Blackout: Tomorrow Will Be Too Late

by Marc Elsberg

  ‘I have to get there.’

  ‘Chopper should be landing in the Talaefer car park in twenty minutes.’

  Brussels, Belgium

  Two minutes, no longer, that was all that was allowed; Sophia had made that clear to him. He had never enjoyed a shower so much. When he stepped out of the stall, hand towel around his waist, the Swede was waiting with a stack of clothes.

  ‘Shirt and trousers. From a colleague who had them stowed away on a shelf but who hasn’t shown up for days. They’ll be a bit too small, but better than nothing.’

  ‘What happened there?’ she asked and pointed at the stitches on his thigh.

  ‘Took a dumb fall,’ he lied.

  ‘Looks nasty.’

  ‘Feels it too. And how are you managing otherwise?’ He changed the subject while he got dressed.

  ‘I more or less live here,’ she answered with a shrug. ‘I only go home to sleep. And sometimes not even that. The special buses for employees aren’t running any more. And it’s an hour and a half by bicycle – quite a haul. But it keeps me warm, and I’m getting a workout to make up for the one I would have had on the ski trip.’

  ‘Have you heard anything from your friends and old man Bondoni?’

  ‘Not since we left,’ she admitted gloomily.

  In front of the bathrooms they ran into Shannon.

  ‘I’m never leaving this place,’ the journalist sighed. She wore a fresh pair of jeans and a sweater.

  ‘Oh yes you are,’ said Sophia. ‘You’re coming with us – to the MIC.’

  She led them into a small office on the seventh floor.

  Manzano had pictured the central reporting and control centre for civil protection and disaster management as being more impressive.

  ‘This is a conference room,’ she explained. ‘We have a guest network, you can access it via WLAN.’

  ‘I can’t access a thing.’ He showed her his laptop. ‘The battery is dead. I’ll need a charger. Do you have one?’

  Sophia opened a side cabinet. ‘Here are two laptops, maybe you can find something that’ll work?’

  Manzano tried them out. One of the cables fit.

  ‘If anybody asks you anything,’ said Sophia, ‘send them to me.’

  ‘Say that we’re from IT. There are thousands of you here, not everybody knows each other anyway.’

  ‘That’s true. I’m two rooms down, on the left. I’ll stop by now and then.’

  She left the room, closed the door.

  Manzano plopped down into one of the chairs and started up the computer.

  Shannon took a seat at the desk opposite.

  ‘When I imagine that for over a week millions of people have been going through what we went through last night,’ she said and looked thoughtfully out the window, ‘I’m amazed that all hell didn’t break loose out there a long time ago.’

  ‘It probably has, to an extent,’ replied Manzano. ‘But most people are too busy surviving. They don’t have the time or the energy for rioting.’ He jumped as the door was opened.

  Sophia walked in, set a tray down on the table.

  ‘Hot coffee and something to eat. You two look like you could use it,’ she said. ‘See you in a bit.’ With that, she went out and closed the door behind her.

  ‘She might as well be telling you what size bra she wears.’ Shannon grinned with her mouth full. ‘She likes you.’

  Manzano felt himself turning red.

  Shannon had to laugh. ‘And you like her too!’

  ‘Cut it out. We have things to do.’

  ‘You have things to do.’ Shannon chuckled contentedly and gulped down her mouthful. ‘All I have to do is eat, drink coffee …’ She pushed her chair around the table and next to his, ‘and watch you.’

  Someone knocked on the door, and before they could respond it was already being opened.

  A man with fashionable designer glasses stuck his head in and looked at them in surprise.

  ‘Oh, I thought … who are you?’

  ‘IT department,’ answered Manzano. ‘We’re supposed to fix something here.’

  ‘Ah. OK then, please excuse the interruption.’

  He closed the door, Manzano and Shannon were not bothered again.

  The Hague, Netherlands

  They had chosen a special conference room in which there were no computers except for Bollard’s. And it wasn’t connected to the internal network. After the presentation, Bollard would have it wiped before he hooked the computer back up to the net.

  ‘The man’s name is Jorge Pucao,’ Bollard declared. ‘Born in 1981 in Buenos Aires. Grew up there as well. Even as a high school student he was politically active – he took part in a number of demonstrations against the economic crisis.’

  Visible on the projection screen was the angry face of a young man raising his fist against unseen enemies.

  ‘During the peak of the crisis around the turn of the millennium he studied political science and computer science in Buenos Aires. He continued to be involved politically, at demonstrations and in the organization of an exchange ring, something that was popular in Argentina at the time, as the value of the state currency, the peso, had plummeted in the economic and financial crisis. The country was going bankrupt, and large parts of the middle class were impoverished. In 2001 Jorge Pucao was arrested at the protests against the G8 summit in Genoa.’

  Even the unflattering mug shots of Pucao with sweat-soaked hair couldn’t mask his good looks.

  ‘Around this time his father took his own life. Pucao returned to his home country and ramped up his activism. By 2003 Argentina was over the worst of it, and Pucao began a master’s degree at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in Washington, DC. He was able to fund his education by working as a freelance IT specialist in online security. Concurrent to this he was involved in the anti-globalization movement. Articles and a so-called manifesto that he published on his website indicate that he had started to become more radical. You will find all documents, later ones as well, under “Pucao_lit” on the server,’ Bollard added, in the expectation that all present would take a close look at the documents. He had skimmed through a few of them himself, but hadn’t delved deeply. What stood out at first glance was the discipline of the arguments, which was missing in most pamphlets by radicals of all stripes, whose tirades got lost in a mess of slogans and accusations.

  ‘In the US he also came into contact with primitivist factions. For any of you who don’t know what that means, essentially, the proponents of primitivism call for a return to pre-industrial ways of life; many also reject our form of civilization. These contacts don’t seem to have been particularly strong – hardly surprising, given that Pucao earned a living with the most modern of technology. But we already know that our man here is thoroughly ambivalent.

  ‘In 2005 he successfully completed his studies in Washington. He protested at the G8 summit in Gleneagles in Scotland. Back in the US he continued to work as an IT specialist. There is speculation, but no proof, that he was also active as a hacker all those years.’

  Now Bollard came to the group photo at the conference in Shanghai that the Germans had sent him.

  ‘In 2006 he took part in a conference for Internet security in Shanghai. At the same conference Hermann Dragenau was also present, as this photo indicates. Dragenau was head of products at Talaefer, the technology firm whose control software for power plants is believed to have been manipulated.’

  ‘Aside from this similarity between our facial composite and the photo of a man who attended the same conference as Dragenau, do we have anything else that suggests he’s our man?’ asked Christopoulos.

  Bollard brought up a list of letters and numbers. ‘As you know, the US began collecting data on passengers travelling by plane after the terror attacks of 9/11. In 2007 the EU announced that it was also prepared to give the US information on passengers in and outside of the US. Therefore we know that Pucao frequently shuttled back and forth between the
United States and Europe between 2007 and 2010. Düsseldorf was often his preferred destination in Europe – a stone’s throw from Dragenau’s place of residence. But it gets even better. In 2011 Dragenau went on vacation to Brazil. We’ve got photos and even travel documents. Pucao flew down there at the same time and stayed two days. Too short for a vacation.’

  ‘But there’s no evidence that the two of them met?’ asked Christopoulos. ‘Even if there were, that in itself wouldn’t mean anything.’

  ‘That’s true, of course, but—’

  ‘Excuse me for interrupting you, but something else occurs to me: if the two of them are such computer geniuses and they’re planning the apocalypse, then they have to know that everything they do leaves behind a digital trail. Why don’t they proceed with more caution or cover their tracks?’

  ‘Because they feel safe?’ countered Bollard. ‘Because they don’t care? For now, all we can do is speculate.’

  ‘Nor have you mentioned anything else about his political activities in the last few years.’

  ‘I’m getting to that. After 2005, Pucao changed his behaviour quite strikingly. He ceased to show up among protestors at meetings of the G8 or similar occasions – though here one has to add that protests by opponents of globalization declined in these years. But he also completely put a stop to his publications. The last political post on his blog appeared on 18 November 2005. And he’s not been active on social media, at least not under his real name.’

  ‘I can see two reasons for that,’ said Christopoulos. ‘He’s either given up his involvement, or he continues to push forward with it, but no longer wants to draw attention to himself …’

  ‘… because he’s planning something in secret. Exactly. Think of the 9/11 attackers, who appeared to be well-behaved students or something along those lines. Inconspicuous, assimilated. Meanwhile they were quietly planning the worst terror attack since the end of the Second World War.’

  ‘But he’s got to expect that he’s still on our radar.’

  ‘Of course. We have him in our databank. Unfortunately, the images we have of him are poor quality, so the facial recognition software couldn’t establish a sufficient degree of similarity between them and the facial composite.’

  ‘How many millions did that cost? It didn’t recognize any of these faces?’

  ‘We’ll find out if that’s the case.’

  ‘But even if Pucao is one of the attackers, we still don’t have the others,’ Christopoulos pointed out, still playing the sceptic.

  Bollard had nothing against that – to the contrary. ‘Right this minute, every intelligence agency in Europe, the US and all allied nations is checking out every contact of Dragenau’s and Pucao’s that they can find.’

  ‘In so far as they’re able to,’ sighed Christopoulos. ‘If things are playing out the same in the US as they are here, they’ll have trouble finding a lot of them. And not because they’re terrorists, but because they’re sleeping on a mattress among hundreds of other people in some sports arena or civic centre – or standing in line for food.’

  Brussels, Belgium

  ‘Remember the suspicious IP-address I discovered before the battery went and we lost the Porsche?’

  He typed it into the browser’s address line. In the browser window the word RESET appeared followed by two fields, ‘user’ and ‘password’.

  ‘Amateurs!’ exclaimed Manzano. ‘I’ll try an SQL-Injection. I’ll spare you the details but someone here felt hugely overconfident.’

  A few minutes later he whispered to himself, ‘I don’t believe it.’

  ‘What?’ Shannon whispered back.

  ‘The username field,’ said Manzano. ‘It’s vulnerable. I can get through and access information on the website practically without putting in a username.’

  ‘How’d that happen?’

  ‘Bad security measures by the people behind it.’

  ‘And what kind of information are we talking about?’

  ‘Let’s take a look right now.’

  A long list appeared on the screen.

  cuhao

  proud

  baku

  tzsche

  b.tuck

  sarowi

  simon

  …

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘If we’re lucky, what we’ve got here is a list of this website’s users,’ said Manzano. ‘Now let’s go look for the passwords.’

  He downloaded the file on to the computer. A few seconds later, he’d opened it.

  A massive jumble of letters and numerals popped up.

  Downloaded table: USERS

  sanskrit:36df662327a5eb9772c968749ce9be7b

  sarowi:11b006e634105339d5a53a93ca85b11b

  tzsche:823a765a12dd063b67412240d5015acc

  tancr:6dedaebd83531823a03173097386801

  b.tuck:9e57554d65f36327cadac052a323f4af

  blond:e0329eab084173a9188c6a1e9111a7f89f

  …

  ‘Look, look,’ was all Manzano said.

  Someone knocked. The door was opened, Manzano reached for the laptop so that he could close it if necessary.

  Sophia.

  ‘You scared us,’ said Manzano.

  ‘What are you up to?’

  ‘We’ve found something interesting.’

  ‘Come on over,’ said Shannon. ‘It’s fascinating what he’s up to over here. If also completely incomprehensible …’

  Sophia gazed at the screen.

  ‘Might as well be Chinese to me,’ she said.

  ‘Same with me,’ Manzano agreed. ‘How can anyone be so careless? Look here,’ he pointed at the beginning of the lines. ‘These are usernames for this website. Plain and clear, stored without encryption. That means we can go ahead and fill in the upper field. The keystroke combinations that follow are the passwords, or, to be more precise – and this is the problem – so-called “hashes” of the passwords – encrypted versions of the same.’

  ‘Does that mean we won’t get any further with them?’ said Shannon.

  ‘Depends,’ replied Manzano. His fingers flew over the keys again.

  ‘If the people behind this did clean enough work, then this is the end of the road for us. But one continues to be surprised at how sloppy even the pros can be in this area.’

  There was another knock at the door. Sophia turned, nervous, crossed the room, opened it, but didn’t give whoever it was the option of coming inside. Behind her, in the hallway, Manzano recognized the man with the designer glasses again.

  ‘Ah, they’re still there …’ he said.

  ‘I called them,’ explained Sophia.

  Manzano could see the man trying to catch a glimpse of him and Shannon over Sophia’s shoulder.

  ‘IT,’ the man said. ‘When I need them it takes two weeks for them to show up. I guess I’d have to look as good as you …’

  ‘Thanks,’ Sophia responded.

  ‘Well, I guess I’ll be …’

  He cast another look inside the room and disappeared.

  Sophia closed the door, came back to the table.

  ‘Did he want something?’

  ‘Seemed to me he was curious.’

  ‘So am I,’ said Shannon. ‘How are you proposing to get the passwords?’

  ‘I’m betting on more human fallibility. First, I’m hoping that the programmers haven’t built in additional security mechanisms. I’m also hoping that a few of the users were too lazy to enter long or complicated passwords. Because the shorter and simpler a password is, the fewer combinations there are that the computer has to cycle through and try out in order to crack the password.’

  ‘But there have got to be more than enough.’

  ‘And for that reason there are so-called rainbow tables.’

  ‘You sound like you’re doing brain surgery here,’ said Sophia.

  ‘Well, I am operating on the nervous system of our society.’

  ‘More jumbled numbers.’

  Manzano’s use of the rainbow
tables for unencrypting the passwords had produced a long list:

  36df662327a5eb9772c968749ce9be7b:NunO2000

  1cfdbe52d6e51a01f939cc7afd79c7ac:kiemens154

  11b006e634105339d5a53a93ca85b11b:

  99a5aa34432d59a38459ee6e71d46bbe:

  9e57554d65f36327cadac052a323f4af:gatinhas_3

  59efbbecd85ee7cb1e52788e54d70058:fusaomg

  823a765a12dd063b67412240d5015acc:43942ac9

  6dedaebd83531823a03173097386801:

  8dcaab52526fa7d7b3a90ec3096fe655:0804e19c

  32f1236aa37a89185003ad972264985e:plus1779

  794c2fe4661290b34a5a246582c1e1f6:xinavane

  e0329eab084173a9188c6a1e9111a7f89f:ribrucos

  ‘Look closer,’ Manzano directed them.

  ‘Behind some of the alpha-numeric sequences, there are shorter ones,’ said Sophia. ‘Some of them look like …’

  ‘… passwords. They don’t just look like them. They are passwords: NunO2000, kiemens154, gatinhas_3, fusaomg … And, as you can see, they’re mostly either shorter, or use only lower- or upper-case letters, or are more simple for some other reason. And of course we were lucky that no other security mechanisms were used.’

  ‘So this means that now you can log on to the site that your computer was being made to transfer data to every night?’

  ‘And that’s exactly what I’m going to do.’

  Manzano brought up the site, filled in the username and password fields with a valid combination.

  Username: blond

  Password: ribrucos

  ‘Enter.’

  ‘And now even more lists, tables …’ Shannon remarked. ‘What do they tell us? Like that one there.’

  She pointed to a line.

  tancr topic 93rm4n h4rd $4b07493

  ‘Looks to me like leet. It’s a hacker language. I think what it says is “topic german hard sabotage”. Let’s see what’s behind it.

  ‘Tancr is confirming some kind of actions. At the end he says he’s satisfied that everything is going according to plan.’