Terminal Compromise

by by Winn Schwartau

  Scott did not know that the Spook bolted into the street and started running, in panic, away from the scene of his most pri- vate of failures. He ran all the way, in fact beating Scott to his hotel. He was driven by the terror of the first sexual failure in his life. The Spook felt emasculated as he sought a rationalization that would allow him to retain a shred of digni- ty.

  He was used to commanding women, not being humiliated by them. What was wrong? Women fell all over him, but why this? This of all things? The Spook fell asleep on the top of his bed with his clothes on.

  Scott did not know that he would not be seeing the Spook tomor- row.

  * * * * *

  Wednesday, January 6

  Washington, D.C.

  "Eight more!" exclaimed Charlie Sorenson into Martin Templer's face. "What the hell is going on?" The private office on twenti- eth and "L" Street was well guarded by an efficient receptionist who believed she worked for an international import export firm. Consulting offices were often easier for senior intelligence officials to use for clandestine, unrecorded meetings than one's own office. In the interest of privacy, naturally.

  The two NSA and CIA agents from "P" Street held their clandestine meeting in a plain, windowless office meagerly furnished with a desk, a couple of chairs and a file cabinet.

  Charlie turned his back on Templer and sighed. "I'm sorry, Marty. It's not you." He paced to the other side of the small confining room. "I'm getting pressure from all sides. That damned FBI guy is making a nuisance of himself. Asking too many questions. The media smells a conspiracy and the Director is telling me to ignore it." Sorenson stood in front of Templer. "And, now, no, it's not bad enough, but 8 more of the mothers go off. Shit!" He slammed his fist onto the desk.

  "We can explain one to the Pentagon, but nine?" Martin asked skeptically.

  "See what I mean?" Sorenson pointed.

  Sorenson and Templer attended the ECCO and CERT roundups twice a week since they began after the first EMP-T explosion.

  "These are the Sats?" Templer leaned over to the desk. Corners of several high resolution satellite photographs sneaked out from a partially open folder. Sorenson opened the folder and spread the photos across the surface. They weren't optical photographs, but the familiar map shapes of the central United States were visible behind swirls and patterns of a spectrum of colors. The cameras and computer had been instructed to look at selected bandwidths, just as infrared vision lets one see at night. In this case, though, the filters excluded everything but frequen- cies of the electromagentic spectrum of interest.

  "Yeah," Sorenson said, pointing at one of the photos. "This is where we found the first one." On one of the photos, where an outline of the United States was visible, a dot of fuzzy light was visible in the Memphis, Tennessee area.

  "That's an EMP-T bomb?" asked Templer.

  "The electromagnetic signature, in certain bandwidths is the same as from a nuclear detonation." Sorenson pulled another photo out. It was a computer enhanced blowup of the first satellite photo. The bridges across the Mississippi were clearly visible. The small fuzzy dot from the other photograph became a larger fuzzy cloud of white light.

  "I didn't know we had geosyncs over us, too," Templer said light- ly.

  "Officially we don't," Sorenson said seriously. Then he showed his teeth and said, "unofficially we have them everywhere."

  "So who was hit?"

  "Here?" He pointed at Memphis. "Federal Express. A few hours ago. They're down. Can't say when they'll be back in business. Thank God no one was killed. They weren't so lucky in Texas."

  Sorenson pulled a couple more photographs and a fuzzy dot and it's fuzzy cloud mate were clearly visible in the Houston area. "EDS Computers," said Sorenson. "Six dead, 15 injured. They do central processing for hundreds of companies. Every one, gone. And then here." He scattered more photos with the now recogniz- able fuzzy white dots.

  "Mid-State Farm Insurance, Immigration and Naturalization, Na- tional Bank, General Inter-Dynamics, CitiBank, and the Sears mail order computers." Sorenson spoke excitedly as he listed the latest victims of the magnetic cardiac arrest that their computer systems, and indeed, their entire organization suffered.

  "Press?"

  "Like stink on shit."

  "What do they know?"

  "Too much."

  "What can we do?"

  "Get to the bottom of this before Mason does."

  Chapter 19 Thursday, January 7

  Amsterdam, Holland

  The following morning Scott awoke without telephone intervention by the front desk. He felt a little on the slow side, an observa- tion he attributed to either the time difference, not the jet lag, or the minor after effect of copius cannabis consumption. The concierge called a cab and Scott told the driver where he thought he was going. Ya, no problem, it's a short ride.

  To Scott's surprise he found himself passing by the same sex emporium where he had left the Spook last evening. Scott reminded himself to ask Spook how it went. The taxi stopped in front of an old building that had no signs of use. It was number 44, but just in case, Scott asked the driver to wait a moment. He walked up the door and finding no bell, rapped on the heavy wooden door.

  "Ya?" A muffled voice asked through the door.

  "Is Jon there? This is Scott Mason." Scott knowingly looked at the cab driver.

  "Who?"

  Scott looked at the number again and then remembered what Jon had told him. "Sorry. This is Repo Man. Kirk said you'd expect me."

  "Ah, ya! Repo Man." The door opened and Scott happily waved off the cab. "Welcome, please, come in." Scott entered a dark chamber as the door closed behind him. "I am Clay, that's French for key."

  Wonderful, thought Scott. "Thanks for the invite. Is Jon here?"

  "Everyone is here."

  "I thought it didn't begin until eleven," Scott said looking at his watch.

  "Ah, ya, well," the Dutch accented Clay said. "It is difficult to stop sometimes. We have been here all night."

  Scott followed Clay up a darkened flight of steps. At mid land- ing Clay opened a door and suddenly the dungeon-like atmosphere vanished. Inside the cavernous room were perhaps 200 people, mostly men, excitedly conversing and huddling over computers of every imaginable model. The high ceiling was liberally dressed with fluorescent tubing which accentuated the green hues from many of the computer monitors. The walls were raw brick and the sparse decorations were all computer related. Windows at the two ends of the building added enough daylight to take some of the edge off of the pallid green aura.

  "What should I do?" Asked Scott looking around the large room which was probably overcrowded by modern safety counts.

  "The Flying Dutchman said he will see you a little later," Clay said. "Many of our members know Repo Man is a reporter, and you are free to look and ask anything. Please enjoy yourself." Clay quickly disappeared into the congregation.

  Scott suddenly felt abandoned and wished he could disappear. Like those dreams where you find yourself stark naked in a public place. He felt that his computer naivete was written all over his face and he would be judged thus, so instead he tried to ignore it by perusing the walls. He became amused at the selec- tion of art, poster art, Scotch taped to the brick.

  The first poster had Daffy Duck, or reasonable facsimile thereof, prepared to bring a high speed sledgehammer in contact with a keyboard. "Hit any key to continue," was the simple poster's message. Another portrayed a cobweb covered skeleton sitting behind a computer terminal with a repairman standing over him asking a pertinent question. "System been down long?"

  One of the ruder posters consisted of Ronald Reagan with a super- imposed hand making a most obscene manual gesture. The poster was entitled, "Compute This!"

  Scott viewed the walls as if in an art gallery, not a hackers convention. He openly laughed when he saw a poster from the National Computer Security Center, a working division of the National Security Agency. A red, white and blue Uncle Sam, finger pointing, beckoned,
"We want YOU! to secure your computer." In an open white space on the poster someone wrote in, "Please list name and date if you have already cracked into an NSA computer." Beneath were a long list of Hacker Handles with the dates they had entered the super secret agency's comput- ers. Were things really that bad, Scott asked himself.

  "Repo Man?"

  Scott turned quickly to see a large, barrel chested, red haired man with an untamed beard in his early forties approach him rapidly. The man was determined in his gait. Scott answered, "Yes . . .?

  "Ya, I'm the Flying Dutchman," he said hurriedly in a large boom- ing voice. "Welcome." He vigorously shook Scott's hand with a wide smile hidden behind the bushy red face. "You enjoyed Am- sterdam last night, ya?" He expected a positive answer. Sex was no crime here.

  "Well," Scott blushed. "I must say it was a unique experience," he said carefully so as not to offend Holland's proud hosts. "But I think the Spook had more fun than I did."

  The Flying Dutchman's hand went limp. "Spook? Did you say Spook?" His astonishment was clear.

  "Yeah, why?" Scott asked.

  "The Spook? Here? No one has seen him in years."

  "Yeah, well he's alive and well and screwing his brains out with three of Amsterdam's finest," Scott said with amusement. "What's the big deal?"

  "The Spook, ya this is goot," the Flying Dutchman said clapping his hands together with approval. "He was the greatest phreak of his day. He retired years ago, and has only been seen once or two times maybe. He is a legend."

  "A phreak?"

  "Oh, ya, ya. A phreak," he said speaking rapidly. "Before home computers, in the 1960's and 1970's, hacking meant fighting the phone company. In America you call it Ma Bell, I believe. Cap- tain Crunch was the epitome of phone phreaks."

  These names were a bit much, thought Scott, but might add a sense of levity to his columns. "Captain Crunch?" Scott asked with skepticism.

  "Ya, Captain Crunch. He blew the plastic whistle from a Captain Crunch cereal box into the phone," the Flying Dutchman held an invisible whistle to his lips. "And it opened up an inside line to make long distance calls. Then he built and sold Blue Boxes which recreated the tones to make free calls."

  "Phreaking and computer hacking, they're the same?"

  "Ya, ya, especially for the older hackers." The Flying Dutchman patted himself on the stomach. "You see hacking, some call it cracking, is taking a system to its limit. Exploring it, master- ing the machine. The phones, computers, viruses, it's all hack- ing. You understand?"

  "Spook called hacking a technique for investigating new spontane- ously generated lifeforms. He said a network was a living being. We got into quite an argument about it." Scott sounded mildly derisive of the theory.

  The Dutchman crossed his arms, grinned wide and rocked back and forth on his heels. "Ya, ya. That sounds like the Spook. Cutting to the heart of the issue. Ya, you see, we all have our reasons why we hack, but ya, Spook is right. We forget sometimes that the world is one giant computer, with thousands and millions of arms, just like the brain. The neurons," he pointed at his head, "are connected to each other with synapses. Just like a computer network."

  The Flying Dutchman's explanation was a little less ethereal than the Spook's and Scott found himself anticipating further enlight- enment.

  "The neuron is a computer. It can function independently, but because it's capacity is tiny, a neuron is really quite limited in what it can achieve alone. The synapse is like the network wire, or phone company wiring. It connects the neurons or com- puters together." The Dutchman spoke almost religiously as he animatedly drew wires and computers in the air to reinforce the concept. "Have you heard of neural networks?"

  "Absolutely," Scott said. "The smart chips that can learn."

  "Ya, exactly. A neural network is modeled after the brain, too. It is a very large number of cells, just like the brain's cells, that are only connected to each other in the most rudimentary way."

  "Like a baby's brain?" Scott offered.

  "Ya, ya, just like a baby. Very good. So like the baby, the neural net grows connections as it learns. The more connections it makes, the smarter it gets."

  "Both the baby and the network?"

  "Ya," Dutchman laughed. "So as the millions of neural connec- tions are made, some people learn skills that others don't and some computers are better suited to certain tasks than others. And now there's a global neural network growing. Millions more computers are added and we connect them together, until any computer can talk to any other computer. Ya, the Spook is very much right. The Network is alive, and it is still learning."

  Scott was entering a world where the machines, the computers, were personified, indeed imbued with a life of their own by their creators and their programmers. A highly complex world where inter-relatedness is infinitely more important than the specific function. Connections are issue. Didn't Spook remind him that the medium is the message?

  But where, questioned Scott, is the line between man and machine? If computers are stupid, and man must program them to give them the appearance of intelligence, then the same must be true of the Network, the global information network. Therefore, when a piece of the Network is programmed to learn how to plan for future Network expansion and that piece of the Network calls another computer on the Network to inquire as to how it is answering the same problem for different conditions, don't man and machine merge? Isn't the Network acting as an extension of man? But then, a hammer is a tool as well, and no one calls a hammer a living being.

  Unto itself it is not alive, Scott reasoned. The Network merely emulates the growth patterns and behavior of the cranial highway system. He was ready to concede that a network was more alive than a hammer, but he could not bring himself to carry the analo- gy any further yet.

  "That gives me a lot to think about," Scott assured the Dutchman.

  "Ya, ya, it does. Do you understand quantum physics?"

  What the hell would make him ask that question, thought Scott. "I barely passed Quantum 101, the math was too far out for me, but, yes," he laughed kindly, "I do remember the basics. Very basic."

  "Goot. In the global Network there is no way to predict where the next information packet will be sent. Will it start here," the Dutchman motioned to his far left, "or here? There's no way to know. All we can say, just as in physics, is that there is a probability of data being transferred between any two points. Chance. And we can also view the Network in operation as both a wave and a particle."

  "Wait," stopped Scott. "You've just gone over my head, but I get the point, I think. You and your associates really believe that this global Network is an entity unto itself and that it is growing and evolving on its own as we speak?"

  "Ya, exactly. You see, no one person is responsible for the Network, its growth or its care. Like the brain, many different regions control their own piece of the Network. And, the Network can still function normally even if pieces of it are disconnect- ed. The split brain studies."

  "And you're the caretakers for the Network?" doubted Scott.

  "No. As I said we all have our reasons. The common denominator is that we treat the Network as an incredibly powerful organism about which we know very, very little. That is our function to learn."

  "What is it that you do? For a living?"

  "Ah, ya. I am Professor of Technological Sociology at the Uni- versity of Amsterdam. The original proposal for my research came from personal beliefs and concerns; about the way the human race has to learn to cope in the face of great technology leaps. NATO is funding the research."

  "NATO," exclaimed Scott. "They fund hacking?"

  "No," laughed the Dutchman. "They know that hacking is necessary to gather the raw data my research requires, so they pretend not to notice or care. What we are trying to do is predict what the Baby, the global Network will look and act like when it grows up."

  "Isn't crystal ball gazing easier?"

  "Ya, it may be," the Dutchman agreed. "But now, why don't you look arou
nd? I am sure you will find it most educational."

  The Dutchman asked again about the Spook. "Is he really here in Amsterdam?" Yup! "And he said he'd be here today?" Yup! "The Spook, at the conference? He hasn't made an appearance in years." Well, that's what he told me, he'd be here.

  Scott profusely thanked his host and assured him that yes, he would ask for anything he needed. Thank you. Kirk had been vindicated, thought Scott who had expected a group of pimply faced adolescents with nerd shirts to be bouncing around like Spring Break in Fort Lauderdale.

  Scott slowly explored the tables loaded with various types of computer gear. IBM clones were the most common, but an assort- ment of older machines, a CP/M or two, even a Commodore PET proved that expensive new equipment was not needed to become a respected hacker. Scott reminded himself that this group was the elite of hackerdom. These were the Hacker's Hackers.

  In his discussions with Kirk, Scott figured he would see some of the tools of the trade. But he had no idea of the level of sophistication that was openly, and perhaps, illegally, being demonstrated. Then again, maybe that's why they hold their Hacker Ho Downs in Amsterdam.

  Scott learned something very critical early on.

  "Once you let one of us inside your computer, it's all over. The system is ours." The universal claim by hackers.

  Scott no longer had any trouble accepting that. "So the securi- ty guy's job," one short balding middle aged American hacker said, "is to keep us out. I'm a cracker." What's that? "The cracker is kind of like a safecracker, or lock picker. It's my job to figure out how to get into the computers." Scott had to stifle a giggle when he found out that this slight man's handle was appropriately Waldo.

  Waldo went on to explain that he was a henpecked CPA who needed a hobby that would bore his wife to tears. So he locked himself in the basement, far away from her, and got hooked on computers. He found that rummaging through other computers was an amusing alternative to watching Honeymooner reruns while his wife kvetched. After a while, he said he discovered that he had a talent for cracking through the front doors of computers. On the professional hacker circuit that made Waldo a valuable commodity. The way it works, he explained, was that he would trade access codes for outlines of the contents of the computers. If he wanted to look further, he maintained a complete indexing system on the contents of thousands of computers world wide. He admit- ted it was the only exciting part of his life. "The most fun a CPA has," he said calmly, "is cutting up client's credit cards. But me," he added proudly, "I've been in and out of the IRS computers more times than Debbie did it in Dallas."