Chasm Waxing: A Startup, Cyber-Thriller (42 page)

“
AES takes a little
longer, but the algorithm developed by the Russian
mathematician
works exquisitely.” AES was an abbreviation of advanced
encryption standard. “Suleiman’s been completely stable for four
weeks. The whole team is awestruck. Here’s the kicker, Muhammad.
Suleiman cracks the SHA-2 and SHA-3 family of hashing
algorithms
. It’s
a cryptographic trifecta!” SHA was short for
secure
hash
algorithm
.

AVICENNA was the code name
for a secret project to construct an
Iranian-made,
quantum computer. The
computer
was
dubbed
, ‘Suleiman.’ Suleiman was one of
the most game-changing computing inventions, since the dawn of the
silicon computer. The quantum computer was Abdullah Rahmati’s
life-long dream. Even when the elder Rahmati lived in Iraq,
he
carefully
followed
the
work of Richard Feynman and David
Deutsch.

The idea to create
Suleiman came to Abdullah when he was with the Revolutionary
Guards. The Reagan Administration, in addition to supplying arms to
the Iranians for the release of hostages, passed along
TOP SECRET
information regarding supercomputing and quantum
computers.

This aspect of Iran-Contra
affair
was never
disclosed
. Abdullah Rahmati was incensed
that the cowboy Americans thought so little of the technical
capabilities of Muslims. They never thought twice about giving away
their supercomputing secrets. While quantum computing wasn’t going
to change every form of computing, Suleiman had numerous
applications that were of great interest to the
Rahmatis
.

Chief among these was
encryption.

There were two basic types
of encryption:
public
key and shared key. Public key encryption relied
upon the lack of classical, von Neumann architected computing’s
ability
to quickly factor the
product of two large prime numbers
. This
inability meant that public key encryption schemes were
safe,
because
classical computers
couldn’t solve the puzzle within a
reasonable time frame. When used on Suleiman, Shor’s
algorithm found the factors in nanoseconds.

The NSA knew of the vulnerability to
public key encryption. In 2015, the NSA announced that the DoD
needed to move to quantum resistant algorithms. Beyond the
pronouncement on a website, little progress was made. There were
other priorities.

And, the NSA had
its
own
quantum computer research project called, ‘Penetrating Hard
Targets.’ Though heavily funded, the project was far from the
creation of
a fully functioning
quantum
computer.
This gave
the NSA confidence that
their current public key algorithms were quantum secure for the
foreseeable future.

Conventional wisdom stated
that AES and SHA were unbreakable, even with a quantum computer.
Apple used AES to encrypt iPhones. AES was a shared key encryption
algorithm that relied
on
iterative substitution with keys of variable
length—the bigger the key, the harder the decryption process. The
worst result the NSA expected from a quantum
computer
was that anything
encrypted with
AES-128,
would need to be upgraded to AES-256. But they
hadn’t counted on Abdullah Rahmati and his Russian mathematician,
Egor Orlov.

Orlov came to Iran when Communism fell
in the early 90s. Egor created Orlov’s algorithm to crack AES
encryption. Until the development of Suleiman, the algorithm was
always theoretical. Egor never possessed a computer powerful enough
to test the algorithm. However, using Orlov’s recipe, Suleiman
broke AES-256 in four minutes. Orlov’s algorithm, with tweaks, also
worked on SHA.

The implications of Hamid’s
briefing were staggering.

It meant
that Suleiman gave Rahmati the ability to crack
almost every public and shared key encryption scheme on earth.
Using Suleiman, Rahmati could see all Internet traffic, email,
instant messaging, and voice communications.

This ability extended to all military
comms, including information on SIPRNet and JWICS. SECRET and TOP
SECRET information was Rahmati’s for the taking. And by cracking
SHA, Rahmati could decipher passwords and change data in a file
without anyone ever knowing. If he wanted, he could steal all the
Bitcoins in the world, or siphon funds from every credit card
transaction.

Rahmati and General Javan
wildly embraced one another. Then, Rahmati hugged Hamid. “All
praise be unto Allah!
This is a
miracle
!” They celebrated for almost 10
minutes. Rahmati finally calmed down. “Who else knows about
this?”

“
Your father, me, Egor,
his two Russian assistants, and four quantum
physicists,” answered
Hamid.
“Over the years, we’ve built
a
decent
cover story for the huge electrical
needs that it takes to power the computer. The Iranian government
thinks we just manufacture computer chips here.”

“
This is the
greatest
secret
in the world,” said Rahmati. “It must be protected at all costs.
Farhad, you’re watching our entire team, right?”

“
Not to worry, Muhammad.
We’re watching everyone—including you.” Javan smiled wryly. “So
what was the secret to perfecting Suleiman?”

“
When the US released our
$100B for the nuclear deal, my dad got
a massive
infusion of capital. He
used it to upgrade our semiconductor facility,” said
Rahmati.

Hamid added, “The scientists finally
developed an adequate error correction mechanism for our 10,000
qubit machine. The error correction limits the most negative
aspects of decoherence.”

A quantum computer
differed from a classical computer in numerous ways. Their
architectures were
entirely
different. At their most elementary level,
traditional
computers managed billions of switches—microscopic
transistors
etched on silicon.

The fundamental unit
of
the classical
computer was a bit. Bits operated in one of two
states, either
on
or
off
.
On
corresponded to a, ‘1.’
Off
was represented by a, ‘0.’ On and off was the
binary language of computers. 1’s and 0’s were a digital
computer’s
digits.

Quantum computers did not
use bits. They employed qubits.
Due to the strange properties of quantum
mechanics
, qubits could operate in more
than one state at a time. Quantum physicists referred to this
as
a
superposition
of 1 and 0.

In other words, qubits
could be on and off—at the same time.
This allowed
computations
to be performed
in parallel.
Qubits
radically
increased the quantum computer’s
speed and computational power. Suleiman was one billion times
faster than a desktop computer.

After nearly 25 years of
work, RTC had beat the world to the quantum computer. They even
beat Nucleus Corporation and the NSA. Those quantum computers were
nothing more than
prototypes
.

“
Let’s go to work! Let’s
start breaking the American’s
codes,
” shouted Rahmati.

“
Right,” replied Javan.
“I’ve segmented off a trusted group of hackers from
Tarh
Andishan.”
Tarh
Andishan was Persian for, ‘Innovators.’ They were
the Iranian equivalent of the NSA’s TAO and Israel’s Unit 8200.
“They’re completely loyal to me. I call them, ‘Group 24.’
The Russians, Chinese, and North Koreans
trained Group 24.
We can use them on
AVICENNA.”

“
Wonderful,” replied
Hamid. “We’ve made sure that Suleiman will never touch the
Internet. Orlov’s team has worked out a hub and spoke architecture
for the data that will keep Suleiman completely air-gapped. I don’t
understand it completely, but whoever
truly
understands
Russians? Suleiman is ready to start decrypting
American communications.”

Rahmati said,
“Let’s
begin
with breaking command and control codes used by the US
military in the Middle East. Especially concentrate on cracking
5
^th
Fleet comms. Then, let’s copy the DoD SECRET and TOP SECRET
data. After
that,
we can target the NSA, CIA, and GCHQ information
stores.”

Javan said, “I’ve also got
a team of 12 developers that can quickly make the front ends
to query
the
underlying data, once
it’s
decrypted
. We’ve got to be careful that we
don’t leave traces in the audit logs of the systems we hack. Since
we’ve broken SHA, we can scrub their
logs
so they’ll never know we were
there
. While
we’re at it, we’ll get everyone’s
passwords
!”

Rahmati reminded Javan to
compartmentalize everything. The more people knew of Suleiman, the
greater the risks of spies and leaks. Javan concurred.

“
I have more good
news,” said Hamid.
“Now that we know how
to make Suleiman, we have spare parts
to assemble another rapidly.
Egor
wants
to call her, ‘Rodina.’”

“
Rodina?” replied Rahmati,
in disgust. “What’s that mean?”

“
It’s Russian for,
‘Motherland.’ I’d let him name it. He’s already upset we didn’t
call Suleiman, ‘Hammer.’ He wanted to
call
the second computer,
‘Sickle.’”

“
Hammer and Sickle? Argh.
Russians have no imagination,” said Rahmati. He was still bitter
about the lack of air support in Tal Azan.

Hamid sighed in relief.
“Rodina it is. We need our Russians motivated. I think we’ll still
be able to hide the increased power consumption, especially if we
can use Group 24 to
conceal
the upsurge
in
electricity
.”

Javan nodded his head. “That won’t be
a problem. Group 24 has hidden trapdoors in every major electric
grid in the world, including ours.”

“
So,” continued Hamid,
“we’ll use Suleiman to crack all the encryption. We’ll use Rodina
to make sense of the data. Orlov is in the process of creating a
quantum neural network to process the information. Nucleus would
die for this. That’s the whole reason they’ve been trying to
develop quantum computers—to make
their
AI better.

“
Orlov is also anxious to
try Grover’s algorithm on the data. It’s a quantum search
algorithm. Using
a typical
search algorithm, if you search 10,000 items,
it
will
take 5000 searches. With Grover’s algorithm working on
Rodina, he’s pretty sure you would only need to perform 100
searches.”

“
Excellent,” replied
Javan. “That will free up a lot of manpower. I’ll assign a handful
of Group 24 to industrial espionage. We can sell what we want to
the Russians and Chinese. Muhammad, if I’m going to get this
information to you in Iraq, we’re going to have to lay new fiber.
We all know that the American’s have
completely
penetrated the Iraqi
telecommunications infrastructure, especially in the Green
Zone.”

“
Right,” said Rahmati. “We
need to be able
to communicate
securely
at the speed of light. I’ll get
the Russians and Chinese to finance the new fiber. “You know,
it’s
amazing
. The
cowboys
thought we could never build a system like this.
They fixated their attention on us copying their designs for
nuclear
weapons.

“
They
forgot that Muslims created the first Renaissance
in the sciences and arts. Their scientific revolution would never
have been possible without us. We should get a royalty every time
they write a number. They’re called
Arabic
numerals
for a reason.

“
The cowboys and their
allies have spent trillions. They’ve created the greatest spy
apparatus and defense communication systems in the world. Now,
we’re going to see everything they see. Then, we’re going to use it
against them. Long live the Crescent Revolution!”

10:00 a.m., Friday, November 20, 2020
- Baghdad, Iraq