Trojan Horse (11 page)

With a glance at her wristwatch, she sighed, went to the car, opened the trunk, then her luggage. She removed a bundle of clothes. She replaced her denims with an ankle-length dark skirt, slipping on a matching long-sleeved parkalike garment. She placed her denims back into the luggage, removed a head scarf, and closed the lid.

She’d scrubbed herself clean before leaving Ankara and wore no makeup, bore no fragrance of any kind. Now she looked like a proper Muslim woman. She’d better.

At sunset, Saliha reached the border with Iran, placing on her head the scarf as she pulled to a stop. She’d traveled often enough to be recognized by the guards. If a single woman driving a car in eastern Turkey was eyecatching, it was even more so in Iran. She’d explained that she was from Prague and that her Iranian boyfriend’s family lived nearby. Whenever she traveled to Turkey he asked her to visit them to give gifts. Then she’d buy some of the things he could only get in Iran and carry them back.

The guards searched the car thoroughly as they always did, even examining the two gifts she’d brought with her from Prague to maintain the charade. After a short delay she was on her way for the final half-hour drive to Maku. It was an ancient capital of the region, today of modest size. Resting in a river valley, it was dominated by a castle.

Here, her instructions never varied. She was to stay only at the Hotel Seyhan Adana and wait. Once that wait had been a short hour, another time she’d sat in her room or the lobby for three days, but always a starkly plain young woman would meet her. This time, early that evening the woman spotted her waiting in the lobby. After brief words of greeting she thanked her for the gifts, gave her items for Ahmed, then took the key-chain drive. That was it.

Back in her room, Saliha carefully opened the packages and meticulously examined the contents. They consisted of regional canned foods unavailable outside Iran. She was not going to be arrested for smuggling. Satisfied they were in order she rewrapped everything, ate a light dinner of rice with a lamb kabob, then found herself pacing in her room unable to sleep. She had another full day of driving ahead of her but sleep just wouldn’t come.

She looked again at the quiet street below. It was full night and almost no one was about. When night descended in Iran an oppressive darkness came with it. She felt like a prisoner in her hotel room.

It was the risk keeping her awake, she realized. She wasn’t stupid. While she had no interest in politics she knew that the Iranian mullahs were at war with the West. She’d considered her boyfriend from every angle and found herself finally reaching the conclusion that he was somehow involved in jihad. It was the one answer that satisfied all her questions. It alone explained his caution, his discreet devotion to Islam, his secret time on his computer, his different cell phones, his private conversations, his mysterious trips, and the thumb drive he gave her for each trip to Iran.

She was smuggling information, something the mullahs didn’t want to have sent to Iran by the Internet or mail, hence a courier.

But what kind of information? What could be so important as to go to all this trouble and expense? She’d spent hours driving here and back trying to solve the enigma. Still she had no idea but she now understood that was the way it was intended to be.

As Saliha prepared for bed, her thoughts wouldn’t turn off. She was in no danger here in Iran, if she was correct, and the Turkish officials, with the nation’s increasingly Muslim orientation, certainly wouldn’t care about what she was doing. If the Czech government really minded, Ahmed wouldn’t have legal status and they’d either expel him or at least be asking questions. She made these trips regularly and had never once been asked about them.

So, she thought as she slipped between the sheets, who was she afraid of?

The CIA for one, but most of all the Mossad, she thought with a shudder. If she was right, either or both of those organizations cared very much indeed about what she was doing and the slightest mistake by someone could point the finger at her.

Saliha feared them both. She didn’t believe for one minute the stories she saw on television or read about a dysfunctional CIA. That was all misinformation. She’d heard about the CIA all her life, how it was behind every coup in the Middle East, every assassination. She had not the slightest doubt. There’d be no Guantanamo for her if the CIA got her. They’d cart her off to some hellhole where torture and rape rooms were stock-in-trade. She had no idea what the Mossad did with people like her but she was certain the CIA alternative was better.

No, she finally decided, this is too much. She knew she must stop this. One more trip and that would be it. And Ahmed must pay well for it.

By Johnson Lam

Internet News Service

April 12

Like many Chinese, when dealing with a Westerner he uses a Western name, Victor. In his case, however, it’s also meant to conceal his real identity. Though accented his English is excellent. He is slender, well mannered, neat. And he is very proud of what he does.

In fact, the need to brag is constantly at odds with a hacker’s desire for obscurity. Though China recently passed tougher cyber security laws they are either lightly enforced or not enforced at all. But Victor fears that could change. “If you put a face to your story, I’ll be in trouble,” he tells me at a coffee shop not far from his small apartment. “If I stay anonymous, I’ll get rich.”

Victor had thought to be an engineer but before university graduation he became intrigued with the digital world of hackers. They are a close-knit group, swapping code, selling viruses, gathering information on computer exploits they can use. “All the big companies have many zero day vulnerabilities,” he says. “I’m going to find one and use it to make a killing.”

Victor tells me that three weeks ago he unleashed his own personally crafted Trojan in a phishing attack and now has a botnet of more than 5,000 computers. The virus harvests banking information and when he is ready he intends to loot the owners’ accounts for all he can take. He’s already set up a complex digital route for the money before it lands into an account he controls. “They’ll never know what happened,” he says with a laugh, as he lights a cigarette.

I ask if he’s proud of being a thief. “It’s not stealing. If you leave your wallet on that table and walk off, I’m a fool not to help myself? It’s the same thing. They let me in. Why shouldn’t I take it?”

Victor is consumed with hacking. He reads hacker forums and magazines, chats with other hackers, swapping information and ideas, and writes malware code. “That’s the hardest part. But also the most rewarding,” he tells me with a satisfied smile.

Unlike Victor, most hackers don’t bother creating their own viruses. They just take them from Web sites and adapt them to their own use. Some of the most successful viruses are rented. That’s right, rented.

Next: The Entrepreneurial World of Hacking

Internet News Service, Inc.
All rights reserved.

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND

RUE DE LAUSANNE

HÔTEL MON-REPOS

7:19 A.M. CET

J
eff was awakened by pounding on his hotel door. Disoriented, he sat up in bed and slid his feet onto the carpet. He rubbed his eyes as the pounding continued.

He’d been exhausted by the time he reached his hotel room in Geneva. Just after the final meeting at Whitehall, he’d texted Daryl to confirm he was flying to Geneva. Then just before takeoff and after landing, he’d called but had gone to voice mail both times. He decided she was earning some well-deserved rest. Once in his room, he’d ordered a room service sandwich, taken a quick shower, then gone immediately to sleep.

Drowsy, stumbling like a drunk, he went to the door and checked the peephole. There she was, grinning at him. He threw open the door. “What are you doing here?” he said as Daryl walked into his arms. She felt good and smelled sweet.

“Hi, big guy,” she murmured. “Couldn’t let you have all the fun, now, could I?”

When he finally let her go, he carried her luggage into the room and set it down. “Really,” he said, “how did you know where to find me?”

Daryl gave him a smile. “I’m a supersecret cyber agent, remember? I have friends in the CIA.” She laughed. “I just contacted Frank, then he made a call. I was on a direct flight while you were still in the air. I was so beat I took a pill and slept the whole way.” She glanced around the room. “No bimbos. That’s good.”

She pulled open the curtains. “Just look!” she exclaimed. Through the window was a lovely view of a well-tended park and beyond it the azure Lake Geneva backed by the Alps.

“Let’s order breakfast,” she said, turning back to him. “I skipped the one on the flight so I could eat with you.”

“Sounds good. Go ahead while I take a quick shower.”

Inside the bathroom, satisfied he’d grasped the idiosyncrasies of the shower handle, he turned the water on, waited a moment, then stepped in, pulling the curtain tight. The hot water bathed his body as he turned slowly. It was wonderful. It felt like a week since he’d washed. It was good having her here. Very good. Just then the curtain drew back and through the steam a naked Daryl stepped in.

“Want me to scrub your back?” she asked. “We’ve got time before food arrives.”

As it was, they kept the waiter waiting as Jeff threw on a hotel robe and let him in while Daryl hid out in the bathroom. He signed, gave the young man a lavish tip consistent with his mood, closed the door, then rapped on the bathroom door. “Food’s here. You can come out now.”

Daryl had brushed her teeth and run a comb through her hair. Without makeup in the strong morning light she was gorgeous. They both dug into the American-style breakfast she’d ordered.

“This is a very nice surprise,” Jeff said between bites.

“I’m just sorry it’s taken so long. I really have been trying to get free. We can take a trip. With me here to help, you’ll get it done in half the time, probably sooner since I’m faster at this than you are.”

“Says who?”

“My mom.” Daryl took another bite. “I can’t help thinking the Iranians aren’t sophisticated enough for this. I’m not saying some Iranian, somewhere, might not have the knowledge and be able to do this though it seems like a team creation and it’s pretty clearly a government operation. I just don’t see the mullahs managing it, do you?” Daryl no longer sounded tired. She was back on the chase. “In fact, I can’t recall a single incident of cyber code coming out of Iran. How about you?”

Jeff thought a moment. “Nothing. And one of us would have heard if there existed an ongoing Iranian government department tasked for computer interdiction. From all reports their computers are under near-constant cyber-assault. I don’t see them having the energy for this. Just think about Stuxnet and all the harm it’s caused. They’re awfully busy countering that.”

Stuxnet was to date the most sophisticated Trojan ever invented. Commonly accepted to be a digital weapon devised and launched by an opposing nation, it had all but brought the Iranian nuclear weapons program to its knees. No one claimed authorship but nearly everyone in the cyber industry believed it was a product of Mossad and CIA working together.

In fact, Jeff and Daryl were all but convinced they’d worked on a Stuxnet-like project for three months the previous year. They’d been asked to submit a bid to Frontline Integrated Systems, or FIS, a specialized software company that worked almost exclusively as a vendor for various U.S. intelligence agencies. Their task was to locate zero day vulnerabilities in Android’s wireless services, WiFi and Bluetooth. Android was the mobile operating system used by a large number of cell phones. Once the vulnerabilities were identified they were to develop reliable exploits. The self-evident though unstated goal was to create a hole through which malware could jump from other systems to Android phones, and vice versa.

Jeff and Daryl were committed to the practice of responsible disclosure, which meant that whenever they encountered a zero day software vulnerability, they felt morally obligated to advise the vendors privately so the holes could be patched before they became generally known. But in the world of cyber warfare, such vulnerabilities were extremely valuable. A government agency would not disclose them because the vendors would then patch them, destroying their value. The couple had resolved this seeming conflict after they accepted the nature of cyber warfare and because their contacts at the CIA and NSA adopted a policy of disclosing such vulnerabilities one year after discovery or when they were exploited by someone else, whichever came first.

It was a compromise, one that in an ideal world they’d not have made, but theirs was not an ideal world. Cyber warfare was the new battleground between the great powers and it was a war the United States and the West had to win.