, I’m afraid.”

  Miriam felt a sinking feeling. “So do you mean to tell me that software does exist that can take over an AI, but nobody should have it, and if they did I’d never know they’d used it?”

  Strangely, Neubold smiled. “Not quite. The software was never finished, you see; it waits locked in limbo for word from on high. We can neither destroy it nor finish it until the government brings down a decision. So its last state was still a beta version, still being tested. Have you heard of the phrase ‘Kilroy was here’?”

  “It sounds vaguely familiar, but I’m not sure where I’ve heard it.”

  “It became popular last century in the Second World War. Allied soldiers would scrawl it in odd places, usually along with a cartoon of a man peering over a wall. Kilroy tended to turn up in the most unlikely places, seemingly before anyone had the chance to put him there. Well, you could say we did the same thing. The beta versions all leave the phrase ‘Kilroy was here’ in register memory deep in the infected AI. In addition, the AI believes it put it there itself a long time ago as an encryption hash salt string. Such salt strings are best acquired randomly, and that is what the AI believes it did via a random phrase search. That was one of our checks that everything had gone according to plan. Not only is it an unlikely phrase to use, but an AI would normally choose a completely random string: that it thinks an English phrase was a perfectly reasonable choice is further evidence of how successful the infiltration was. Using such a phrase is somewhat geeky humor, but one must expect that from geeks, eh?”

  Miriam’s pulse went up a notch. “Dr Neubold, I cannot thank you enough. This might help my investigations enormously.”

  “You’re welcome, Ms Hunter. May I remind you of the need for discretion? And please let me know the results of your enquiries. But may I ask you when the video you referred to was taken?”

  “Several months ago.”

  Neubold gave her a startled glance. “That long!” Then a thoughtful look came over his face. “You know, there might be a clue there. We lost a technician about a year ago. He was a very adventurous young man, prone to go off hiking alone in the wilderness without telling anyone. Rather foolish, in my opinion. Well, he disappeared. Just never showed up for work one Monday, and attempts to find him were futile. Everyone decided he probably met his end broken at the bottom of some trackless ravine. But perhaps he is now living the high life in the Bahamas instead. He had no direct access to the software we’re discussing, but I would not be surprised if he had been aware of its existence. That would have been a breach of internal security in itself, but I have found that geeks have a tendency to treat security with contempt, especially if they have done something clever. I suppose it is possible he found a way to steal it himself or somehow enabled its theft by an outside gang.”

  He turned to his computer and worked on it for a short while. “Yes, here he is: Geoffrey Baxter. I have sent his details to you in case they help.”

  Then he stared at her. “But your timeline presents us with a problem, don’t you think? I’d have thought that if criminals had gained access to this technology that long ago there’d have been signs of their activities on the news. I haven’t noticed anything. What kind of targets are you investigating?”

  “The only victims we are aware of are some private individuals. Wealthy but private: no corporations or government bodies that we’re aware of.”

  “That seems to show a marked lack of imagination on the part of your criminals, no? No doubt they would like to keep the existence of such a tool undetected for as long as possible, so with their extra security banks and government systems would probably be too risky to attempt. But that leaves a vast array of places with ordinary security, blithely imagining they are safe but wide open to this particular attack. Any criminals worth the name should have struck hard, fast and wide, and be living it up on their own island paradise by now. So perhaps we have been worrying over nothing. If it has anything to do with cracking AIs, then either they got their hands on a very early test version of ours, or they had a similar idea but made their own much less effective form of it. Or perhaps it has nothing to do with the AIs at all.”

  He paused to think. “You seem to have reached a contradiction. If your corrupted video is due to a coopted AI, that implies high ability indeed: they can take over an AI quickly and completely enough to do it during the very course of committing a crime. But if that is what your criminals are doing then the crimes are too trivial. It is as if somebody invented a fusion reactor and all they used it for was to power their bicycle to and from work.” He spread his hands. “It makes no sense!”

  Miriam smiled wanly. “Welcome to my case.”

  Chapter 36 – Kilroy

  Miriam drove back to her office, but she did not really see the road. Her mind was elsewhere; her body drove under its own direction. It parked the car and walked her into the elevator and thence to her office. It was the end of the day and people were leaving; perhaps she answered their farewells, but she did not know. Her mind did not regain the reins until she sat down in front of her AI access point.

  “Voice interface,” she commanded.

  “Voice active.”

  “What does the phrase ‘Kilroy was here’ mean to you?”

  Miriam held her breath, waiting for the AI to respond.

  “‘Kilroy was here’ was a graffi
ti phrase common in World War II. It represented a standing joke, always appearing in unlikely places. It was usually associated with the drawing now displayed. Would you like more detail?”

  “No, that’s fine. Were you aware of the phrase before today? If so, how?”

  After a few seconds, the AI replied. “No. I have no record of it.”

  Miriam let out a breath. She had been getting so caught up in the mysterious omnipotence of her opponents that she had feared even her own AI was their pawn and part of a conspiracy leading her astray. Not, she reminded herself, that this proves anything. But even absence of proof was a relief at this stage.

  “Please display a list of the victims in the Katlyn case who have allowed us remote access to their AIs.”

  The screen displayed Delaney and two others – both from the group who had been bemused rather than hostile at her earlier enquiries. All had given permission for automatic access to the public interface of their AIs so the police could query aspects of the case without having to bother them personally. The rest had either been hostile to her enquiries or not interested or trusting enough to allow even that small an official foot in their door.

  “Please make the same enquiry I just made to you about Kilroy to these three AIs.”

  “Please wait.”

  Miriam waited, heart thumping. She wasn’t sure whether to be more afraid that her enquiry would return nothing or something.

  “The results are curious. All three AIs report that ‘Kilroy was here’ exists as a string in their registry memory and all state they put it there as an encryption salt string chosen by a random net search.”