Chasm Waxing: A Startup, Cyber-Thriller (5 page)

“
In REALSPACE, the DDOS
attack consisted of
a
specific
type of packet, called SYN
packets, sent from the botnet.
To
mitigate the threat
,
REALSPACE
filtered the
SYN
packets,
and launched virtual
load
balancers. So the mitigation
stopped the offending
packets
and surged to improve the
amount of traffic the network could accept. That’s the
good
part.

“
After
that,
the wheels came off,”
said Becca, with disappointment. “The arrows that flew over the
castle, and landed
in
the courtyard, represented a spear
phishing
attack.
The malicious attachments on the spear
phishing
email
were rendered
as gold coins
in GAMESPACE. I’m encouraged that the G-Agents recognized the
attack. That’s why we saw arrows in GAMESPACE in the first
place.

“
But the Cleric’s spell
should’ve thwarted the spear
phishing
attack. It didn’t. The Gecko
customer service agents clicked on the attachment. That’s when the
demo broke
down,
and the workers could no longer do their job.
There’s a bug in the code somewhere. Ali will track it
down.”

The General looked at the
clock. “Becca, Grandma thanks you for your explanations. The
ability to
succinctly
communicate
complex topics is one of the
most
critical
skills in the technology world. Only then, do you
actually
know
that you know something—when
you can explain it to your grandma. Just last night,
President
Goodson
called and asked me to explain encryption.”

Becca giggled. Her eyes
widened behind her black,
wire-rim
glasses.

“
It’s about time to start
our Friday evening,” said the General. “But before we break,
Samantha, how’s the AI coming?”

Artificial Intelligence
was a broad and complex term with a long history
in
computing.
Generally
speaking,
it referred
to the
enablement of
computers to mimic human thinking and display human-like
intelligence.

Samantha replied, “Right
now, we use AI to recognize
cyber-attacks
in REALSPACE. But, I
think you’re asking about AI to replace the necessity of the
G-Master, right?”

“
Yes.”

“
W
e haven’t
progressed
as far as I’d hoped. As
you know, we don’t want the dependency of a Gamification Systems’
employee monitoring every game. So we’re working hard on
it.”

“
Roger
that,
” said the General. “Show me what you
have
at
next month’s demo. You
guys
should talk to CyberAI about the
AI. Artificial intelligence is their core competency.”

“
Yes,
sir.
”

“
Samantha, this looks
good. Keep at it. Spear phishing is a very hard problem. 90% of all
data breaches begin with spear phishing. It’s complex and involves
social engineering. It doesn’t surprise me that you’re struggling
with it. Now, I’ve kept all of you here too long. Thanks for
accommodating my schedule.” Lin and the General left the
room.

Samantha surveyed Becca and Ali.
“Well, that went pretty well. Good job guys. Ali, how long do you
think it’ll take to locate that bug?”

“
I’ll work on it this
weekend. I
remember fixing
it.
Maybe I checked in the wrong source
code into GitHub.” GitHub was software that managed files and took
care of file versioning. Software source code—whatever the
programming language—boiled down to digital
files
, composed of
text.

Different software
engineers at Gamification worked with
different
files. The entire
process of creating, checking out, and updating source code files,
was the
lifeblood
of a software company. A finished software
product was simply
a number
of
files
,
spliced together, written in
a
particular
programming language. When
executed, the
files
worked to perform the requested task.

Ali was telling Samantha that he could
have mistakenly uploaded the wrong version of his source code file
to GitHub.

“
Ok, great,” replied
Samantha.

“
You know
Samantha; I
think I’d work much faster with a personal aide like Lin.”
Ali snickered.

“
Stop. I wasn’t impressed.
I didn’t think
she
was that
pretty
or smart,” Samantha said. “Also,
Becca, you can’t call this Castle Gecko. I
thought
we talked about that?
Gecko Insurance Company won’t appreciate it. We don’t want the
Gamers to have any idea of what’s
actually
occurring in
REALSPACE.”

“
Right” replied a
crestfallen Becca. “I didn’t have enough time to change everything
for the demo. I was thinking of another name. Do you like Castle
Chevaliers?”

“
Yeah, that sounds
great.”

“
Aren’t you a little
skittish about working with CyberAI? Don’t they do what we do?”
asked Becca.

Small startup companies were always
deeply concerned about competition. Samantha replied, “I’ve always
thought so too. So let’s be careful.”

While Samantha checked her
phone, Becca and Ali packed up their
laptops
. Once finished, they both
waited for Samantha.

“
Oh, don’t wait for
me,
guys. I’ve
got something I need to discuss with General Shields. Have a great
weekend.”

4:15 p.m. (EDT), Monday, July 27, 2020
– Fort Meade, MD

Eighth Floor, Director’s
Suite, Ops 2B, NSA Headquarters

General Shields slammed
the phone down.
The violent smash
abruptly
ended the conversation with his
counterpart at the CIA. Shields’ office at NSA headquarters was
twice as large as his Accelerator office. Behind his desk, stood a
wooden credenza with
ceiling-high
bookshelves.
The
room
contained an
eight-seat
conference table and a separate casual seating area. Like the
Accelerator office, Charlie Shields’ picture was displayed most
prominently.

The Intelligence
Community
called
CIA Director, Walt Black, the DCIA. The Intelligence
Community—abbreviated ‘IC’—was a federation of over 17 agencies in
the US government. The organizations with the biggest budgets in
the IC were the CIA, NSA, and National Reconnaissance Office—NRO.
The NRO’s job
was
day-to-day
management of spy satellites.
DIRNSA got along famously with the Director of the NRO. The two
agencies
effectively
cooperated with one another. On the other hand,
General Shields despised Walt Black.

Lin Liu arrived in DIRNSA’s office.
“Good afternoon sir, are you ready to go over to the Accelerator?
Josh Adler, of CyberAI, is scheduled to give us a demo at 1700.
Sir?”

General Shields looked into Lin’s jade
eyes. A revealing, dark green blouse intensified her eyes, making
them sparkle like two emeralds.

“
Walt Black is a complete
moron. President Goodson must have selected him based
on
the
reputation of the DCIA’s father. All the DCIA does is build his
drone fleet, at the expense of what the CIA should be
doing—HUMINT.” HUMINT stood for human intelligence; information
derived from human sources—spies.

“
The CIA was founded to
use secret agents to spy on the Russians after World War II. The
DCIAs in the Cold War knew what they were doing with HUMINT. The
Iraq/ Afghanistan War Directors knew what they were doing. But Walt
Black offers his intelligence customers virtually no HUMINT on the
Caliphate.
I give him NSA SIGINT.
Rather than use SIGINT to develop his HUMINT, all he does is order
drone strikes—based on my SIGINT.”

SIGINT stood for
intelligence derived from signals. The NSA’s mission was
collection
of
foreign SIGINT and protection of US military SIGINT.

SIGINT consisted
of wired
and wireless phone calls, text
messages, email, and
other
Internet traffic; like chat,
and Skype.
SIGINT also
included signals from satellites, w
eapons
systems, radars, telemetry from space launches, and ballistic
missile launches. In 2020—every day—the NSA scooped up more SIGINT
than 20-times the entire collection of the
Library
of Congress.

“
If Walt Black wanted to
join the Air Force, he should have done so. Now he operates his
private air force from Langley.” Langley, Virginia was the
headquarters of the CIA. It was about a one hour drive from Fort
Meade.

The General took a deep
breath and recomposed himself. “Alright, I’m ready. Let me show you
the Accelerator Line of
what we
call the, ‘Underground Railroad.’
”
Yesterday, Shields had read Lin into the
special access program that contained details about the clandestine
NSA tunnel complex.

“
It’s a lot faster than
driving. In the basement of this building, there’s a mile and
a
half tunnel
. It runs under Highway 32, straight to Defense
Innovations.”

“
That’s
incredible
! No
wonder you get there so quickly,” said Lin.

They left his office and walked
towards DIRNSA’s private elevator.

The NSA was a component of
the US Department of Defense—DoD. In 1952, President Truman
initiated the NSA, in response to the escalating Cold War. After
9/11, the NSA became the most powerful spy agency in the world. It
employed over 40,000 military and civilian workers.
Also
, an even
larger cadre of government contractors worked to support the
NSA.

General Shields could have chosen to
house Defense Innovations Accelerator at NSA headquarters, within
the confines of Fort Meade. It wasn’t like the Fort lacked
space.

Fort George G. Meade was a
US Army base spread over eight square miles. The 660-acre campus of
the NSA sat on the western side of the base. Located 25
miles
northeast
of Washington DC, it was
a gargantuan
complex. The Fort
also housed US Cyber
Command—CYBERCOM—headquarters and
the
Defense Information Systems Agency. DISA acted like the DoD’s phone
company and Internet service provider.

Not including the
Underground Railroad, the Fort contained more than 32 miles of
roads, its
own
fire department, post office, police force, and a SWAT team.
Before CYBERCOM and DISA arrived, the NSA had two golf courses.
Fort Meade housed more than 50 offices buildings totaling over
seven million square feet.
And
that was just the Fort. The
NSA maintained
facilities all over the world.

Shields didn’t want to house the
Accelerator on base. He wanted to keep the government-types away
from the entrepreneurs. He knew that many govies would pour energy
into throwing rocks at unproven technologies.

In
addition
, it took
time
to get into and out of the
Fort. Traffic jams during rush hour were
standard
. Also, if the General
wanted to house the Accelerator within one of the buildings at
Headquarters, no cell phones were allowed. General Shields knew
that
mobile
phones were the
lifeblood
of entrepreneurial companies
trying
to quickly ramp up
revenue
.

Shields pushed the basement floor
button.

*

General Shields and Lin
hopped into the back seat of a golf-cart sized, hovercraft. From
their position in the hovercraft, tunnels extended in many
different directions. A heavily armed NSA
police officer
drove the vehicle.
They sped towards the Accelerator. “I love this thing,” squealed
Lin in delight. “I want one!”

Shields laughed. “They’re
fun. If the Fort still had golf courses, they’d be perfect. They
glide right over
water
and don’t leave any tracks on the
greens.”