The Mutable World
Page 4
Chapter 4
“What’s that?” asked Eun Seo.
My muscles tensed, gripped by terror. What do I do? Why was she here? What was I going to tell her? Circuitry buzzed. Gears whirred. Thoughts flitted to and fro within my skull, desperately seeking an escape.
Raising the sheaf of paper to my eyes, she pointed out an entry using her index finger, “570 BitCoins? What’s that?”
The desk chair beneath me squeaked in tandem with the nearly audible wave of relief that her question spawned within me. One by one, it washed over my muscles, relaxing them to the point where I worried Eun Seo would notice. Luckily, she did not, and I silently thanked whomever responsible for such favorable fortune on my part.
Making sure not to draw Eun Seo’s attention to any entries on the list, I focused my vision upon her fake white fingernails digging into the paper and said, “Nothing. Just money from this game I play.”
“Another one of your games, Kee Jin?”
“Why? What’s wrong with me playing games?”
“How many times do we have to tell you, Kee Jin? You play too much! You have to focus on your studies!”
“For what purpose? To eventually be upstaged by some other kid who’s inevitably more accomplished than me? It’s all pointless.”
“Kee Jin, you can’t just continue like this. Do you want to be homeless when you get older? Dae Joon is already worried about you!”
“Dae Joon has been worried about me for the past 8 years.”
“You can’t just blow him off, Kee Jin. Think of all he’s done for you. He worked tirelessly to obtain a home for you. Show him some respect.”
“Ok.”
Eun Seo briefly surveyed me with pleading eyes before releasing a gasp of frustration. She trotted out of the room and closed the door behind her.
Thank god she didn’t recognize the list’s contents. Peering down, I reviewed the entries once more.
●570 BitCoins
●A specific target
●10,000+ computers
Looking upon it now, the list seems short. Unfortunately, this is no indicator of the difficulty I would be faced with in collecting the materials necessary to follow through on this. Only a month remains until the target date. I will need to act quickly.
First, the target. Electric production capacity takes priority in this case, in order to most efficiently handicap the nation’s energy supply. Unfortunately, research shows those plants with the highest capacity to be nuclear facilities. It would be best not to target these, for fear of their instability as an energy source. Fortunately, irradiating the Korean peninsula is not one of my goals. This then leaves the Boryeong coal plant. On the west coast of the peninsula, the plant is the third largest in the country in terms of capacity, behind two nuclear plants, each producing greater than 5,000 MW. Disabling its 4,000 MW contribution to the energy grid should cripple the country’s electricity supply, preferably for an extended period of time. The question is, how do I disable it? It’s not as simple as shutting down or even destroying the mainframe computer. Replacing it would take a maximum of a few days, not nearly long enough to meet my goals. No, in order to effectively achieve my duration goal, permanent destruction of electrical hardware will be necessary. Repairs for that sort of damage would require a minimum of three weeks, likely more depending on the extent of damage.
So, with a target established, there remains the question of how I exactly intend on disabling the plant. Heh. It sounds so easy. I gently pushed myself away from the desk, the chair slowly coming to a stop in the center of the room. Is this really worth doing? What if I fail? What if I’m caught? If someone had been there to observe me at that moment, they would have likely described my appearance as “defeated”, or even “estranged”. They would have been mistaken, however, as the questions seemingly chipping at my resolve served only to strengthen it. My eyes flicked to the side and affixed their focus upon the small leaf-bearing box resting upon the cabinet. Fear shall not conquer my ideals, nor shall it extinguish my quest for justice. Father taught me that.
In any case, I still have to devise a viable method of destroying the plant’s equipment. Physical tampering is out of the question. Electrical plants possess massive camera surveillance networks, and undoubtedly have measures in place to act once an intrusion has been identified. In addition, the process of disabling the plant would need to be fast. The vulnerability of electrical grids the world round is a well-known subject of concern, and the South Korean government is not one to lag behind in security with its Northern neighbor knocking. Bypassing the measures will require speed, making digital infiltration the most effective choice. If I am able to gain access to the mainframe, I can fry the plant’s transformers and other sensitive electrical equipment through an overvoltage of the internal electricity network. However, access to the mainframe will be impossible remotely without some sort of network exploration. It is highly unlikely it has Internet access, and it would be extremely difficult to isolate an IP address of a computer with network access to the mainframe. I will need local access in order to assess the internal network of the plant to plan the attack. That’s—not good, to say the least.
Local access necessitates physical presence. I can’t just go to Boryeong. Ouch. Touching my right index finger to my lip, I felt the warm presence of blood stain my finger. While pondering the dilemma, I had bitten my lip, puncturing it with my incisors. Instinctively, I ran my tongue over the wound, measuring its extent. It’s pretty big. I hope Eun Seo doesn’t make a big deal out of it. Sucking on my lower lip, I once more committed myself to the task of planning the attack further.
I’ll worry about specific network information later. The process is foremost. In this vein, I am going to require a large and capable botnet to congest the plant’s internal network. My 4,000-strong existing botnet won’t suffice, sadly. I’ll need at least another 6,000 computers, plus high data rate foreign VPN servers to scatter the traffic. I don’t plan on getting caught. Also, 6,000 additions to my botnet using my current methods will be impossible in a single month. I need a new source of computing power, that does not require the tedious process of viral infection. A source such as the innumerable horde of PC rooms that litter the city, each feeding the inability and unwillingness to act that afflicts the youth. Offering an essentially endless opportunity for distraction through computer games, PC rooms as a business model perpetuate our broken society in their current state. 24-hour opening times seven days a week, offering ample sources of refreshments and food, the PC rooms ensnare the youth in a continuous cycle. Why strive for more, when you can enjoy yourself playing games with no end? The places cloud our vision, veiling the withheld right we so blindly fail to recognize is not ours: freedom.
Despite their vile undertones however, I cannot be successful without the aid of their resources. At an average of 40 computers each, I would need to convince 150 owners to allow rental of their resources. Moral appeals will do little to persuade them, as they rely on the current state of Korea’s social affairs to turn a profit. Providing satisfactory incentive will require monetary resources. I cannot pay them in Won, however. I do not possess nearly enough in assets equivalent to official currency. I do possess a large supply of BitCoins produced by my existing botnet over the past couple years. 574 of them, to be exact. I’ll have to hope that it will suffice for payment. In addition, some sort of communication will need to be established in order to communicate effectively with the management staff. That will need to be looked into later down the road.
Finally, the specific method of attack. For this, a decision will need to be made according to the results of network exploration. If such exploration reveals that the mainframe bears some form of Internet-capable connection, immediate seizure and preparation of that pipeline will need to be established, and legitimize its presence to the inevitably present firewall protecting the plant’s data networks. If network exploration reveals no such connection exists, I will have to make d
o with routing traffic through available connections, likely lower priority computers that still have network access to the mainframe. In either case, my botnet in tandem with the computers made available by the PC rooms will be mounting a variation of the popular denial of service attack. Routing requests through high data rate foreign VPN’s in foreign countries, and then through available connections into the plant, they will bombard computers on the network excluding the mainframe with hundreds of requests a second. This will prevent any attempted remote intervention from staff while the electrical equipment is destroyed through overvoltage.
“Tick. There go the lights.”