Aftermath_ Chapter Sixteen

8/7/2019 Aftermath_ Chapter Sixteen

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/aftermath-chapter-sixteen 1/4

Aftermath: Chapter Sixteen

Black Rock AFB. Blinding sunlight. The clicks of insects. It reminded Ellison of microbots the size

of crickets and flies. The scent of sagebrush. Thirst. Their collars chafed in the heat and dust. Theywere disoriented from the trip there and had lost a sense of direction. This was intentional as the basedid not want any announced or unannounced visitors to get their bearings. The road was deliberatelytwisty.

A car approached.

General Simmonds got out. The base commander was with her. He spoke.“I'm sorry to decline. I know you wanted an off-the-books tour but you have my personal word that theproject commander will not be informed of your visit. Especially since it never took place. There is nosurveillance this far out so relax.”

Simmonds nodded.

Except for General Simmonds, no one else has clearance to inspect the top secret Skynet Project.So the group leaves Area 51 before heading on to their next stop.

Mel is writing code to bring down Skynet but before he hits the button to send it to infect the AI, anintuition tells him to take precautions. He sends a file to “hack r” and another file to the Cyborg'sDungeon, a group of fellow malcontents and malicious software (malware) developers. Only then doeshe route the infection through a hundred countries and high anonymity proxies and distorters. And forgood measure, he unplugs the computer he was using, checks out of the cash-only no-names hotel, andtakes the computer to a business that guaranteed destruction of the hard drive. Mel then went home.



The next day, Lance Strong goes to spy on Mel. In the driveway, bumper stickers and decals were allover the car that he seldom uses.

“This where he live?”“Yeh, enemy of the state like him doesn't belong on the task force. I wanted to personally check himout. Look at those bumper stickers! A spy for a foreign power if ever I saw one.”

“Dust all over the car. Who walks in L.A. ?”“A New Yorker who hasn't adjusted to the fact of free parking.”“Aren't spies supposed to keep a lower profile than this? A Russian or Chinese spy would not advertisethe fact that they hated the US government with attitude and bumper stickers and hacker activity andTea Party politics and suspicious friends. Then again, he might be too far gone a commie to care. LikeLee Harvey Oswald.” He abruptly stopped.

The door was open. They drew their concealed weapons. The house was trashed. Someone waslooking for something. Mel's body. A noise. Lance goes to investigate and sees a figure dart out theback door. He runs after them but in the alley he looks both ways and sees no one. As he stands therecatching his breath, the other Homeland Security man joins him.

“I called in backup. What did you see?”Lance felt disgusted with himself.“I didn't get a good look. Average height. Average weight. Don't bother to call a sketch artist. Icouldn't tell gender, color or age. And I am so out of shape. I've got to stop smoking.”

Conference call.Lance: “The guy was a nobody and maybe a creep but he was one of us. Someone was looking forsomething.”Hackett: “I might have it. Got an email from him in my in box. Excuse me, had an email. I don'tremember erasing it.”

Potomac. Pennsylvania Avenue. Postal Annex. An ordinary government office building.

Inside the cold air is pervaded by the waft of motherboards, circuitry, wiring, fiber cables andcryogenic gases. CERT net op center. Feeds from the NSA, Internet backbone companies like Cisco,Google server farms and data warehouses, AT&T and other telcos, Comsat, Intelsat, major Internetsocieties, ARPANET, and CERN. Ergonomic chairs kept workers here alert even after prolongedsitting but a cold draft made them wear sweaters even in summer. It was a quiet place of peoplewhispering into headsets wearing headphones (preferred over ear buds) and always in the backgroundthe whir of cooling systems for electronic switching devices and the click of keys being pressed.

Hacker: “I think I recovered Mel's email and uncovered why it was erased. This is why I brought youall here. We've been getting this low-level activity all week.”

He puts up a display.



CERT 1

Status

• Cyber-threats & bullying (not illegal in all jurisdictions)

• Enemy communications networks are being spoofed.

• Internet social engineering attacks

•

Network sniffers• Packet spoofing

• Session-hijacking

• Automated probes and scans

• GUI intrusion tools being used

• Industrial espionage

• Windows-based remote controllable trojans (Back Orifice)

• Email propagation of malicious code

• Executable code attacks (against browsers)

• "Stealth" and other advanced scanning techniques being used

• Distributed attack tools being used

• Targeting of specific users

• Anti-forensic techniques being used



In Russia, the best hackers are being assassinated. Not even the Russian police takes notice.

In China, hackers are dying by the hundreds. By contrast, Chinese intelligence notices immediately.

Aftermath_ Chapter Sixteen

Documents

Transcript of Aftermath_ Chapter Sixteen