Chasm Waxing: A Startup, Cyber-Thriller (54 page)

Josh’s question
reverberated
through
Becca’s
thoughts
. “Wait, now that you say that,
let me go back and look at the Swarmbot’s peer-to-peer networking
capability. Maybe I missed something in Swarmlink.”

“
I’m
totally
confident in you,
Becca. You’ll track it down. Chris is right. It’s probably
something
simple
that we’re
just
overlooking. I’m close to being
able to help. Hey, while I have a second…I just wanted to say that
I
really
enjoy working with you. I think we’re a great team. When I
got fired from CyberAI, I felt like I was surrendering from
an important
battle. Now,
we're
in this
together
—and we’re battling as one. You
make me better.”

“
Aww, that’s sweet. I love
working with you too. You’ve helped me, be more of me. You rescued
me from my dark place and freed me to
walk
in the sunshine. I think our
adventure is just getting started. I’m fired up to work together to
grow ElectricMind into a
billion
dollar company. Watch out
Nucleus!”

Josh finally decided on a
name for the AI. They couldn’t keep calling it, ‘Josh’s AI.’ He
labeled the
artificial
intelligence, ‘eM.’ He pronounced it just like the letter,
‘M.’

Josh set up eM to ingest
data about Rahmati. Some information came from the web, but there
were other sources as well.
This
included
SIPRNet and JWICS. Lin ordered
the NSA to install
the classified
drops in a newly constructed SCIF in ElectricMind’s
offices

*

Muhammad Rahmati was now
operating out of his headquarters building in Babylon. His
high-speed
communications backbone
finally linked
to Tehran. The fiber
optic installation went faster than normal because Chinese
engineers laid the cable beside railways.

With high-speed, encrypted
comms, Rahmati rushed to assemble his
own
team of cryptographers,
analysts, and hackers in Babylon. They were to work in conjunction
with Group 24 on Suleiman and Rodina.

Both Iraq and Persia
purged their countries of all Western spies. Rahmati could tell
from decrypted intercepts that the US and the
UK
were now operating
entirely blind
.
They had no more reliable HUMINT in either Iraq or
Persia.

“
I’m glad you’re finally
here, Javan. We’ve gone through a lot together to reach this day.
As you
can see
,
there’s
no traffic in downtown
Babylon,
” chuckled Rahmati.
Babylon was still under heavy construction. It housed few
residents.

“
Well, I’ll remember
that,” laughed Javan, heartily. “I’ll need to find another way to
rid Tehran of excess citizens. Evan Prison is not big
enough.”

“
Good point.
Governing the country would be much
easier without all the people.” Rahmati and Javan cackled in
unison.

“
The Americans are up to
some
intriguing
things,” said Rahmati. “We need to execute the
third phase of Operation THUNDERCLAP soon. We both know that our
possession of quantum computers will leak at some point. Or, the
Americans will guess of their
existence, especially
with the hack of
the Swarmbots. Although, I imagine
they’re
still scratching their heads
about that one. While we have the keys to America’s
Kingdom
; we need
to act.

Javan nodded. “Ultimately,
I agree with your call on commandeering the Swarmbots. It was the
only way to get in, secure the Ark, and make sure the Jews wouldn’t
rally around the idea of building their Temple. We don’t have time
to deal with that issue right now. Until the Americans figure out
the
hack,
they’ll shut down the SWARM program.”

“
I thought long and hard
about taking the unexploded drones. It was just too risky. There
could have been a back door somewhere. But we do have all the
engineering diagrams and schematics.”

“
I don’t want to have to
deal with those things in Persia,” exclaimed Javan.

Rahmati said, “I have
other concerns. If the Americans can find the
Ark
;
given enough time, they can
ascertain
the location of Suleiman and
Rodina. Granted,
they’re deeply
hidden, but
so
was
the Ark. I want to interrogate
those kids that escaped in Jerusalem. How on earth did they find
that cave after 3000 years?

“
In any case, we’ve got to
move quickly and force the Americans to the bargaining table. We
must be more successful than the
Japanese or Al Qaeda,
when they
surprise attacked America. We need to hit
fast
—and then offer them a
face-saving way out. Just like Pearl Harbor, the
American’s
aren’t
ready.

“
Right,” said Javan. “I
know one thing; we don’t want an Iraqi Hiroshima or Persian
Nagasaki. We need to ensure that the Russians and Chinese will
cooperate, and not
renege
when the situation gets tense. We’re laying out
the chess board. Once the plan
is
implemented
,
there
are
only so many moves everyone one can
make.
Hopefully,
we force the American’s to respond accordingly.

“
We’re set to launch our
Persian social media and e-commerce sites. Our engineers have
versions in both Farsi and Arabic. Once you get your entire
infrastructure set up here, we’ll ship you the Arabic
servers.

“
Muhammad, with your
popularity, you can begin pushing everyone to
the .
ISLAM domain. We’ve
made sure the search engine is very
robust,
and we’ve hired some former
Persian and Arab engineering executives from Silicon Valley. I love
that we’re taking this page right out of China’s playbook. There’s
no Atom Search Engine in China, only Baidu. I’m excited we’re going
to follow that same model and create businesses
headquartered
in our
countries,
to employ our
citizens.”

“
Indeed,” replied Rahmati.
“This Islam-First economic policy is genius. No wonder China has
grown so fast.”

“
How’s everything going
here?” asked Javan.

“
It’s moving forward
better than I anticipated. The amnesty, coupled with the fact that
I’ve
eliminated
spies, has allowed us to decimate Daesh. You
probably saw that we just retook Tikrit. Whenever we
eliminate
Daesh,
we usually have
to completely
rebuild
. We’re spending a truckload of
money on laying fiber. We aren’t going to have a world class
economy without guaranteeing access to high-speed Internet to all
Iraqis.

“
Of course, 93% of all
Iraqi state revenue is derived from oil. You guys are in a better
place.
Your economy is a little
more diversified.
But, we both need oil
prices to rise. We’ve
got to
build
out our infrastructure more quickly.
The greatest human tragedy over the last 100 years is that our
rulers pocketed all the money from Allah’s resource, made for His
people.

“
Allah created oil for
Muslims to prosper. Instead, kings and dictators consumed it for
themselves. The world is buying less and less Middle Eastern oil.
Now is the time to act. Every year, Americans pump more shale oil
and buy more electric cars. Europe is similar. We can’t stop the
flood, but we can realign our economies before the damn
breaks.”

*

“
General Shields,” said
Becca, “I’ve worked non-stop to replicate the Swarmbot hack. I’ve
tried everything I
know. I haven’t
had any success.
For the past two weeks, I
focused heavily on Swarmlink. After a conversation with Josh, I
thought there could be a hole in the peer-to-peer comms. But,
Swarmlink uses the same encryption libraries as the satellite
comms, AES 256.

“
The Swarmbot operating
system is embedded SELinux, the
hardened
version of Linux
developed
by the
NSA. I’ve checked the ports and protocols, over and over.
Everything
is correctly
configured.
I don’t have
an answer
for
you. I can’t tell you how Rahmati did it.”

“
Chris, what’s Swarmbot
Corporation’s opinion regarding the hack?” asked
Shields.

“
Ken, Hideki, and I have
looked at this from every angle. Now, anything can be hacked. But,
none of us know how they did it. Our best guess is that Rahmati’s
team used a
zero-day exploit.
W
e just haven’t
found the source of the compromise yet. We all know that
Iran is very good at hacking. We think Iraq is still in the Dark
Ages. But, both of them are very chummy with the Russians and
Chinese. They could have received a zero-day, or zero-days, from
them—there could be more than one.
”

A
zero-day
was
a never-seen-before cybersecurity
attack or virus.
Hackers
paid big dollars for zero-days.
Since they were brand new assaults, no anti-virus software was able
to recognize the attack’s signature. The NSA stockpiled
zero-day
attacks, as did may other nations. They’d
be unleashed
during times of
heightened tension or war. Stuxnet contained
multiple
zero-day
attacks.

“
I’ve surfed the Darknet
and trolled for any attacks that resembled the Swarmbot exploit. We
couldn’t find any candidate hacks. We also offered
big
money in the
hacker chat rooms for zero-days that match our parameters. So far,
no one has responded to our offer. We’re stuck. But, we all
feel
a zero-day
attack is the most likely scenario.

“
We’ve considered if
someone
may have
placed a backdoor in the Swarmbot’s chipset.
That’s a favorite technique of the Chinese. But, we source all of
our chips from US factories. Nobody has reported an exploit like
this.”

Becca steadied her nerves. “General, I
have to bring this up. It’s the only possibility that we haven’t
seriously considered. What if Rahmati cracked the AES encryption
algorithm?”

“
That’s impossible,”
responded Shields, tersely. “The NSA certifies
those algorithms
.”

The General directed his gaze to Josh.
“Does the AI tell us anything new?”

“
As we speak, I’m
working
through
the files that Lin had delivered from the NSA
Records Center. The ones relating to Rahmati’s father are old.
The
records
include handwritten notes that need translation. Then, I
have
to digitize
them for eM. Did you know that Abdullah
Rahmati
played a role in
t
he Iran-Contra Affair?

“
Also, there was an
interesting Mossad file on Abdullah. It claims
that Abdullah
was one of the
handlers for the guy that shot Pope John Paul II in 1981, Mehmet
Ali Agca. Abdullah
Rahmati
was quite a colorful character.

“
I’m working on training
eM’s neural network to understand the Swarmbot technical
documentation. That’s a bigger process than ingesting the
Iran-Contra
documents,
because I have to
teach
the AI to understand technical
literature.”

Becca added, “I’m also
reviewing the Swarmbot technical documentation again. It’s possible
someone leaked those documents. Perhaps the hackers
identified
a
latent vulnerability by reading the
documentation.”

“
Swarmbot doesn’t think
that’s likely,” said Chris. “We’ve carefully read through the
technical
literature
many times. But we welcome a fresh set of
eyes.”

“
This is all very
disappointing,” replied the General. “The best answers for the
compromise of my $100M investment are: an unknown zero-day attack,
I’ve got a mole, or Rahmati broke the Swarmbot’s AES-256. I can’t
redeploy the Swarmbots until we identify the exploit. You guys have
to do better.”

In measured tones, Becca said,
“General Shields, I’m concerned that our problem is bigger than the
compromised Swarmbots. Your SWARM analysts tell me that all of our
assets in Iraq and Persia have gone offline. What if their
disappearance and the Swarmbot hack is related?”