The Alexandria Project: A Tale of Treachery and Technology (Frank Adversego Thrillers Book 1)

by Andrew Updegrove

  He snapped open his laptop and punched the keys with fury, rushing through the complicated log-in sequence that would take him into the heart of the LoC’s system, where his proposal was archived. Highlighting the file name, he hit the Enter key, leaned back, and waited for the proposal to display.

  Except it didn’t. Frank leaned forward and poked the Enter key again. Still nothing. Perhaps his laptop was frozen. But no – he could still move his cursor.

  Then Frank noticed that something on the screen was changing: the background color was warming up, turning reddish, orange and yellow, as if the sun was rising behind it. Now that was different! Frank watched with growing astonishment as the colors began to shimmer, and then coalesced into shapes that might be flames. Yes, flames indeed – but not like a holiday screen-saver image of a log fire – this was a real barn-burner of a conflagration!

  Frank wondered what kind of weird virus he’d picked up, and how. After all, he was an IT security specialist, and if any laptop was protected six ways to Sunday, it was his. So much for whatever he had planned for today; he’d have to wipe his disk and rebuild his system from the ground up.

  He was about to shut the laptop down when he saw that the flames were dying away. Now what? An image seemed to be emerging from behind the flames as they subsided. Frank leaned forward; the image became a tall building – maybe some sort of lighthouse? Underneath, there was a line of text, but in characters he couldn’t read. Truly, this was like no virus he’d ever seen or even heard of before. He reached for his cellphone and took a picture of the screen just before it suddenly went blank.

  Frank was impressed. Whoever had come up with this hack certainly had a sense of style. A weird one, but hey, graphic art of any type wasn’t the long suit of most hackers.

  Frank got a pad of paper and a pen from his desk and punched up the file directory again, highlighted his proposal, and pressed the Enter key again. This time, he would watch more closely and take notes.

  But all that displayed was a three word message: “File not found.”

  Frank tried again – no luck. He did a search of the entire directory using the title. Nothing. His proposal was gone.

  Now he was alarmed. After all, the directory he was staring at was in the innermost sanctum of the Library of Congress computer system, and the LoC was the greatest library in the world. Within its vast holdings were books that could be found almost nowhere else on earth. Recently, the Library had begun digitizing materials, and then destroying the physical copies. If someone had been able to delete files in the most protected part of the Library’s computer system, what else might be missing?

  Frank raced through a random sampling of sensitive directories, and then let out a sigh of relief; it was hard to tell for sure, but everything seemed intact. He checked the server logs for the Library’s indices, holdings and various other resources; everything appeared to be undisturbed, with no unusual reductions in the amount of data stored.

  Frank drummed his fingers on the table in the cramped dinette. How to go about figuring this one out? Then he remembered his cellphone, and sent the picture of the screenshot to his laptop. The picture wasn’t great, but once he enlarged it he could tell that the characters were Greek. He cropped the image until just the text remained, then ran it through a multi-script OCR program to turn the picture of the Greek characters into text. Finally, he pasted the text into a translator window. No luck – all he got was a “cannot translate” message.

  Frank’s fingers started drumming again. He reopened the drop down menu of languages in the translator screen and noticed that another language option was “Ancient Greek.” He highlighted that choice and hit Enter. This time, the screen blinked.

  Frank looked, and then he blinked, too. But the translation still read the same:

  THANK YOU FOR YOUR

  CONTRIBUTION

  TO THE ALEXANDRIA PROJECT

  * * *

  2

  The Plot Thickens

  Frank wondered how long his phone had been buzzing. He was about to turn it off when he saw that it was Marla.

  “Hi, kid,” he said, “Listen....” But she cut him off.

  “Well! So nice of you to pick up. I considered worrying about you for a second, and then figured you’d never really jump out the window – you’re only on the second floor, after all, and broken bones don’t solve anything. I mean, you’re much too logical to miss something like that.”

  “Marla, I….”

  “So how’s your big morning-after-the-night-before coming along?”

  Frank tried one last time to escape. “Listen, Marla, this just isn’t a good time. I’m in the middle of something, and.…”

  “Right. Fat chance YOU got lucky last night. I’ll be right over.” She hung up.

  Frank looked helplessly at the phone. He started to call her back but then put it down. She wouldn’t answer anyway.

  Turning back to his laptop, he took stock. He had no doubt he’d eventually be able to figure out how the intruder had gained access. The more challenging question was why? All he really knew so far was that a file in the most secure part of a government computer system had been stolen by someone who wanted their theft to be discovered. That, and the fact that whoever was behind the exploit had a snarky sense of humor, or wanted to lead him down the wrong path – or both. No matter how you looked at it, he didn’t have a lot to work with.

  Frank’s fingers drummed on the kitchen table for a full minute, and then he opened the Alexandria Project screenshot again, this time using a photo editing program. But cleaning the image up as much as possible uncovered no new clues. More finger drumming produced no further revelation, either, so for want of anything more productive to do, he deleted the Greek text, typed in the English translation, and stared at the result.

  How seriously should he take what had just happened? After all, someone with truly malicious intent would never leave a calling card. Instead, he would do everything he could to avoid detection. So if the cracker wanted his exploits to be known, what exactly was he trying to prove? Perhaps he was just showing off.

  That would be troubling enough, though, given how deeply inside the LoC’s defenses the intruder had penetrated. What if the files the mysterious cracker had decided should be “contributed” had been really important files? Or files that had just been created, and hadn’t yet been backed up to another location?

  On a hunch, Frank started typing again. A few new passwords and a number from a different security token than he’d used before, and he was staring at the same directory at the off-site backup center for the Library of Congress. Then he clicked on the Enter key for his security proposal. Nothing. And then the following message appeared:

  The material you have requested is being catalogued by the

  Alexandria Projects Acquisitions Department

  Please try again later

  Frank was impressed; and he had to admit he liked the guy’s sense of humor. Whoever had hacked the LoC’s system was good – really good. He had not only penetrated the LoC’s primary security system, but gotten through to the Library’s backup site as well, ensuring that whatever had been “contributed” was gone for good. That was truly disturbing. If the intruder could do that with one file, theoretically he could do it with every file on every server available from his point of entry. Frank would have to put some real effort into working this one out.

  And then it struck him: why bother?

  He smiled slowly and leaned back. All of the tension that had built up inside him began to seep away as he laced his fingers behind his head and stretched his legs out under the table. This was actually rather cool, wasn’t it? No, he corrected himself, this was really, really cool.

  Up until that moment, Frank had been dreading checking his email.

  Now he opened it with relish.

  Yes, there was an email from George waiting for him. Frank grinned wickedly as he read the subject line – in all caps, even: “WHAT IS THE A
LEXANDRIA PROJECT?”

  “Great question!” Frank banged out happily in reply. “Better get Rick on that right away!” He hit the “send” button with a flourish, staring gleefully at the screen as the message disappeared.

  Frank poured himself another cup of coffee and toggled back to the screen with the Alexandria Project logo in translation. He saw it now with a new sense of appreciation. It actually was an awfully good looking image, wasn’t it? Very stylish – just right to replace his old screen saver. Amazing how quickly a day could take a turn for the better.

  Just then he heard a knock, followed by Marla’s key rattling in the door. He got up to usher her in.

  “Hey, kid!” he greeted her, smiling broadly. “It’s great to see you.”

  “My, you sound perky,” she said, looking at him with curiosity. “I thought after last night’s little passion play I’d find you huddled in the corner in a fetal position, moaning softly.”

  She walked into the kitchen to drop a bag of bagels and fruit on the dinette table, and then went back into the hall to hang up her coat. Returning, she found her father standing behind his laptop with arms crossed and a goofy grin spread across his face.

  “So what gives? You haven’t looked this happy since Rush Limbaugh got busted for popping pain pills.”

  Frank just smiled and pointed at his laptop. Marla’s expression was quizzical, but she wasn’t about to ask for an explanation if her father hadn’t chosen to offer one. She sat down and stared at the screen, searching for clues.

  “Okay,” She said. “So you’ve found a new charity you like and that makes you all giggly?” But Frank just raised his eyebrows, so she looked at the screen again, vexed that her father had posed a riddle she couldn’t solve.

  Finally, she had to give up. “Alright, whoever you are, what have you done with my cranky old man? I’m not saying this isn’t a huge improvement, but unless you agree to keep him, you might as well let him go now.”

  Frank traded his grin for a simple smile and sat down. “Sorry to be so mysterious,” he said, pouring her a cup of coffee. “But it’s not every day I get to savor something this delicious. And this really is good.”

  “Fine,” she said. “So share.”

  “Okay, so here’s what’s up: you’ve certainly figured out by now that I expected to get the project that George gave to Rick last night. And you’ve also assumed, I’m sure, that it was a security project, or my nose wouldn’t have been so far out of joint.” Marla shrugged. Of course, but she didn’t want to embarrass her father further by admitting it.

  “If so, you’re right on target. Now here are two things you don’t know: first, the project is an important one: the boys up on the Hill suddenly have their knickers all in a twist about cybersecurity. And it’s a damn good thing they do, too, because there are bad guys out the wazoo out there with plenty of reasons to want to stick it to us – North Koreans; Revolutionary Guards from Iran; the big boys in Al-Qaeda, wherever they’re hiding out; lots and lots of criminals in Eastern Europe and Russia – who knows who else. And the easiest way to wreak havoc on the only remaining Super Power in the world is via an Internet connection.”

  “Isn’t that a bit of an overstatement, Dad? I mean, with all the money we spend on defense, how could some rogue nation, much less a criminal outfit, manage that?”

  “How? Because we haven’t done enough to prevent it. It wasn’t until last June that the Department of Defense formally acknowledged that cybersecurity needs to be part of national defense at all. That’s pretty scary, because if you think about it, our $600 billion annual defense budget makes us more vulnerable, not less so.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “Because it helps us run everything with computers – all the bombers, all the missiles, all the ground troops – everything. And they’re all controlled through the Internet.”

  “So what? Isn’t that why they hire smart guys like you, to set things up so the bad guys can’t get in?”

  “Sure, the government sets up firewalls and requires people to use passwords and all that, but data still has to get in and out or it isn’t useful. The CIA bigwigs at Langley have to suck information in from resources all over the world, and they also have to get instructions back out to their agents in the field. Same with the Department of Defense. All that data is spewing in and out like a giant fire hose – video from predator drones flying over Afghanistan, satellite data from all over the world, battlefield intelligence from spotters in forward positions, and much, much more – gigabytes of it every hour.”

  Marla looked unconvinced. “Okay, so why is this any different from the old days, when all they had were secure telephones and secret codes for anything that went out by radio? It may be more information now, but aren’t the challenges just the same?”

  “Yes and no,” he admitted, “but the ‘yes’ bit is by far the smallest part. The first thing to realize is that in the old days, besides paper documents, all you had to worry about were voices and Morse code signals. Both were transmitted using ‘analog’ technology – electric and electromagnetic pulses. If a bad guy managed to intercept the message, the most he could do was listen and record it to play back later. These days, we send every kind of information imaginable – everything from text to spreadsheets to video to radar images to...you name it. And all that information is transmitted as ‘digital’ data – just ones and zeroes. Those ones and zeroes can be stored, analyzed, searched, repurposed – and altered in ways that a voice recording never could.”

  “So?” Marla asked. “That should just make things a whole lot easier to deal with, shouldn’t it? I mean, computers can just encrypt all that information automatically, right? In the old days, I guess the sender had to use code tables and such to encrypt messages one word at a time, and then the receiver would have to do the same thing in reverse. And if someone broke the code and you didn’t know it, you were cooked. I remember you telling me how the Brits cracked the Nazi’s Enigma machine code and the Germans never figured it out.”

  “All that’s true,” Frank said, “but there are some important differences. Back when most information existed only in paper form, it was easy to control how many copies of a top secret document there were, and who had access to them. And you could put them behind walls, locks and guards. Now they’re all on servers, and those servers are all linked together, and.…”

  “Okay, Okay,” Marla interrupted. “You’ve ranted at me about this often enough before.”

  “Hardly ranting,” he said primly. “Simply fulfilling a father’s duty to pass along important information to the next generation.” She made a face at him. “But to continue: every day, every big enterprise is adding new computers for new employees; swapping out old routers as part of normal maintenance; updating obsolete software and adding new programs. All of that has to be done according to strict protocols, or it introduces points of vulnerability. And when you allow email into your system, bad stuff can come in that way, too – lots of it.”

  “Okay,” Marla admitted. “I’ve fallen for that stuff once or twice.” But her interruption barely slowed him down.

  “Every moment, the bad guys are probing our systems for gaps in our defenses. It only takes one vulnerability to allow an intruder to plant some nasty software – ‘malware’ we call it – inside the firewall, and it’s usually really difficult for us to find it. Once it’s there, the malware can start prowling around. When it finds what the cracker sent it to look for, it opens a “trapdoor” in the firewall and sends that data to whoever planted it in the first place. Or maybe it’s been programmed to delete the information so it’s no longer available, or perhaps subtly alter it in such a way that while it may seem fine, it’s actually no longer trustworthy.

  “It all depends on who the bad guy is – a criminal, a spy, or whatever. Imagine he works for, say, Al-Qaeda. The malware he plants just sits there, like a living member of a sleeper cell, just waiting for the right time. You don’t know it
’s there, but it is. One day its clock runs out, or it gets a signal from outside, or maybe it even gets triggered by something inside the firewall it’s been waiting for. Then it does something truly destructive, like take down a key system just when it’s needed the most – say the national power grid.”

  Marla broke in. “Okay, okay, I’m impressed. But if this is so dangerous, why don’t we hear more about it?”

  “But you have, my dear,” he replied. “Do any of these names ring a bell? Heartland? Target? Hannaford Brothers?”

  “I remember hearing the name Heartland before. Wasn’t that the big credit card security breach that was in the news a while back?” Her father nodded. “So I’m guessing the other two were security breaches, too, right?”

  “Bingo.” Frank nodded again. “In the biggest breaches, ones like those, the credit and debit card information of millions of people gets compromised, and often even by the same guy, a cracker named Albert Gonzalez.” Frank pulled Gonzalez’s mug shot up on his computer as he spoke and then swiveled his laptop towards her. “There – that’s the guy.”

  “Hmm. Not a bad looking hacker,” Marla observed appreciatively, watching her father out of the corner of her eye.

  “Cracker!” Frank corrected her. “Crackers wear black hats. Hackers aren’t criminals. Your father is a hacker. But if you insist, I’ll call the bad guys ‘hackers,’ too.”

  “Whatever,” Marla responded emphatically. “Are we getting any closer to the point here?”

  “Yes,” Frank replied tartly. “And I doubt Gonzalez will look like that by the time he gets out of Federal prison. Anyway, in the data breach you remember, Gonzalez succeeded in planting a virus called a ‘sniffer’ inside the firewall of an information processing company that sits between the merchants that take in credit card information and the financial institutions that complete the card transactions.

  “What a sniffer program does is look for information, and when it finds what it wants, it sends it back to the hacker. All it took was one employee adding a wireless router to the system and forgetting to set the security settings up properly. Probably in no time flat, the automated software Gonzalez was using found the vulnerability, and in went the sniffer. It was two years – and forty million pirated customer records – before Heartland realized it was broadcasting sensitive personal financial data to criminals.”