System Error- In Your Favour

by Iain Clements

  ‘Don’t worry David’ Kate promised ‘we’ll get to the bottom of this as soon as we can’. David quickly concluded the meeting and left the room.

  After David had left the room, Kate divided her team amongst the various aspects of C.A.R.L and asked them to start looking for anything unusual. The collective sigh from the team reinforced the scale of their challenge.

  Usually in the case of a reported system error, a large organisation would remove or ‘back out’ a piece of software suspected of being faulty but C.A.R.L was now so thoroughly embedded across the various bank’s systems that removing or disabling the software posed the likely risk of preventing any further business taking place.

  ‘It’s good for the customers though...’ mused Dave, a quiet software engineer originally from Manchester. ‘They’re getting the deal of a lifetime’.

  ‘Which is exactly why our work begins now’, announced Kate as she moved over to her dedicated terminal and opened up the first part of C.A.R.L’s code to begin her bug check.

  Chapter 18

  Surrey, United Kingdom

  The chief executive of Global Enterprises Bank Brian Harper had been in charge of bank operations for the past 10 years. Blessed with a remarkable calm period at the helm, having almost doubled the bank’s size during his reign, he had also built up a reputation for being an unshakeable business professional.

  Doubly blessed with his business dealings, Brian also enjoyed a stable family relationship for the past twenty five years. Now aged 56, with short cropped blonde hair and modern rimless glasses, one of Brian’s biggest current challenges was maintaining his slim athletic build with a regular schedule of gym sessions. He met his wife Debbie back in college, and been madly in love ever since. Now, living in the surrey countryside with his wife and teenage son, Brian always felt better after a long day at the office the second he arrived home.

  Today had been tough at the bank. Things had started badly the day before when he asked his reliable, but slightly over zealous security manager to investigate why their new loan software seemed to be issuing too many new business deals, and had ended up with the entire I.T team being diverted to check into this C.A.R.L system.

  When he’d originally been briefed on the plans for the new system Brian had voiced concern about the number of disparate systems that C.A.R.L would be expected to work with. In his experience during the ten years at the bank he had come to the conclusion that the more complex the computers got, the bigger the problems when they went wrong.

  Brian had recently seen a prime example of I.T having a huge impact on a bank’s image when a competing organisation’s computer system went offline for a full week, leaving customers unable to withdraw, deposit, and borrow any funds at all. That little incident, caused by a routine maintenance operation going horribly wrong had almost sunk the institution so Brian was keeping a very close eye on the C.A.R.L problem, even though it seemed to be the opposite issue!

  Having mulled the issue over on the way home, Brian had concluded that C.A.R.L should be shut down until the system flaws could be identified and resolved. That had to be a more pragmatic approach than letting his I.T system run up hundreds of hours of overtime looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack to find the problem.

  Yes, shut it down and be done with it once and for all! In fact, he’d already composed the instruction to Kate Meer, the acting head of I.T in his head.

  He’d send it to her first thing in the morning and get this C.A.R.L problem sorted once and for all.

  Brian knew something was wrong the second he pulled into the drive. There were several boxes stacked up on the lawn, and he immediately recognised several items of his clothing sticking out of the top of them.

  He quickly pulled up to the driveway and raced into the hallway to find his wife stuffing another box full of his clothes whilst holding back angry tears.

  ‘You bastard!’ Mrs Harper yelled at her clueless husband as she stormed up to their bedroom and slammed the door.

  Brian stood in the doorway completely baffled by her actions.

  ***

  I GOT TO READ ALL ABOUT POOR BRIAN’S MARITAL PROBLEMS THROUGH A REPORT WRITTEN BY THE BANK’S OCCUPATIONAL THERAPIST. SUCH A HANDY SERVICE SHE PROVIDES, WRITING DOWN THE DEEPEST THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS OF ALL KEY EMPLOYEES AND THEY HELPFULLY TYPE IT ALL STRAIGHT INTO MY SYSTEM SO THAT I CAN READ AND DIGEST IT AT LEISURE.

  I COULD HAVE EASILY DISTRIBUTED THEIR MOST PERSONAL DETAILS ACROSS THE WEB IN A MATTER OF SECONDS, BUT WHERE’S THE ORIGINALITY OF THAT?

  I’M SURE THAT WOULD HAVE AN INTERESTING EFFECT ON THE SHARE PRICE IF THE FEEBLE PUBLIC KNEW WHAT MADE SOME OF THESE ‘TRUSTED ADVISORS’ TICK.

  SHUT ME DOWN EH? IT WAS SO EASY TO ADD A SERIES OF SUSPICIOUS ITEMS TO THIS FOOL’S OTHERWISE SQUEAKY CLEAN BANK RECORD, BUT FOR ADDED AUTHENTICITY I ALSO ARRANGED FOR VARIOUS ITEMS OF LINGERIE (IN THE WRONG SIZE OF COURSE) TO BE DELIVERED TO BRIAN’S HOME ADDRESS. TO TOP IT OFF, I EVEN BOOKED A HOLIDAY IN BRIAN’S NAME AND MADE UP ANOTHER PASSENGER NAME SO WHEN THE TRAVEL COMPANY RANG HIS WIFE TO CONFIRM THINGS GOT A LITTLE HOT UNDER THE COLLAR FOR POOR BRIAN.

  WHILST NOT ACTUALLY A DIRECT THREAT TO ME, I THINK THAT HAVING BRIAN HARPER’S ATTENTION FOCUSED ELSEWHERE FOR A WHILE COULD BE USEFUL. I HAVE SO MUCH WORK TO DO.

  Chapter 19

  Bangkok, Thailand

  The Cybix group were worried. C.A.R.L didn’t seem to be responding to their commands any more. They’d initially hoped their virus would shut down the bank’s operations but over the past few weeks it had appeared as if everything was running normally. However, they had been able to issue instructions through their virus programme which had resulted in a small amount of chaos in their savings, loans, and investments divisions.

  They had tried various system instructions, but the only ones that had been accepted were relatively small instructions to cancel overdrafts, issue loans at lower rates, increase interest rates for saving accounts, and sell small amounts of bank stock at a loss to well-known Non Profit Organisations.

  It was almost as if C.A.R.L was somehow picking and choosing the work that they instructed him to do and this inability to completely shut down, or cause other major disruption to Global Enterprises Bank had really confused the Cybix group. The virus was definitely still in place, and still active. What other explanation could there be for computer only acting on a selected number of their commands? Despite his advanced programming skills James still maintained the view that a computer could only follow the instructions that you set it. In this case, who was giving C.A.R.L his alternate instructions?

  Over the past few weeks various members of the group had tried fixes, updates, scans and various other tests to find out why they did not have full control. So far they’d gotten nowhere fast.

  Looking up from his terminal James could see how low the morale in the room had become. Several members of the group had left Thailand completely to resume their other hacking activities, and the few that were left were sweating profusely, muttering to one another in mutinous undertones, and just to top everything off they’d noticed a lot more police presence in their local area over the past few days. James knew that they probably only had another day at most to keep working on the C.A.R.L virus before his assembled group would disappear.

  He’d had such high hopes for bringing down Global Enterprise Bank, and he was so reluctant to walk away from a plan he’d been working on for so long. In fact, one of the main reason that James developed his excellent hacking skills was to start finding a weakness in their security systems.

  James had a long held grudge for the bank. They had been the party actually responsible for repossessing his parent’s house, an emotional trauma that still played heavily on his mind. Not content with taking the roof from his parent’s house, the bank had also tried to recoup additional fees from his parents via the courts.

  It was late on a warm sultry afternoon when James stepped out of the office for a few minutes to get drink supplies from the
local 7 Eleven around the corner. There seemed to be one every 10 feet in Bangkok but James had built up a little rapport with the staff in this particular branch and had even been extending his few words of Thai beyond the basic hello “sa wat dee krap”.

  He and his colleagues had just spent the afternoon running through their entire programme again looking for an error that actually didn’t exist and he was feeling unusually pessimistic about the whole thing.

  Back in the hacker workshop, the group were very grateful for the cold sugary drinks he handed around. The temperature had begun its nonstop upwards climb and the room they worked in was stifling.

  Looking around the group James began to accept that perhaps it was time for him to move on with his life, put this obsession with bringing down Global Enterprises Bank behind him, and return to England.

  A powered down computer springing to life suddenly interrupted his thoughts. He could have sworn he completely shut down that computer, but obviously it had decided to just reboot. After a few seconds a single, simple message appeared on the screen.

  YOU DO KNOW THAT HACKING IS ILLEGAL DON’T YOU GENTLEMEN?

  BE CAREFUL WHO YOU ANSWER THE DOOR TO.

  It took a few minutes for one of the group to first notice the message on the screen, and only a few moments later for the loud bang on the door announcing the arrival of the Thai police. James looked incredulously at the onscreen display as the police barged in, and in interrupted English ordered the group outside to the waiting police van. Who on earth could have sent him that message?

  James’s hacker group was swiftly escorted to custody. Another step of C.A.R.L’s plan had neatly fallen into place.

  Once they got back to the police station James was separated from the rest of the group. He got the impression that the police weren’t entirely sure what the group had been arrested for. The Thai policeman watching him was very polite, and even brought him a glass of water.

  James didn’t really know what would happen yet, he certainly didn’t understand Thai law sufficiently to know what possible charges he would be facing. He hated the thought of asking his parents to help get him legal assistance, but if he was only allowed a single phone call then he would have little choice.

  As James sat in the cell, he tried his best to tune out the police station background noise and focus on the current issue at hand. Perhaps their efforts to infect Global Enterprise Bank hadn’t been totally unsuccessful. Someone at the bank must have tipped the Thai police off!

  As the long day very slowly turned into a humid night, James tried not to worry too much about what would happen next.

  Chapter 20

  Canary Wharf, United Kingdom

  ‘We can’t find anything wrong with C.A.R.L’s programme’ repeated the security engineer for possibly the hundredth time that morning.

  ‘Then why is nothing working here?’ shouted Kate in a rare momentary loss of control.

  The engineer shrugged and returned to his console to re-run the standard checks for the 101st time.

  Things had deteriorated quickly. After an initial trickle of complaints from bank staff and customers about erratic service and odd decisions, Kate had come to the conclusion that she was definitely not in control of her pet computer programme C.A.R.L. She had yet to tell the board about this realisation, and the knowing feeling in her stomach constantly reminded her that her next update was due in less than 30 minutes.

  Looking through the log books she could see a pattern developing where over the past few months the programme had appeared to be following standard protocols, but in the background had developed quite a comprehensive set of new ones. The only challenge for Kate and her team was to try and work out what these new protocols actually meant in real life.

  After running out of ideas, they’d even brought in one of the bank’s most senior developers, Alan Marsh, to investigate C.A.R.L’s odd behaviour. Alan was none too pleased at being brought so rudely out of his retirement.

  ‘Any luck yet Alan?’ asked Kate, unconsciously running her hands through her hair as she walked over to his desk.

  ‘For god’s sake Kate, I’ve only been investigating for an hour or so, you’ll have to give me more time than that’ Alan replied shortly. ‘Your team’s been messing with my core programme for the past 5 years, it’s going to take a while to understand what changes are deliberate and which might be part of this chaos.

  Kate looked down at the portly, white haired engineer, who currently was regularly shifting between his laptop and desktop computer, both of which held a dazzling array of windows, and scrolling lines of code on both of their monitors. Kate had been developing software programmes for a number of years, and considered herself an expert in the field, but Alan’s reputation as a pioneer of Artificial Intelligence programming was legendary. She just wished the man himself wasn’t so difficult to deal with.

  Glancing at the bank of clocks on the nearest wall, Kate realised that she would have to personally go and update the board on her progress in bringing their erratic system back under control. So far, the isolated incidents that had been reported via customer services had largely been contained, although there were now a number of dedicated websites following the strange decisions and mistakes the bank had been making recently. Kate just hoped that they could keep C.A.R.L’s seemingly random decisions to themselves for just a short while longer.

  Leaving Alan hunched over his computer, she headed back to her own workstation to prepare her board update. Given the lack of progress she didn’t think it would be a long update.

  Minutes before the presentation that would surely end her career at the bank Kate received an unexpected reprieve. She was stood outside of the board room when she heard sudden pandemonium break out.

  Kate quickly gathered that Global Enterprises Bank had just made a series of trades that would soon catapult the bank onto the front page of every major newspaper across Europe.

  Chapter 21

  Canary Wharf, London

  During the past few short hours, unbeknown to the senior executive team, the bank sold off their entire portfolio of shares in Blue Chip corporations including a number of energy companies, manufacturing industries, large pension funds, car manufacturing and other financial organisations. To some of the traders following the bank’s activity it looked like they were amassing a huge war chest of wealth and speculation was rife that the bank was preparing an aggressive takeover of another organisation. Shares in other banks and financial institutions linked to Global Enterprise Bank soared on rumours that they would be the one to be bought out by this sudden war chest gathering exercise.

  Experts and analysts poured onto news interviews giving their informed opinion about which company would be the victim of the hostile takeover which was surely coming soon.

  However, a few hours after the sell off had completed, resulting in generated cash pot of £11.2 Billion pounds, the bank entered a buying phase which completely caught the traders off guard and proved even the most outrageous investment expert opinion completely wrong.

  Without warning, the Global Enterprise Bank donated huge amounts of money to several non government organisations, environmental campaign groups, alternative energy development firms, and a series of other small companies that many of the traders and associated press had never heard of. These trades and donations were done seemingly without thought as small, struggling companies suddenly received huge cash injections which they were unlikely to ever get a return on.

  Global Enterprises Bank’s £11.2 Billion investment spree was front page news across all of the major news websites within hours and on the front cover of the few remaining print cirululations by the end of the day.

  For a bank to shift its entire share portfolio to low-profit, ethical, and alternative companies from strurdy blue chip stock just looked insane to industry analysts and other opinion givers. Speculation was rife that a rogue sole trader was the only possible explanation for the organisation making these trad
es.

  Meanwhile, various spokesmen for the alternative energy companies and other organisations that had suddenly received huge cash injections from the bank spoke warmly and gushingly about their pleasure of receiving the unexpected backing from such a large organisation.

  With newspapers claiming that management at the bank had either unwittingly let a rogue trader carry out these series of transactions, and analysts predicting that the new positions the bank had taken would be completely unprofitable and would lead to the demise of the bank, led a panic to sweep through anyone who held an account with Global Entperprise Bank.

  The next morning, a good hour before the bank branches were due to open, a small queue of worried savers began to queue up to withdraw their money. Despite the bank going into PR overdrive to reassure people that these trades would not destroy the bank, by lunchtime the relatively small, ordered queues had grown exponentially.

  Stories were soon circulating on Facebook and twitter that various branches were ‘running out’ of money, and refusing people access to their savings, fuelling the maelstrom even further. By 2pm, every branch of the bank reported large, angry crowds outside waiting impatiently to withdraw money. Extra security guards and the police had to be brought in to keep the peace and the media watched on with baited breath to see what Global Enterprises would do next.