DEAD BEEF (Our Cyber World Book 1) (38 page)

Chapter 49

It wasn’t difficult to identify the cell tower that had issued a large Electromagnetic pulse right around the time the Humvees and helicopter lost control. The cell tower stood in a remote area, at quite a distance from other towers. Already configured to emit energy more powerfully to cover a wider area, and located only a quarter mile from where the incident took place, it became an ideal candidate for the type of EM attack Julian had pulled off.

A more in-depth review of the power surge at the cell tower showed what appeared as a random set of pulses, varying erratically in frequency. Embedded in them, Sasha’s diagnostic code discovered a repeating pattern. Itzak was the first to connect the pattern to a known sequence. “Missile codes,” he said.

When someone asked him how he knew that, he eyed Chana, who with a small nod approved the disclosure that followed.

“A few years ago we were here in this area following a couple of Egyptian nationals doing their tourist bit across America,” she said. “Their intentions were unclear, but their visit here coincided with an incident in which fifty nuclear missiles were, shall we say, beyond the control of their handlers for 45 minutes.”

“I remember reading about that,” Sasha said. “Wasn't it deemed a glitch?”

“Wishfully,” Chana replied. “Yes, your Air Force conducted an investigation and reported the whole thing as a one-off system glitch. In our own report to your government we suggested that a transmission from one of the Egyptian’s cellphones may have contained nuclear codes from one or more of the compromised missiles. Lacking hard evidence, we could only make the suggestion based on chatter we heard via HUMINT channels. Far too disturbing for positive thinkers, your people dismissed our report. An update to the missile codes shortly thereafter added the belts and suspenders assurance they needed to sleep better at night and move on from the embarrassing incident.”

“It appears that our little victory was a bit too easy after all,” Martin said.

“Sure, but for now at least we can say Julian doesn’t control the towers to do that again,” Sasha noted.

Martin stared at his screen hoping he could read Julian’s mind there. “Maybe he doesn’t need them if he’s already done whatever he needed to do with them,” he said. “I’m just concerned what other tricks he pulled while we were recovering the towers from him. A faint in Cheyenne, with the real action going on out there, around the real prize. Add to that how he’s probably dissecting our winning solution as we speak—.”

“I think you’re beating yourself up too much,” Sasha said. “Let’s run a full diagnostic on all the cell towers and see what happened and what we have to worry about going forward.”

“I’m with Martin,” Beloski said. “That was a classical probe and counter-attack capture. As we speak, Julian is changing his code to handle our latest.”

“And so am I,” said Martin Spencer. He started typing furiously. Every good programmer knows where his code is weakest, Martin reflected, and he was already modifying the area he thought Julian would exploit.

“Inbound,” Sasha said, meaning another attack had started. “Eighty nodes this time, all probing the power grid.”

“Did 1-prime-mod2 finish loading?” Martin asked.

“Ten minutes ago,” Sasha confirmed. “Diagnostic check complete, all looks good.”

“What are you guys doing?” Beloski asked.

Martin was too busy to respond. He had ten routines to modify, worth about 300 lines of code to pound out before he was ready for the next step.

Sasha answered for him. “We’re working.”

“Working on what?” Beloski.

“The next wave,” Sasha replied.

Cynthia who had just come into the room, asked, “The next wave? What about this one?”

“They’re going after the power grid,” Beloski said. “Shouldn’t you be doing something about that?”

“Nope,” Sasha said.

“They can have it,” Martin said. “We have enough generator power here to last us for days. They can turn it off and on all they want. When it’s off, that means they can talk to fewer network devices and computers. They can have it.”

“But you installed a new version of the software in the monitors and controllers?” Beloski said.

Martin smiled. “Yup, the switch-out will perform a full forensic analysis on Julian’s latest code and write home about it before he can figure out what it’s done. That’s because it will concurrently flood him with a crap load of data, replicated through each of his nodes. His system will slow down to a crawl just long enough for him to not know what hit him.”

“What does this crap load of data contain?” Beloski asked.

Now Martin was grinning, the old Martin, having fun during a hacking face-off. “A random sequencing of the characters in the phrase, ‘Keep it real, keep it random, dude. We love ya, Julian.’ Over and over again, so that eventually snippets of the phrase or the full phrase is legible.”

“And what is that supposed to accomplish?” Cynthia asked

Martin turned to look at her and said, “You remember that story I told you about Bobby Fisher ordering a tall glass of orange juice, foamy on top, please, in the middle of one of his games with Boris Spasky?”

“I have a vague recollection,” Cynthia said. “He never drank any of it, right? Just let it sit here.”

“Yeah, and it pissed off Spasky, enough of a distraction to cause him to lose focus,” Martin said. “He lost the game, and eventually the match. That’s what I’m trying to give Julian. A tall glass of his own crappy random stuff.”

The Israeli computer expert, after paying very close attention to his own screen for some time, came over to Martin to look over his shoulder. “Good play,” he said in a thick Russian accent, and returned to his station. On the way there, he said something to Chana in Hebrew, and she smiled.

Julian watched his screen. His attack was working flawlessly. The hovercrafts were easily gaining access to wireless networks because their ability to fly allowed them to get in close and in just the right position to maximize signal strength. Then, their built-in firmware algorithms, running off 300 MHz processors — not the fastest, but pretty awesome for a platform that small — would pound on secure connections with millions of unlock codes per second until they broke through.

The rest was child’s play. Martin’s code, the one he’d installed back in L.A. was good. But Julian had probed it, and he’d had over 24 hours to study what it did before he arrived in Colorado. Breaking into it was easy, yet, as soon as he did, he noticed his computers slowed down.

“Ooops,” he said to Masoud. “Looks like a reverse denial of service. Very weak and old school, dude.”

“They’re flooding you with much data?” Masoud asked.

“Yeah, boat loads of it. I’ll figure out the repeating pattern, and filter it out in second—”

“What’s wrong?”

Julian was scrolling through the data, and endless sequence of characters that said nothing, and specified nothing. He kept scrolling and stopped when he saw his name spelled out. More scrolling and he found the words “dude” and “random.” And he got it.

“It’s a joke,” he said to Masound. “There,” he added after finding another part in the data stream. He read it aloud. “Keep it real, keep it random, dude. We love ya, Julian.”

One of Julian’s other laptops beeped and on its screen he saw the notification: “Power grid switch-out complete. All systems check out, Pass.”

“We got it,” Masoud said.

“Yeah, but that was too easy,” Julian said. “They scanned the heck out of us while we took over, and the few seconds that my system slowed down let them do it without me being able to intercept the scan.”

“Just received another message from Spencer, Mr. President. It says they allowed Julian to capture the power grid, but were able to get a comprehensive scan. We have a couple of questions we want to send back to Martin.”

The president seemed to hesitate. Martin wanted to be left alone and probably had little time to contemplate questions. “Stand by,” he said, and turning to Odehl he asked, “Why would Spencer allow Julian to capture the power grid?”

“Martin probably thinks it buys Julian nothing. Yes, Julian can turn power on and off, but if he turns it off, he can’t talk to most of the networks and systems he wants to crack. I’m also guessing Julian got trapped and scanned, meaning his attack was dissected rather than stopped, and that gives Martin additional information to stop the main attack.”

“The one on the prize,” the president said, intentionally choosing to leave the words “nuclear” and “missile” out of it for now.

“Mr. President,” someone said on the phone. “Power in Cheyenne and surrounding areas is now gone. They’re fully black.”

The president lowered his voice, but it still carried from one end to the other of the tense room. “More scary stuff, Martin. I hope you’re playing your hand correctly.”

“Martin doesn’t play poker, Mr. President,” Odehl noted. “What you mean to say is that you hope he’s playing his chess position well.”

“Or that if he’s using a gambit, it’s the right one,” the president added.