by Fritz Galt
A familiar figure sat profiled in the window.
Jake straightened his tie.
Werner Hoffkeit was an imposing man, a legend in the Bureau. He had worked his way up the ranks from the FBI Academy to one of the highest profile jobs in Washington: Director of the FBI. Why had the director come to see him, a lowly investigator in a third-tier field office?
“Director Hoffkeit,” Jake said, and shook the hand extended toward him. “An honor, sir.”
“Agent Maguire.”
Hoffkeit was broad-shouldered and stood a ramrod straight six feet plus. His light gray eyes gave Jake the impression of windows into the man’s soul. And what Jake saw there was deep intelligence on high alert.
Jake wondered if he was up for some Bureau honor. The most he deserved might be a pay increase. He certainly wasn’t up for promotion any time soon.
“To what do I owe this honor?” he finally said.
Bob closed the door. Then he and Hoffkeit sat down and acted as if they expected Jake to sit as well.
He edged into the empty sofa opposite their easy chairs.
Hoffkeit’s large forehead was furrowed. “I’ve been reading your personnel file. You have a clean record, worked on some tough cases, always come out on top.”
“The FBI always gets their man,” Jake said.
“I know that.” In FBI circles, it was a fact.
Hoffkeit flipped through Jake’s file and ran a finger down a page. It stopped halfway.
“You put together the evidence to finger the Pakistani boys?”
“That’s right, sir.”
“You coordinated the sting on the mini-van smuggling ring?”
“Right. I did.”
“You’ve worked on surveillance surrounding foreign diplomats?”
Jake nodded. It was a nice list of accomplishments, but nothing high-profile, notable only for its variety and lack of specificity. To his mind, his record in the Bureau was spotty at best.
Maybe this was going to result in a dismissal.
Hoffkeit turned to Bob. “Anything I missed?”
Bob scratched his head. “No. Those were the major cases.”
“I see.” Hoffkeit turned his gray eyes back on Jake. “Ever work directly for a U.S. Attorney? Put together the legal side of a case?”
Jake shook his head. “Just field work, sir.”
He had spent his career on the ground looking for evidence, putting clues together, tracking down the scum that walked the earth. He had never done the front office work that made an agent’s career.
“You’re still young,” Hoffkeit said.
“Just over forty, sir.”
“Good physical condition?”
“I stay well within physical fitness requirements.”
Hoffkeit nodded. “Traveled much?”
Jake had been born, grew up, lived and worked in Northern Virginia. College had been in Charlottesville, in southwestern Virginia. FBI Academy had been in Quantico, Virginia.
“Basically, I know Virginia.”
“Travelled overseas?”
He had to be honest. “I went to London for an interagency meeting.”
“London.”
“Yes. That’s pretty much it, sir.”
Hoffkeit shifted uncomfortably. “Agent Maguire, what do you know about computers?”
“I’ll be honest with you,” Jake said. “I understand how computers work, and I use them on a daily basis. But I’m not a computer expert.”
“Ever take a programming course?”
Jake thought back. “I learned C++ in high school. Can’t say I remember any of it.”
Boy was he bombing this interview.
Hoffkeit rubbed the back of his neck. “That’s more than I know about computers.”
Bob leaned forward. “As you know, sir, the Bureau does have experts in computers.”
“But can they perform field work?”
Bob sat back.
Hoffkeit was staring at Jake like he was the new savior for the Bureau. “What do you know about the Han Chu case?”
Han Chu? Jake had been concentrating more on Stacy Stefansson. “It’s an interesting case, sir.”
“In what respect?”
Jake thought back to the murder scene. “It was an unfortunate murder.”
“Just ‘unfortunate’? Agent Maguire, as of today the FBI has taken over this case. And I am appointing you as the lead investigator. I can assure you that this is far more than ‘an unfortunate murder.’”
“Sir, I have a general sense about who Han Chu was and what his company does. But I still fail to see how any of this makes the murder a federal crime, unless I’m missing something here.”
Hoffkeit stood up and faced the window. His eyes caught a glint of light off the city as he stared outside. “Agent Maguire, what do you know about Verisign?”
Jake remembered the file that Bob had asked him to review. “It’s the company where the witness, Stacy Stefansson, works.” In fact, he knew very little about the company, aside from having seen its logo like a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval at the bottom of web pages to verify the pages’ authenticity.
“And are you aware of what they do?”
“They’re computer-related.”
At this point Hoffkeit’s broad face broke into an ironic smile. “‘Computer-related’ is an understatement. They are the internet.”
Jake’s first thought was that Hoffkeit had no idea what he was talking about. But Hoffkeit wasn’t a man who bandied about facts loosely.
“My understanding,” Jake said, “is that the internet is a vast network of connected computers spanning the entire world. How could one company be the internet?”
Hoffkeit was not offended. Instead, he stared at Jake intensely as if trying to impart knowledge ahead of the words he was about to say. “I don’t have to tell you how important the internet is to our GDP.”
Jake had some vague idea that it was a large percentage.
“It’s more than agriculture or energy,” Hoffkeit said. “And that number doesn’t even begin to reflect the dependency our business community has on the internet. Every company from Fortune 500 down to your local hardware store relies on the internet on a daily basis.”
“I can see that.” But Jake still couldn’t see how one company could be the internet.
“So can you see how important the internet is to our national security?”
“Sure,” Jake said. “But wasn’t that why the internet was developed–to guarantee that information was spread over multiple computers?”
“Agent Maguire, I hate to shake your faith in the resilience of the internet, but sharing information doesn’t mean it’s backed up.”
“Still, the information is distributed among many computers. If one computer dies, only the information on that system is lost, not all the information on all systems.”
“That, Agent Maguire, is where you’re wrong.”
Jake had to think about what Hoffkeit had just said. He could see how a computer virus could quickly spread and take down many computers and servers, but how did all computers rely on one computer?
“Is there a particular computer that you have in mind, sir?”
Hoffkeit smiled and leaned against Bob’s desk. “Now you’re catching on.”
Jake’s mind was whirling. He wasn’t catching on to anything. If these men thought he was up to tackling a massive computer failure, they were sorely mistaken. The lowliest clerk in a Radio Shack knew more than he did.
“So you’re saying,” Jake said, feeling Hoffkeit out, “that any one computer can bring the whole system down?”
“No. Not any one.” Hoffkeit looked at Bob, who nodded. They could tell Jake the big news. “There’s one computer in particular that keeps all the domain names for .com addresses. If that computer fails or is compromised, all email and the entire World Wide Web system is in jeopardy. From your Yahoo account to your Facebook wall to your bank account to your orders on Amazon.”<
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“I see,” Jake said. “And what does that have to do with this case?” He tapped on the Han Chu file.
“All domain names are looked up and disseminated from a single server,” Hoffkeit said. “It’s called the A root server.”
Jake had never heard the term.
Hoffkeit returned to the window and stared at the sun-drenched landscape. “Contrary to popular belief, the internet is a public, indeed an international, organization. Its servers are not operated by the U.S. Government.”
It took a moment for Jake to comprehend the implications. “So this one big computer is maintained by the private sector?”
“I said ‘operated by.’ In fact, the A root server is physically located at a U.S. Department of Commerce facility. But yes, it’s connected to the internet, so it’s vulnerable to cyber attack. In fact, Commerce has reported a sharp rise in attempted intrusions into the A root server.” Hoffkeit swung around from the window and faced Jake. “Agent Maguire, they think a major cyber attack is imminent.”
Jake sucked in his breath. But he didn’t exactly see how the FBI fit in. “Wouldn’t that be under, say, the military’s purview or the Department of Homeland Security?”
“You would think,” Hoffkeit said. “It turns out most of the internet is under the control of one company.”
“Which company?”
“Verisign.”
“Where Stacy works.”
Hoffkeit shook his head. “She more than works for Verisign. She runs the A root server.”
Jake was floored. Being a programmer was one thing. And working on government contracts was important. But running the heart of the World Wide Web was in a completely different league.
“Remember, Chu was also a computer expert,” Hoffkeit said. “And the Arlington police have just confirmed an alarming fact: Stacy’s voiceprint matches that of the witness on the 9-1-1 call. I want you to investigate her.”
Stacy was the murder witness? That went a long way toward explaining why she was at Chu’s funeral.
“You…want me…to investigate Stacy?”
Once again Hoffkeit exchanged glances with Bob. “We’ve arranged a secure room,” Hoffkeit said at last. “It’s down at our headquarters in D.C. She’s waiting to meet you.”
Chapter 7
Driving across the Potomac always presented an inspiring sight for Jake. He looked first for the Washington Monument, then the Capitol Building, then the Lincoln Memorial. The city seemed laid out in order of importance.
As the armored Suburban turned onto Pennsylvania and they came within view of a honeycomb-windowed building, Jake felt a moment of awe and pride. It was the J. Edgar Hoover Building, headquarters of the FBI. These were his people, but he had always assumed the work at headquarters was massively more important than anything he was pursuing in the burbs.
Arriving with the director made Jake wonder if he was up to the task. What did Hoffkeit see in him that gave him any confidence that he could handle a case involving the A root server? And why did Hoffkeit think he was qualified to interview Stacy Stefansson, the woman at the heart of the World Wide Web?
Both men had to go through the metal detector, and even the director had to surrender his cell phone.
The building had once posted a color-coded terrorist warning sign in the lobby. But Jake noticed the warning sign was gone. Was it really true that the nation no longer faced dire threats? How about losing the A root server?
Jake took a deep breath. His task was to pursue the connections between Chu’s murder, Stacy Stefansson, and recent attacks on the A root server. He hoped by unearthing what was behind Chu’s murder, he could expose any existing cyber threats.
The elevator dropped him off on the fourth floor, while Hoffkeit proceeded to the top. His only command to Jake before the elevator doors closed was, “Come to my office when you’re through.”
The elevator had deposited Jake on a floor he had visited several times before. The entire crime lab used to be situated there, but most of its work had since been moved to more spacious quarters on the Marine base at Quantico.
Now the hallway led to smaller offices behind closed doors. Hoffkeit’s aide led Jake to a room at the back of the building, where Jake had once interrogated a witness in a gun smuggling case. It was a sound-proof, surveillance-proof chamber.
Swinging idly from side to side in one of the swivel chairs sat Stacy Stefansson.
She was no longer wearing her tank top and jeans. She looked professional in a navy blue pants suit, which didn’t fit his image of her as a computer programmer. He was having a hard time getting a fix on who she really was.
“Good morning. I’m Special Agent Jake Maguire,” he said, reaching for his badge. But he changed his mind and offered a handshake instead.
“So that’s the name behind the face,” she said. “I saw you at the funeral.” An intelligent brightness played in her baby blue eyes.
Her grip was firm.
“Sorry about the cold hands,” she said. “There’s no control unit for the air conditioning.”
“And I’m sorry,” he said, “to have frightened you off at the funeral.”
She didn’t respond. Maybe she was just as uncomfortable about their brief encounter the day before.
He decided to get right down to business.
“I understand you work for Verisign,” he began, flipping her file open.
“Do you know what I do?”
“I understand you work on something called the A root server…”
She lowered her eyes and grinned, then looked at him. “You don’t have a clue what this is all about, do you?”
“If you could fill in some background information about the server…”
“Okay. Let me know when this gets over your head.” She stood and walked over to a white board that stretched across an entire wall of the room. She picked up a black marker and drew a small box at the top center of the board. “Say this is the A root server,” she said.
He nodded.
“This computer holds all the DNS addresses for the .com domain. Most people think this is a single, physical server that sits in some office. That used to be the case. The root zone file used to reside on a single computer at the top of a hierarchy of computers.” She drew lines down to a second tier of boxes. “Our company used to have that file.”
“I thought you still did.”
“Now we maintain the file, but it resides on thirteen different servers.” She filled in thirteen boxes on the upper-most tier, and drew lines downward from each box to the second tier of servers.
“So there’s no hierarchical structure?” Jake said.
“It’s more disseminated, using anycast addressing.” She drew a bottom row of boxes. “So any computer in the world can find a domain name by referencing any one of these root servers.” She drew lines upward to demonstrate computers requesting addresses from the thirteen servers.
Jake kind of got it. If he sat at his computer at home and opened a web browser, he could type in the name of any website in the world and the internet would find the exact computer where the website was located and connect his computer directly to that website. “So all the web traffic doesn’t pass through the A root server,” he said. “You’re just a yellow pages that computers refer to when looking up addresses.”
“Right. When you type in an English word, such as ‘Google,’ it is actually a pseudonym for a numerical code that specifies an exact computer where the website resides. All we do at Verisign is maintain the Yellow Pages.”
She put the marker down and returned to her chair.
“Who, exactly, maintains this file?”
“I do.”
“But people register new addresses every hour of the day,” he said. “When you sit here, is anybody updating your file?”
She smiled. “An organization has been chosen to approve all the new addresses and remove expired addresses. That organization is ICANN, which stands for the International Co
rporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. I take their changes and update the root server file.”
Slowly the picture became clear. Stacy’s job was a clerical job that required some programming skill, as well as a large amount of responsibility. That was where his investigation came in. Could she be compromised?
He looked at her open expression. Honesty and transparency seemed among her hallmarks, and her most attractive features. On the other hand, he would expect a more closed, secretive person to have the job.
“Exactly how did you get your job?”
“I’ve worked on several contracts for the Department of Commerce, which is responsible for the security of the Domain Name System. Verisign has the contract to handle two of the root servers, A and J. So when the job opened up at Verisign, they gave it to me.”
“So you have a security clearance?”
“Of course. I couldn’t work on such a contract without one.” She eyed him closely. “Are you questioning my integrity?”
“I just need to understand the hiring process.”
He stared at her scheme on the wall. “I’m intrigued by the terminology you use,” he said. “What’s an A root server as opposed to a J root server?”
She stood up and pointed at the upper tier of boxes. “Don’t confuse these with the A through M root servers. All you see here is the A root server system. Domain names are classified under top level domains such as .com, .net, .gov, .mil, .edu and all the country designations such as .uk and .fr. These classifications are divided up among different root servers. The A root server holds the .com names.”
“So what you’ve drawn here is the network of root servers for just the .com addresses?”
“That’s right.”
It took a moment for Jake to realize what he had just said. “Just the .com addresses” represented most of the internet usage in the United States, which accounted for such a large swath of the GDP.
He studied the thirteen boxes at the top of the board. “You said the root file resides on thirteen different servers. Exactly where are they located?”
“Many are overseas.”
Jake felt uncomfortable with all the openness and transparency. The whole world having access to U.S. domain addresses was great for the economy, but access to the servers handling all the domain name addresses seemed a bit risky.
