Bad Intentions

by Matt Lynn

  One more thing. He needed an electronic tone controller. A blue box? said the assistant with a knowing smile. Absolutely, replied Jack. Did they have any in stock? The assistant said he would have to check. He disappeared to the back room, and through a crack in the doorway Jack could glimpse him talking with another man. When he came back, the assistant explained they did have some Taiwanese devices, but they were sold for export orders only. The machines were not licensed for use in Britain. And he felt duty-bound to point out that phone phreaking was technically illegal in this country.

  Jack smiled. 'It's OK, I'm a tourist,' he said. 'I won't be using it here.'

  'You have your passport on you?'

  Jack checked his wallet and shook his head. 'Back at the hotel. Sorry.'

  The assistant looked doubtful. '£650,' he replied. 'Cash.'

  This time Jack decided it was better not to haggle. 'Fine,' he replied crisply, digging into his pockets again and counting out another row of twenties.

  Jack added five packets of floppy discs to the order, collected his boxes and took them outside. He stood on the edge of the kerb, looking out for a taxi. As he did so, he cast his eyes over the rubbish bin, overflowing with crisp packets and beer cans, on the side of the street. Below, lying at the edge of the gutter, he saw what he wanted. Walking across, he picked up the discarded Visa slip and tucked it in his back pocket. Now, he thought to himself, we have everything we need.

  The Chairman punched four digits into the desk-top phone. Monday morning had been progressing just fine so far, he decided. The morning's papers had followed up the story of the biological weaponry, and included some generally favourable commentary on the role Kizog had played. The company's share price was down a little in early morning trading, but a quick check with the brokers and the investor relations people had established that most of the analysts were discounting the possibility the news would have any financial impact on Kizog. It was nothing shareholders need worry about, the management had everything under control, they were saying, and the origins of the Ator virus made no difference to the demand for the vaccine. Most brokers were still recommending holders of Ocher shares to accept the offer, and judging by the turnover in the stock, some of the big institutional holders were starting to unload their positions.

  Clockwork, thought the Chairman to himself.

  He glanced upwards. David Stile, the director of information technology, was standing in the doorway. On receiving the summons to the Chairman's office, Stile had rushed straight upstairs from the third floor, and was looking slightly flustered. Sir Kurt, Stile knew, had almost no interest in computers, scarcely knowing how to turn one on himself, and very rarely requested a private audience. This must be something special, he decided, and he was already worrying if something had gone wrong with the systems.

  The Chairman asked Stile, a neat, compact man of thirty-eight, to sit down on the sofa, joining him on the adjacent chair, and began talking about how they might integrate their own computer systems with those of Ocher once the take-over was complete. Relieved that nothing appeared to have gone wrong, Stile launched into a lengthy explanation of how both companies used basic UNIX systems, designed around mini supercomputers, connected into networks of office and field PCs. There were some incompatibilities in the software, he cautioned, but nothing they could not smooth out in six months or so, so long as they reengineered the software and bought in some new kit.

  'Fine, fine, I am sure you can handle it,' said the Chairman, visibly reluctant to explore the subject any further. 'There is something else I wanted to discuss with you. How secure are our computer systems?'

  Stile hesitated for a moment. 'As secure as most commercial systems,' he replied carefully. 'Probably more so.'

  'Not completely secure then?'

  Something about his tone suggested to Stile the Chairman was not happy with his answer. 'Computer security is much like any other sort,' he began. 'If you stayed at home all day locked behind iron bars you would be one hundred per cent secure, but you wouldn't get very much done. Computers are the same. A single box accessible through just one terminal locked up and protected by armed guards is secure, but not very useful. We have tried to maintain a balance between reasonable security and the advantages of connecting all our employees up to a single unified network.'

  'Quite so,' replied the Chairman. 'But the bottom line is that it isn't secure. Am I right?'

  'Everything is sorted into levels,' said Stile quickly. 'Low grade information is fairly open, protected only by simple password commands. Those can be opened quite easily, not least because employees use silly passwords, like the wife's name or whatever, that are quite easy to crack. The more important the information is, the more heavily it is protected.'

  The Chairman leant forward. 'How heavily?'

  'Extremely heavily, sir,' answered Stile. 'I am sure it is possible for outsiders to break into the network, but that won't do them much good. All the important information is screened off behind firewalls. Those are chunks of computer code that prevent users from moving between different parts of the network. The more important the information, the more firewalls you have to move through to get to it. It should be invulnerable.'

  'Should be?'

  Stiles decided to correct himself. 'It is invulnerable,' he added. 'We are using the latest and most up-to-date technology available. But, it has to be admitted, computer science moves very quickly. One can never quite tell.'

  'I am sure you are doing your best,' said the Chairman. 'Now, if someone from outside was trying to access our system, would we know about it?'

  'Certainly. There are alarms attached to the firewalls. An attempt to break should be signalled immediately to the software managers monitoring the network.'

  'And we could trap them?'

  Stile shook his head. 'No, the alarms are a warning device. They are not designed to trap intruders, merely to warn them off.'

  The Chairman frowned. 'So we couldn't catch them.'

  'Not through the systems we have in place, no,' said Stile.

  'It's not technically possible?' questioned the Chairman.

  'It is possible to install entrapment software,' replied Stile. 'We haven't because it starts to compromise the whole network. It slows down the entire system. And makes it harder for legitimate users to get around. Up until now our focus has been on prevention, not detection.'

  The Chairman leant backwards in his chair, fixing a piercing stare upon his employee. 'I want those systems installed.'

  'Of course, sir. By when?'

  'By yesterday,' he snapped.

  Almost in silence, Tara and Jack began to unpack the equipment. They placed the two computers on the desk, next to each other. They plugged in the modem, and began hooking up the machines. Tara switched the machines on, and started checking everything was in place. So far it all seemed to work.

  Jack busied himself with loading the software. Slotting in the discs, firing up the hard drives and downloading everything they needed took up more than an hour. When he had finished he checked his watch. It was almost four p.m. 'Ready to start?' he asked.

  Tara nodded. Jack's arm reached out across the desk, and he squeezed the palm of her hand. 'Here we go then,' he said.

  'You are sure you know how this works?' she said cautiously.

  'No, I've read about it, but I have never tried it before,' Jack replied, his voice betraying his nerves. 'We'll only get one shot at this. A mistake and they'll find us.'

  They had already discussed the plan in detail, and decided that despite the risks it was the best chance they had. Phone phreaking had been around since the mid-seventies, a term devised for the hundreds of different ways hackers had developed for breaking into the phone system. Usually, the hackers were trying to make free calls, sometimes just breaking into the phone company's computer systems for the simple fun of it. Tara and Jack were not interested in free calls; they did not mind paying. Nor were they were interested in looking into the B
ritish Telecom systems. There was only one aspect of phreaking that really interested them this afternoon; a technique for disguising where the phone call had come from.

  Discussing the plan, they had decided they had to break into the Kizog computer system. It was the only way of gathering the information they needed. There was a chance that they could break in, take what they needed, and depart without anyone ever detecting their presence within the system. But it was a long shot. To get everything they needed, they figured they would have to stay inside the system for a decent length of time. The chances were their intrusion would be detected. And when it was, tracing the source of the call would not be difficult for anyone who had police co-operation. Such as Kizog. A simple phone trace would lead right to this hotel. Right to this room. And they were finished.

  Phreaking the phones, Jack insisted, was their one chance of remaining undetected until Friday.

  Jack took the phone, and pulled its socket from the wall. Carefully, he plugged the phone into the blue box controller, and then, using another lead, plugged that into the phone connection down by the skirting board.

  They had talked through the technology they were using and felt that they knew how it worked. The central London area where they were staying would be using an automatic electronic exchange, meaning that calls to and from any phone in the area would be routed according to the instructions coded into a series of inaudible tone pulses the phone would transmit as it made the call. The tones would tell the system where to place the call, but they would also leave a trail, telling anyone who cared to look where the call was coming from.

  Turning to the computer, Jack logged into the communications software, and set it to dial the freephone number in Holland. Next, he switched on the controller. As the phone rang, it sent a 'clear forward' tone down the line by transmitting electronic pulses at 2,400 hertz. The signal told the international call transit centre to terminate the call. But, in the split second before the exchange could do so, another signal, this time transmitted at 2,600 hertz, known in the telecoms trade as a 'seize tone', announced a request for another call. The line was then opened. The call would now be free, because the exchange would register it as a routine call between two international exchanges. But, more importantly, the source of the call had now been wiped clean. The exchange would have no idea where it was coming from. As far as the computers were concerned, it was just internal traffic, of no interest to anyone.

  An icon displayed on the communications software indicated that the line was open. 'I think it's working,' whispered Jack.

  Turning to the keyboard, he tapped in the number of Arbex, an Internet service provider based in Birmingham. Within a minute, he was logged on to the Net. 'Open new account,' Jack requested. He had chosen Arbex because it accepted quick connections via a modem. A page of instructions scrolled down the computer screen. Jack tapped in his name as 'KH Reid', and put down an address in Amsterdam; he didn't have an address to hand so he made one up. He filled in his e-mail address as 'ken@line', noting down the numerical lP address the computer provided him with. Lastly the machine asked for credit card details, to cover the connection charges. Jack took the Visa slip he had picked up earlier and tapped into the machine the number and expiry date of KH Reid's card. Whoever he or she was, they would, he knew, report the misuse of the card, causing the account to be closed. But that would not be until they got the statement. Which could be weeks away. And they would be long gone by then.

  'Account accepted,' flashed up a message on the screen. 'Your Arbex Internet connection will be ready for use within 12 hours. Happy surfing!'

  'It's working,' said Jack, allowing a smile to cross his face.

  'And you are sure it is safe?' asked Tara anxiously.

  'Pretty sure,' replied Jack calmly. 'We have two levels of security here. First, we are going to get into the Kizog computer system via the Internet. On the Net, we call into the service provider, and their machine then connects into the Kizog machines. If they trace those connections, it will just lead them back to Arbex in Birmingham. Then they will have to trace back where the calls into Arbex are coming from. Because of the transformer, that will just lead them to the international exchange in Holland. It could take them weeks to find their way back to us through that maze.'

  He reached across for Tara and squeezed her waist. 'We only need two or three days,' he added. 'So long as it holds until then, we'll be fine.'

  TWENTY-ONE

  Angus Shane introduced himself to David Stile with a firm handshake. Dani nodded at the man and sat down in his office. The pair needed no further introduction. The Chairman had said they were working with him on security issues, and he was to give them everything they asked for. For Stile, that was all the authorisation they needed.

  The information technology director sat in a small office, partitioned by a sheet of clear glass from the open-plan office that took up a section of the third floor. Outside, groups of white-shifted programmers huddled over terminals, peering into the entrails of the system. Stile kept his jacket on throughout the day. It was, he felt, a mark of his authority.

  He began by giving Shane and Fuller a short description of the computer systems at Kizog. There were mainframes, basically mini supercomputers, which were kept deep underground in the foundations of this office, plus other back-up machines kept about twenty miles away, in case a fire or an earthquake hit the site. There were more mainframes located at the Stuttgart offices, at the American headquarters in North Carolina, and at the Japanese laboratories just outside Osaka. Each set of computers recorded everything. Unless it was the end of the world, he explained, there was no way they could lose the data. Every transaction, every data entry, every e-mail message, anything entered on to a computer by any Kizog employee or consultant around the world would be logged into the machines. And kept. For ever. Hard disc capacity was so cheap these days, he continued, there was really no need ever to throw anything away.

  'How far back do the records go?' asked Fuller.

  'Some to the sixties,' replied Stile. 'That was when computers first started being installed into the company. Of course computers were much more expensive then, and could do much less, so much less of our work was inputted in those days. But if it was ever put into the system, it will still be there somewhere.'

  'How easy is it to find?' asked Fuller.

  'Depends. If you wanted to find the e-mail Joe Bloggs in marketing sent to his girlfriend in accounts last week that would be easy. Generally speaking, the further back you go in time, and the deeper you go into the more sensitive material, the harder it gets.' He pointed to the workers outside. 'A lot of our time is spent dealing with executives who have mislaid files. They send them to the wrong place by mistake, then ask us to retrieve them. It is often very hard to find something.'

  'Even if you know the system?' asked Fuller.

  'Obviously the more you know about the system the easier it gets. But we aren't talking about internal hacking here. We are talking about outside intruders, aren't we?'

  'Can we talk in total privacy?' interrupted Shane.

  'Of course,' replied Stile, eager to win their confidence.

  'We believe that Ocher, or people working for them, may be trying to break into our systems,' Shane continued. 'In the hope of finding some information they can use at the last minute to defeat the bid.'

  Stile felt a tingle of excitement running down his spine. This, he realised, was much more important than most of the issues that passed across his desk. He assumed an air of great importance. 'Obviously we must do everything we can to stop them,' he said.

  'The new software has been installed?' asked Shane.

  'We are using a Sidewinder detection system,' Stile replied. 'It is an American program, originally developed by the military, but now being made commercially available, although it is rumoured that the CIA only let it be released after they had figured a way to crack it. Anyway, it is about the best on the market. And, as requested, it is p
rimarily about detecting attacks, rather than protecting the system from them. Our existing firewalls should do that.'

  'And it is now operating.'

  Stile hesitated. 'Not quite,' he replied. 'I placed the order immediately after I spoke to the Chairman yesterday. We are paying extra for immediate installation. A team of their people are working with our experts in the US office right now. Once it is installed, it will cover the whole system around the world. But it is complex software, being bolted on to what is already a complex network. Everyone is working around the clock. But when I spoke to them earlier they said they would not have it up and running for another eight or nine hours.'

  That would make it Tuesday evening, thought Shane. They had no idea where Jack and Tara might be. Or how far they might have progressed. Time was getting tight, he realised. But, he told himself, if time was tight for him, it was even tighter for them. They did not have long.

  'Just make it as fast as possible,' he said.

  The light of dawn seeped only slowly through the one window in the hotel room. Jack woke with a start, an image of the murdered girl, her throat cut and bloody, receding in his mind as the nightmare faded. Instinctively he reached out for Tara. He felt her instantly, her warm body lying next to his. She rolled over on her side under his touch, her eyes momentarily opening and then closing again. Jack gazed down at her body, covered by the rumpled shorts and T-shirt she wore to bed, feeling the same rush of desire that was intensely familiar to him now.

  He wiped the trace of moisture from his brow, wondering if those pictures would ever go away, or whether, twenty or thirty years from now, he would still wake up in the morning feverish from the same horrific scenes.

  Trying to empty his mind, Jack climbed out of bed, showered and ordered breakfast from room service before waking Tara with a shake. She smiled, and rose instantly, moving into the shower without a word. By the time she had emerged, the tray of hot coffee and toast was waiting on the floor, and the computers were already humming. She poured herself a cup of coffee from the pot, and sat down next to Jack at the desk. 'Time to begin,' she said.