Sadly, no. I am talking to you as a friend of Scott's. And I will tell you, that anything I learn I will use to fight Homoso- to's attack. But frankly, you are little fish. I don't know who you are, nor do I really care. In all honesty, neither does Washington, the NSA or anyone else. You're merely an underground protest group. If anything, you help keep us honest. But even protestors should have their limits.
MINE HAS BEEN REACHED. [KIRK]
AND MINE. [RAMBO]
There is a big difference between freedom of speech and insurrec- tion and invasion.
WHAT ABOUT PRIVACY? [PHASER]
THERE IS NONE, AND YOU KNOW IT. [KIRK]
THAT'S THE POINT. WE HAVE TO STOP THE MILITARISTIC WAR MONGERS FROM PRYING INTO OUR LIVES. THEY KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT US, AND MORE. I WANT TO SEE THAT STOPPED. NOW. [PHASER]
This is Mason. At the expense of true freedom? Freedom of choice? By your logic, you may end up with no Compuserve. No electronic mail boxes. No networks. Or, they'll be so restricted that you'll never get on them.
IT'LL HAPPEN ANYWAY. [PHASER]
And you'll just speed up the process. What do you have to lose by helping out?
I WANT TO CONTINUE HELPING. MY FREEDOM TO HACK RESPONSIBLY IS IN DANGER BY ONE MAN, AND I AIM ON KEEPING MY FREEDOM. [KIRK]
It may be the only way to keep the digital highways open, I'm sorry to say.
IS THAT A THREAT? [PHASER]
Merely an observation.
I NEED TO THINK. [PHASER]
WHAT DO YOU NEED TO KNOW? [RAMBO]
A lot. We need a complete list of phone numbers for every Free- dom BBS. They provide wide distribution of infected software.
WE KNOW. BFD. [PHASER]
This is FBI. We want to shut them down.
HOW? [KIRK]
We have our means.
SEE WHAT I MEAN! THEY'RE ALL PIGS. THEY TAKE, TAKE, TAKE. BUT IF YOU ASK SOMETHING THEY CLAM UP. [PHASER]
All right. If it works you'll find out anyway. There are a number of underused laws, and we want to keep this on a Federal level. USC 1029, 1030, 2134 they're a bunch of them including racketeering. Then there are a number of Federal laws against doing anything injurious to the United States.
WHICH GIVES YOU THE RIGHT TO PROSECUTE ANYONE YOU DAMN WELL PLEASE WHENEVER YOU DAMN WELL WANT. [POLTERGEIST]
As a lawyer, I could make that case.
I AM A LAWYER, TOO. I PHREAK FOR PHREEDOM. [POLTERGEIST]
Then you also know, that you have to really be on someone's shit list to get the FBI after you. Right now, Homosoto and his gang are on our shit list big time.
THEN WHEN YOU'RE THROUGH WITH THEM, IT'S US NEXT. THEN WHO'S LEFT? [PHASER]
RIGHT. [POLTERGEIST]
We can argue forever. All I'm saying is we could use whatever help you can give us. And I honestly don't care who you are. Unless of course you're on my shit list.
FBI HUMOR. [KIRK]
WHAT ELSE DO YOU NEED? [RAMBO]
As many signatures as possible. We figure that there are thou- sands of you out there, and you can probably do a better job than any government security group punching in at nine and out at five. You have more people, no bureaucracy and a bigger sample of the software population.
SIGNATURES? NO QUESTIONS ASKED? [PHASER]
None. Also, rumors.
WHAT KIND OF RUMORS? [KIRK]
Like who might want to disrupt the Air Reservations System.
YOU'RE KIDDING? [POLTERGEIST]
I wish I was. You see, we are up against the wall.
THAT COULD REALLY FUCK THINGS UP. [POLTERGEIST]
REALLY! [KIRK]
IS IT REALLY THAT BAD? [POLTERGEIST]
Worse.
MAYBE I'LL THINK ABOUT IT. [POLTERGEIST]
ME TOO. [PHASER]
MASON. I'M GOING TO CUT YOU OFF. [KIRK]
It won't be the first time.
[[[CONNECTION TERMINATED]]]
Tyrone stretched his limbs searching for a bare place to sit down. Leaning over Scott's shoulders for the slow paced computer conversation stiffened his muscles. Scott motioned to slide whatever was in the way, out of the way, to which Tyrone com- plied.
"Dedicated mother fuckers. Misguided, but dedicated." Ty sat back in thought. "What do you think they'll do?"
"I don't think, I know," said Scott confidently. "Most of them will help, but they won't admit it. They openly distrust you, Washington and me. But they value their freedom, and instinc- tively they will protect that. Kirk will be the conduit. I'm not worried."
"And what will they do?"
"Once they get around to it, they'll commandeer every hacker in the country and at least stop the viruses. Or some of them. I think that we need to elicit their trust, and I can do that by giving them more than they give me."
"Can you do that?"
"Just watch. If they play their cards right, they can be heroes."
Chapter 29 Monday, January 25
The White House
We had a pretty good handle on parts of it," said Marvin Jacobs glibly.
Phil Musgrave, Martin Royce, Henry Kennedy and Quinton Chambers joined Marvin in one of the private White House conference rooms at 5 A.M. Jacobs had called all members of the inner circle, personally, early that morning. He had received word that last evening's computer conversations between Scott Mason and the Spook had been intercepted and the preliminary analysis was ready.
Scott Mason's computer screens had been read by the NSA's remote electromagnetic receivers while he prepared his article for the following day. The actual article had also been transmitted to the White House, prior to publication, as agreed.
"And Mason seems to be living up to his part of the bargain," Jacobs continued. "He only edits out the bullshit, pardon my French. Gives the public their money's worth."
"You said we were close. How close?" Musgrave tended to run these meetings; it was one of the perks of being the President's Number One.
"His organization was a lot more comprehensive than we thought," Henry Kennedy said. "We underestimated his capabilities, but we caught the essence of his weapons by good guessing."
"If we could get our hands on this Spook character," sighed Martin Royce. He was thinking of the perennial problems associ- ated with identifying the exact location of someone who doesn't want to be found.
"That's not the problem," said Chief of Staff Phil Musgrave. "We know who the Spook is, but we can't prove it. It's only hearsay, even with Mason's testimony, and it's a pretty damn safe bet he won't be inclined to testify. But Marv has given us a ton on him. After all, he is Marv's fault."
"You guys sort that out on your own time," yawned Phil. "For now, though we need to know what we're up against."
"If the President hadn't gone on television last night, we might have been able to keep this quiet and give the press some answers in a few days." Marv said.
"Dream on," Phil said emphatically. "Mason broke the story and we were caught with our pants down. The President did not, and I repeat, did not, want to be associated with any cover up . . ."
"I didn't say cover up . . ."
"He wants to take his lumps and fix it. He will not lie to the American people."
"If we shut Mason up." Marv suggested.
"We need him right where he is," Henry Kennedy said about Scott to stem the escalating argument.
"The subject is closed." Phil's comment silenced the room. After all was said and done, Musgrave was the closet thing to the President in the room. As with the President, the discussion was over, the policy set, now let's get on with it. "So, Marv? What are we up against."
The seasoned professional in Marvin Jacobs took over, conflicting opinions in the past, and he handed out a series of TOP SECRET briefing folders.
"You've got to be kidding," laughed Martin Royce holding up his file. "This stuff will be in today's morning paper and you classify it?"
"There are guidelines for classification," Marvin insisted. "We follow them to the letter."
&nb
sp; "And every letter gets classified." muttered Royce under his breath. The pragmatist in him saw the lunacy of the classifica- tion process, but the civil servant in him recognized the impos- sibility of changing it. Marv ignored the comment and opened his folder.
"Thanks, Phil," began Marv. "Well, I'll give it to him, Foster that is. If what he says is accurate, we have our work cut out for us, and in many cases all we can do is board up our windows before the hurricane hits."
"For purposes of this discussion, assume, as we will, that the Spook, Foster, is telling the truth. Do we have any reason to disbelieve him?"
"Other than attacking his own country? No, no reason at all." Marvin showed total disdain for Foster. His vehemence quieted the room, so he picked up where he left off.
"The first thing he did was establish a communications network, courtesy of AT&T. If Foster is right, then his boys have more doors and windows in and out of the phone company computers than AT&T knows exist. For all intents and purposes, they can do anything with the phone system that they want.
"They assign their own numbers, tap into digital transmissions, reprogram the main switches, create drop-dead billings, keep unlimited access lines and Operator Control. If we do locate a conversation, they're using a very sophisticated encryption scheme to disguise their communications. They're using the same bag of tricks we tried to classify over 20 years ago, and if anyone had listened . . ."
"We get the point, Marv," Phil said just before Henry was about to say the same thing.
"We can triangulate the cell phone location, but it takes time. Perhaps the smartest thing Foster did was recognize the need for an efficient distribution system. In order for his plan to work, he had to insure that every computer in the country was infected."
"Thus the dGraph situation?" Quinton Chambers finally began to look awake.
"And the Lotus Viruses, and the Freedom software," Henry said. "What about FTS-2000?" He was asking about the new multi-billion dollar voice and data communications network. FTS stands for Federal Telecommunications System.
"I have no doubt that it's in the same boat," suggested Marv. "But we have no sure data yet. We should ask Scott to ask Fos- ter."
"What could happen?"
"Worst case? The government shuts down for lack of interest and no dial tone."
"And these viruses?"
"According to Foster, they designed over 8,000 viruses and he assumes that all or most of them have been released over the last several years," Marv said to a room full of raised eyebrows.
"How bad is that?" asked Chambers.
"Let's put it this way," said Marv. "In the last 14 years, of the viruses that have been confirmed, the longest gestation period, from release to detonation . . .was eight months. And that one was discovered a couple of weeks after they were re- leased. What Foster counted on was the fact that if software behaved normally, it wouldn't be suspect. And if it became popular, it was automatically above suspicion. He was right."
"I've heard that every computer is infected?"
"At the minimum, yes." Jacobs turned the pages of his dossier. "To continue, one of Foster's most important tools was the con- struction of road maps."
"Road maps?" questioned Phil.
"Connections, how it all ties together. How MILNET ties to INTERNET to DARPANET to DockMaster, then to the Universities." Marv wove a complex picture of how millions of computers are all interconnected. "Foster knew what he was doing. He called this group Mappers. The maps included the private nets, CompuServe, The Source, Gemini, Prodigy . . .BBS's to Tymenet . . .the lists go on forever. The road maps, according to Foster, were very detailed. The kind of computer, the operating system, what kind of security if any. They apparently raked through the hacker bulletin boards and complied massive lists of passwords for computers . . ."
"Including ours?" asked Quinton Chambers.
"Quite definitely. They kept files on the back doors, the trap doors and the system holes so they could enter computers unde- tected, or infect the files or erase them . . .take a look at Social Security and the IRS. Martin?"
Treasury Secretary Royce nodded in strong agreement. "We got hit but good. We still have no idea how many hundreds of thousands of tax records are gone forever, if they were ever there. So far it's been kept under wraps, but I don't know how long that can continue. The CDN has been nothing but trouble. We're actually worse off with it than without it."
"How can one person do all of that?" Chambers had little knowl- edge of computers, but he was getting a pretty good feel for the potential political fallout.
"One person! Ha!" exclaimed Jacobs. "Look at Page 16." He pointed at his copy of the Secret documents. "According to Foster he told Homosoto he needed hundreds of full time mappers to draw an accurate and worthwhile picture of the communications and networks in the U.S.."
"That's a lot of money right there," added Royce.
"It's obvious that money wasn't a consideration." Phil spouted the current political party line as well as it was understood. "Retaliation against the United States was the motivation, and to hell with the cost."
"Homosoto obviously took Foster's advice when it came to Propa- ganda," Marv continued. "The FBI, I believe, saw the results of a concentrated effort at creating distrust in computers. We've got a team working on just finding the blackmailers. Their version of a disinformation campaign was to spread the truth, the secret undeniable truths of those who most want to keep their secrets a secret."
"That's also where the banks got hit so hard," offered Henry Kennedy. "Tens of thousands of credit card numbers were spirited away from bank computers everywhere. You can imagine the shock when tens of millions of dollars of purchases were contested by the legitimate credit card holders."
"It's bad," agreed Royce.
"And we haven't even seen the beginning yet, if we believe Fos- ter. There were other groups. Some specialized in Tempest-Bust- ing . . ."
"Excuse me?" asked Quinton Chambers.
"Reading the signals broadcast by computers," Marv said with some derision. The Secretary of State should know better, he thought. "It's a classified Defense program." He paused while Chambers made a note. "Others used stolen EMP-T bomb technology to blow up the Stock Exchange and they even had antennas to focus HERF . . ."
"HERF?" laughed Phil.
"HERF," said Marv defensively. "High Energy Radiated Fields. Pick a frequency, add an antenna, point and shoot. Poof! Your computer's history."
"You're kidding me . . ."
"No joke. We and the Soviets did it for years; Cold War Games," said Kennedy. "Pretty hush-hush stuff. We have hand held electric guns that will stop a car cold at a thousand yards."
"Phasers?" asked Chambers.
"Sort of, Quinton," chimed in Phil.
"Foster's plan also called for moles to be placed within strate- gic organizations, civilian and government." Marv continued. "They were to design and release malicious software from inside the company. Powerful technique if you can find enough bodies for the dirty work."
"Again, according to Foster, Homosoto said that there was never a manpower problem," Marv said. "He's confident that an Arab group is involved somewhere. The MacDonald's accident was caused by Arabs who . . ."
"And we still can't get shit out of the one who we're holding. The only one that's left. Troubleaux was shot by an Arab . . .the FBI is working hard on that angle. They've given themselves extraordinary covers." Phil was always on top of those things that might have a political cause and/or effect. "How extensive an operation was this?"
Marvin Jacobs ruffled through some notes in his files. "It's hard to be sure. If Homosoto followed all of Foster's plan, I would guess 3 5,000 people, with a cost of between $100 $300 Mil- lion. But mind you, that's an uneducated guesstimate."
Quinton Chambers dropped his pen on the table. "Are you telling us that one man is bringing the United States virtually to its knees for a couple of hundred million?" Marv reluctantly nodded. "Gentlemen, this is in
credible, more than incredible . . .does the President know?"
Even Phil Musgrave was antsy with the answer to that question. "Not in any detail, but he is very concerned. As for the cost, terrorism has never been considered expensive."
"Well thank you Ron Ziegler, for that piece of information," scowled Chambers. "So if we know all of this, why don't we pick 'em all up and get this over with and everything working again?"
"Foster claims he doesn't know who anyone other than Homosoto is. He was kept in the dark. That is certainly not inconsistent with the way Homosoto is known to do business very compartmental- ized. He didn't do the recruitment, he said, and all communica- tions were done over the computer . . .no faces, no names. If it wasn't for Mason, we wouldn't even know that Foster is the Spook. I consider us very lucky on that point alone."
"What are we going to do? What can we do?" Royce and Chambers both sounded and looked more concerned than the others. Their agencies were on the front line and the most visible to the public.
"For the government we can take some mandatory precautions. For the private sector, probably nothing . . ."
"Unless." Phil said quietly.
"Unless what?" All heads turned to Phil Musgrave.
"Unless the President invokes martial law to protect the country and takes control of the computers until we can respond." Phil often thought out loud, even with his extremist possibilities.
"Good idea!" said Jacobs quickly.
"You think that public will buy that?" asked Chambers.
"No, but they may have no choice."
* * * * *
Tuesday, January 26
PRESIDENT DECLARES WAR ON COMPUTERS
By Scott Mason
Support for the President's Sunday night call to arms has been virtually unanimous by industry leaders.
According to James Worthington, Director of Computing Services at First National Life, "We take the threat to our computers very seriously. Without the reliable operation of our MIS systems, our customers cannot be serviced and the company will suffer tremendous losses. Rates will undoubtedly rise unless we protect ourselves."
Similar sentiments were echoed by most industry leaders. IBM announced it would be closing all of its computer centers for between two and four weeks to effect a complete cleansing of all systems and products. A spokesperson for IBM said, "If our computers are threatened, we will take all necessary steps to protect our investment and the confidence of our customers. IBM prefers a short term disruption in normal services to a long term failure."
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