Chasm Waxing: A Startup, Cyber-Thriller (2 page)

“
Ali, I thought you fixed
the code that dealt with spear phishing?”  

Spear phishing occurred
when hackers sent emails with nefarious attachments to selectively
targeted individuals.  Most hacking attacks started with
spear phishing emails. Once the victim clicked the attachment, bad
things happened.  For example, a virus might be unleashed
onto the target’s computer.  Or the victim could be tricked
into entering personal information into a bogus website. An
infamous
spear phishing
attack targeted celebrities. A hacker sent
illegitimate emails to female stars. The phishing emails looked
like they were sent by Apple,
duping
the luminaries into revealing
their iCloud passwords.
This
allowed
the hacker to gain access to the
starlets’ personal information, including nude photos.

“
I thought I did too,”
replied Ali, anxiously.

Becca tried hard to hide
her frustration, but a poker face wasn’t one of her strengths.
“Team Bravo, you guys
are
done.
” Within the VR gaming world of
Castle Gecko, Becca’s presence was indicated
by
a flashing ‘G-Master’
icon.

“
G-Master, do we get our
money?” asked rAzorWire_007. 

“
Yes, I’ll release your
Bitcoins by close of business
today.  Out.” 

“
Wait,” said
SoCalSheMerlin, “will you raise our Social Rankings?”

“
Yes,” Becca replied, with
exasperation. 

Team Bravo logged out of the game.
Beep, Beep, Beep. The Gamers were gone.

Becca Roberts and Ali Asir were the
first two employees of Gamification Systems, Inc.  Like
Becca, Ali was young.  His family originated from Turkey,
but the software engineer was born in the US. Gamification Systems
could only hire US citizens.

The company’s
35-year-old
CEO,
Samantha Powers, was seated across the table from Becca. 
Samantha wore a fitted, crisp white blouse, and black pencil skirt.
The CEO had a sleek, blonde bob. She wore small diamond earrings
and a diamond tennis bracelet.  No
rings
encumbered
her fingers. At five foot
seven, her black
high-heels
accentuated her shapely legs. 

Gamification Systems was
conducting its monthly demo for General Shields, Director of the
National Security Administration. Shields was one of the
most
powerful
men in the world.  He sat at the head of the shiny
table.

Within the Intelligence
Community and among his employees, General Shields was known as
‘DIRNSA,’ pronounced ‘
durnza
.’ Shields had served as DIRNSA
for three years. The President of the United States,
Thomas Goodson,
approved
Shields
as DIRNSA in 2017. POTUS’ re-election was coming
in November.

Gamification Systems marketed software
that applied elements of the video game experience—points, badges,
and contests—to corporate environments. Gamification’s product
transformed mundane business tasks into something more interesting
and engaging.

The purpose of this demo
was to gamify
cybersecurity
for Fortune 1000 companies.  The software
world used the word, ‘enterprise,’ to refer to these
organizations
.
Large
corporations
and government agencies bought enterprise
software.

Samantha gazed intently into the
General’s commanding eyes. “We’ll get this fixed.”

Becca studied the
General’s expression.  Her peripheral vision always
noticed the five stars on both of his shoulders.  Today,
the stars were attached to his zip-up, blue jacket. The
jacket
was emblazoned
with his name and numerous Air Force
patches.

“
I know you
will.  It’s important that you get this
right,
” said
General Shields, sternly. “However, I will say that your team has
made
real
progress in the last month.” The tension
on
his face
faded. 

“
Thank you, General.”
Samantha flashed a coy smile at her lead investor.

General Shields exited his chair and
peered out the top floor window of Defense Innovations
Accelerator.  Defense Innovations Accelerator was the
first NSA funded, VC and startup accelerator firm. 

Venture
capital firms provided money to young companies
in return for stock in the
startup
.  Startup
accelerators offered
training
, provided mentors, allowed
access to cutting edge technology, and furnished office space to
competitively selected startups.

A tall chain link fence,
topped with rolls of barbed wire, protected Defense
Innovations’
six-story
building. The sprawling structure didn’t have
many windows. NSA police officers armed with MP5 submachine guns,
M4 assault rifles, and
bomb-sniffing dogs
protected the one
entry way. It was like a real world version of the Castle Gecko
virtual world.  Other NSA police were stationed
strategically on the campus.  The Accelerator was just one
mile from NSA headquarters at Fort Meade, Maryland.

The General continued,
“You guys are delivering the exact type of innovation that I
expected when I testified
before
Congress
to obtain approval for the
Accelerator. Becca, give me a Hotwash Report.”  Shields
chuckled.  “Check that, I forgot.  I’m
across
the
highway,
and this isn’t a military organization. 
What I meant to say was please tell me what we just saw on the
big screen.  Act like
you’re
explaining it to your
grandma.”

Excitement and anxiety
pumped through
Becca’s
veins. Just two years out of college, she already
possessed a TS/SCI clearance and was debriefing a 5-star general—a
man who regularly met with the President.  TS/SCI stood
for TOP SECRET/ Sensitive Compartmented Information.  It
was
among
the hardest military clearance for contractors to obtain and
involved two types of polygraphs.

As General Shields returned to his
chair, Becca cleared her throat.  “This demo ran on the
test network of Gecko Insurance Company.” 

Samantha interrupted. “General
Shields, thank you so much for making that
introduction.”

The General dipped his head. “Yep,
that’s one purpose of the Accelerator, to bring people
together.”

Despite her pushiness,
Becca
loved
her boss. CEO’s had to be pushy. When Becca’s passion for
Gamification
waned
, she would remember Samantha’s
work ethic. Samantha aggressively recruited Becca to join
Gamification from their previous company. Becca had never felt so
needed.

She continued, “There are
no real customers on the test network.  Gecko uses their
test
network
to evaluate software, hardware, and networking
gear.  Even though it’s just a test
network
, it’s the first time
we’ve run Gamification’s software outside our firewall—on a
network
we don’t
own or control.

“
We put a Gamification
software agent on every network element
on
the test
network
. We call this
software, ‘G-Agent.’ When I say network element, I mean every
firewall, web server, database server, computer, router, switch,
Wi-Fi access point—
everything
.  We even put a
G-Agent on an A-Stat thermostat.  You know the thermostat
you can program over the Internet?” 

The General shook his head
yes. 

The wildly successful, Nucleus
Corporation, marketed the A-Stat. Nucleus owned the top search
engine in the world, the Atom search engine.

“
We also linked the
G-Agents to log files on the devices.  For example, the
G-Agent on the Gecko firewall incorporated information from the
firewall’s log.  This file records everything that occurs
on the firewall, second-by-second.”  Firewalls attempted
to monitor and control the type of digital traffic on a computer
network. “The software operates like any other security software in
that respect.  It’s always listening, trying to
detect
malicious
activities and prevent bad stuff from
happening.”

Becca walked to the whiteboard.
 She reached for a black whiteboard marker. “I want to draw a
simple architectural diagram of the Gamification Software.”
 

First, she drew a large,
black rectangle standing on its short end. It looked like one bar
of a bar chart. Within the black
rectangle
, Becca wrote, 'REALSPACE.’
Moving from left to right, Becca etched a fatter, green
rectangle. It was
longer at both ends than the REALSPACE rectangle.

Becca stamped this
green
rectangle
as, ‘G-Bridge,’ short for the Gamification
Bridge. Finally, to the right of G-Bridge, Becca sketched a
blue
rectangle. It
was the
exact
same
proportion as the black, REALSPACE
rectangle. Inside of the blue
rectangle,
Becca wrote,
‘GAMESPACE.’

To Becca, the entire architectural
diagram looked like a standing stick with two stubby arms. Samantha
chided Becca to quit calling it a ‘stick,’ and always refer to it
as an ‘angel,’ during company presentations.

Becca continued, “We call this whole
architecture, the Gamification Angel.” Samantha’s eyes gleamed with
approval.

Becca moved back to the
original rectangle. “The black wing of the angel is REALSPACE. In
the demo, REALSPACE is the world of
cybersecurity
I just
described.”  She grabbed a purple marker and penned a
bunch of small squares within REALSPACE.  “The purple
squares within REALSPACE are all the network elements; the
firewalls, the routers, and the like.”

Reaching for a red marker,
she drew a small circle
in
each purple square.  “These red circles
in the purple boxes are the G-Agents.  The G-Agents sit
on the network devices within REALSPACE and talk to G-Bridge. So
the red circles—the G-Agents—talk to the green G-Bridge. G-Bridge
is Gamification System’s secret sauce.  It’s the crown
jewels of the company. That’s why we always draw it using money
green.”

“
The blue GAMESPACE wing
of the
angel
is the virtual gaming world.  In this demo, it’s
the virtual world of Castle Gecko.” Within GAMESPACE, Becca
traced an orange square she named, ‘Game Engine.’  

“
I programmed the Castle
Gecko game.  I used the Unreal Engine.  A game
engine is a software framework that enables
the more
rapid creation of
video games.  With a game engine, you don't have to start from
scratch every time you write a game.  The Unreal Engine
works well with VR. It’s the game engine’s job to interact with
G-Bridge and adequately render what’s occurring in REALSPACE. In
other words, G-Bridge translates REALSPACE to GAMESPACE. That’s why
G-Bridge is the key intellectual property of our
company.”

“
Do you support any other
gaming engines?” asked Shields.

“
Not yet. We focused on
the Unreal Engine.  But your question highlights what’s
cool about our architecture.  Our entire architecture is
pluggable and extensible.  The key to our flexibility is
that we created
G-Bridge
to expose a
very
robust API.” 

API stood for Application
Programming Interface.  API’s were used to help one piece
of software communicate with another piece of software
code.  APIs were
critical
in the software world. They
allowed programmers to talk to a software component, like G-Bridge,
without knowing how G-Bridge worked internally. People used
APIs
every day
. Typing ‘http://www.cnn.com’ was an API call.
The web browser
sent the API
call
over the Internet to CNN’s webserver.

“
Through this API,
G-Bridge can talk to any gaming engine that makes up
GAMESPACE.  My colleague—Saul Abrams—did amazing work
with the API.  And on the other end, in REALSPACE,
G-Bridge talks to our G-Agents.  We have G-Agents for
Linux, Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, and even embedded
systems.  Ali leads the team that codes the REALSPACE
software.”

Ali Asir still wore a
disappointed expression.  His software
code
had broken
the demo.  While Becca wrote on the whiteboard, he was
frantically searching through his source code to find the
bug. 

The General paused in
thought for a moment. “What I hear you saying is that REALSPACE can
be anything upon which I can deploy a G-Agent.  And
REALSPACE could be more than just
cybersecurity
?”