No Strings Attached

by Julie Moffett

  Slash took off his sunglasses and hooked them on the front of his shirt. “I’m not looking for anything quite yet. I need an official consult before I start looking, which means whatever I’m about to say stays between us.”

  Elvis blinked, clearly startled by the statement. “Wait. You want an official consult? Here?” He held out his hands to encompass the living room.

  Slash glanced around. “Are you clean?”

  The clean Slash referred to was not the vacuuming or dusting kind. He was asking if it was safe to talk about classified matters. Because of the high incidence of industrial spying and the sheer amount of work the twins did out of their home office, they had a lot of special monitoring and security equipment that probably made their house as safe as Fort Knox, and most likely safer than any government facility. I presumed Slash already knew that, but regardless it was very unusual for Slash to read the twins in on something this classified in a setting that wasn’t officially protected. I guess after the penetration by one of the NSA’s own, he didn’t have a lot of confidence it would be any safer discussing this matter in an NSA conference room.

  Elvis exchanged a glance with Xavier who shrugged. “As of 0600 this morning. If you can wait three more minutes, we’ll do another pass to make sure.”

  “Do it,” Slash said.

  Xavier got to work on his keyboard. After a few minutes he looked up. “Confirmed. We’re clean. So what’s going on that requires a special consult with us?”

  Slash motioned to me. I sat beside him on the couch our knees touching as he gave them an abbreviated rundown of my interception of the hack and the subsequent activities, including the attempt on my life and our discovery of the insider threat at the NSA.

  Elvis’s eyes got wide when Slash told them about the attempt on my life. “What the hell, Lexi? Someone tried to kill you? Again?”

  “Little black cloud.” I pointed up. “Best friends, apparently.”

  Xavier rubbed his temples. “What’s this world coming to? Another insider threat at the NSA? Lexi under attack again? This is just ugly, people. What do you guys know so far about the hack?”

  Slash rested his hands on his knees. “Not much, unfortunately. I’ve done a first-pass analysis. It was definitely engineered from someone on the inside.”

  “And this hack led where?” Elvis asked. “If you are permitted to tell us?”

  “I’m permitted. IAD. There was another hack into SIGINT, as well. There could be others. We’re investigating now.”

  Elvis whistled. “Damn, that’s bold. What parts of IAD and SIGINT?”

  “This is where things get interesting,” Slash said. “The personnel databases.”

  “Huh? The personnel databases?” Elvis took a minute to digest that.

  Xavier rested his feet on top of his desk and hooked his hands behind his head. A thoughtful expression crossed his face. “Well, that’s totally random except it’s not. Why go to all the trouble of such a deep hack to get into a personnel database?”

  “Trust me, that’s the thousand-dollar question,” I answered.

  Elvis jotted something on a pad of paper. He looked over at Slash. “So, how many employees were compromised?”

  “IAD has forty-two employees listed in this particular database. SIGINT has one hundred and four.”

  “You included?”

  Slash hesitated and then nodded. “Including me.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Xavier hopped up from his chair and disappeared into the kitchen. He returned carrying several beers. He popped the tops and handed them to us. I took one even though I was on the painkillers. I figured a little extra assistance in the relaxation department was warranted after the events of the past twenty-four hours.

  “Any idea why IAD and SIGINT in particular were targeted?” Elvis asked Slash.

  “My first-pass analysis has been inconclusive so far.” Slash ran his fingers through his hair. He looked tired. Neither of us had slept well last night. “My best guess at this point is the Red Guest.”

  “Those Chinese bastards who kidnapped Lexi in Papua, New Guinea?” Elvis asked.

  “One and the same.”

  Anger crossed Elvis’s face. “Damn it. Then you can count me in on any counteroffensive. If Jiang Shi or his group is trying to harm Lexi and hacking into the NSA, it’s a priority for me.”

  “Me, too,” Xavier added. “As of this moment. Let the hunt begin.”

  “We’re not hunting,” Slash said. “If it’s the Red Guest, I already know how to get at them.”

  I saw Elvis’s eyes spark with interest. Despite my apprehension at such an approach, I felt my own little thrill of excitement. What could I say? I loved a challenge and the Red Guest would certainly be one. I wouldn’t be the first one to back down from a battle of wits with them. In fact, after what they’d put me through, I’d actually kind of welcome the battle. Not sure what kind of person that made me, but it is what it is.

  “So, what’s the deal with the Chinese?” Xavier asked.

  “After getting nabbed for a bunch of high-profile and ugly hacks on us and other countries, they are backpedaling, at least publicly,” Slash said. “The government is facing serious international backlash and dealing with a lot of internal upheaval in their upper echelons at the moment. Apparently, they’ve decided to publicly clean house to try to save face. Numerous high officials are being tried for bribery, fraud, stealing funds from the government and so on. It’s a bit of a chaotic situation. All of this high-profile activity means I’m not convinced the hack on the NSA database was sanctioned by their government. Certainly not at such a sensitive time for them.”

  “Whoa,” Elvis said. “You think the Red Guest went rogue?”

  Slash shrugged. “Honestly? I think Jiang Shi is on the hunt for his brother.”

  Elvis whistled. “Okay, then what’s the end game?”

  “End game is I want to reverse engineer the hack.”

  Xavier and Elvis exchanged a glance. Elvis leaned back against the chair and crossed his arms against his chest. “I’m pretty sure you don’t need us to do that.”

  “I do if I want to replicate and morph a code for self-destruction.”

  I choked on the mouthful of beer I’d just put into my mouth. Elvis and Xavier seemed equally as shocked.

  Slash patted me on the back until I managed to swallow.

  “Self-destruction?” I spluttered.

  Slash met my gaze and nodded.

  We were silent as we studied Slash to make sure he wasn’t kidding. What he was talking about—replicating a code designed for self-destruction was dangerous. Beyond dangerous. There were a million things that could go wrong. The code could go awry, or be diverted, copied, or used for a multitude of destructive purposes, none of which might have been the intended target.

  “Wait. You’re not talking full-on self-destruction, right?” I asked Slash. “The so-called nuclear option?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m talking about.” There was no indecision in his voice, no wavering. He was deadly serious. “Look, to protect ourselves, our country, this can’t just be an attack on the Red Guest, it has to go all the way to the top. But we get at them through the Red Guest to make a point.”

  I couldn’t speak. I just looked at him in total shock.

  Either Slash didn’t notice my disbelief or chose to ignore it. “We’d start with an attack through the routers, targeting the systems and control infrastructure of the country. We’ll not only take it down—we’ll keep it down. We’d then disable central communications by encrypting the software that talks to each other, preventing them from a restart even if they wipe things clean. That’s it. If we take down the electrical grid and communications, they are dead in the water. They can’t retaliate, counterattack or launch their own
offense. They will be helpless.”

  I swallowed hard. So many thoughts were racing through my head I was having a hard time sorting through it all. What Slash was talking about—creating and releasing a dark code—was something seldom ever discussed in cybersecurity. In addition to the initial destruction it would cause, a domino effect could take down or cripple additional critical infrastructure. People, primarily those most vulnerable, would be at serious risk. There would certainly be deaths if hospitals, transportation systems and electrical grids were affected, even if the attack was used purely as a show of power and could be reversed at some point. That also meant once the code had done its initial work, the consequences would be out of the hands of its creator—Slash. It would then be up to the politicians to decide what to do about a helpless China. Given the state of things in Washington at the moment, that alone scared the bejesus out of me.

  All of this in addition to the singularly perilous fact that once the dark code was out there, it could be used by other coders and black hatters savvy enough to find and replicate it. Those people could be agents of other nations or cyber mercenaries out for themselves. It was beyond scary to think Slash would be providing tools for other nations or organizations—benign or not—to become nuclear players in the cyberwar. In my opinion, spreading nuclear cyber power around was not a good idea.

  My breathing quickened. So many things could go wrong with a self-destructive code that such code was rarely ever used, even by the most sophisticated of black hatters. I’d never even seen such a code, not even in an academic presentation. Yet here was Slash, my boyfriend, calmly proposing to go all Darth Vader and do exactly that.

  Elvis leaned forward, his hands hanging between his knees. His blue eyes were intense and interested, but wary. “Okay, Slash. You have my full attention.”

  “Mine, too, dude,” Xavier added. He’d swung his feet down from the desk and was staring at Slash in anticipation.

  Slash turned to me, lifting an eyebrow. I swallowed hard. I wanted to warn him against even thinking such a thing, except he already knew the dangers. He was well aware this kind of hacking crossed the line from white to black. I was more than a little taken aback he was considering it, even if a valid argument could be made that it would be done in the name of national security.

  “Slash, I don’t know about this.” I hated to be the only one voicing opposition because I was his girlfriend and I should support him. But I couldn’t in good conscience go along with this until I heard more of his reasoning. My hopes he would be easily talked out of this course of action were dwindling. I knew him well enough to see he was already committed, given the grim look in his eyes and the hard set of his jaw.

  He put a light hand on my knee. “Hear me out, cara. Okay?”

  After a moment, I nodded. I owed him that.

  “Despite vocal and official protestations by the Chinese government, the Red Guest is supported by the state,” he said. “Maybe they know about the latest attack on the NSA, maybe they don’t. Regardless, their goal is to bring down the political and economic infrastructure of the United States and her allies though concentrated cyberattacks. Now they are murdering our people. I don’t need to tell any of you in this room that this isn’t a game. The Red Guest are housed in the communist-supported Chinese People’s Liberation Front, which is run by the Chinese military. This past year we’ve been engaged in some serious warfare, none of which has been made public. It’s getting ugly. As you all know, there are international rules in hacking—legal rules the US and the West have been playing by. But the Chinese have not. They are getting bolder, believing us to be hamstringed by our obedience to a moral and legal code they don’t follow. They think we won’t do, can’t do, what we need to do to stop them. They are wrong. It will take only one concentrated and successful attack to make them rethink their position.”

  “Maybe.” I set my beer bottle down on the side table and scooted forward on the couch. “But one attack of this nature, even if it worked precisely as it was supposed to, wouldn’t shut them down forever.”

  “Not forever. That’s not the goal. But it would indicate we mean business, and we’re able to play the game by their rules, or lack thereof, if we have to. It would also put a serious crimp in Chinese cybersecurity operations, especially if we take out the Red Guest in the first sweep.”

  “Whoa, dude, when you say ‘take out’ what exactly are we talking about?” Xavier tossed his empty beer bottle into a recycling tub on the floor near his desk. It was half-full of Mountain Dew cans and beer bottles.

  “Total destruction.” Slash’s expression didn’t change an iota. “The Red Guest must be compromised, humiliated and rendered completely inoperable.”

  I pressed a hand to my right temple, where a headache was brewing despite the pain pill I’d just taken. “This sounds like a strategy to spring a kind of cyber Pearl Harbor.”

  “That’s not a bad analogy,” Slash replied. “The Chinese must be forced to move on to someone other than the Red Guest to front their effort. Perhaps next time they will choose with more circumspection.”

  “And if they don’t?” I asked.

  “I believe our show of power will cause them to think twice about their escalating efforts. Or at least the threat could stimulate a new approach to cyber détente.”

  “Cyber détente,” Elvis said thoughtfully. “An electronic standoff between two superpowers. Historically sound, but I don’t see this gaining official approval from Congress anytime soon.”

  “He doesn’t intend to go through Congress or the NSA.” I suddenly understood what was happening here. “Which I presume is why we’re having this official conversation in a nonofficial setting.”

  Slash didn’t correct me, so Xavier laughed. It wasn’t a sound of humor, but of nervousness.

  “Look, guys, we’ve all worked at the NSA,” Xavier said. “We know they’re fully aware we’re having this little conversation, so there is no need to pretend. Let’s just put it on the table. They’re tagging us to be some kind of black ops cyber team, right? It’s all got to be hush-hush, off the record, off the books. Official deniability to the last keystroke.”

  Slash still didn’t say anything, but he didn’t have to. We all understood what was at stake.

  I felt like I was still missing a critical piece of the puzzle.

  “What else aren’t you telling us, Slash? If you’re asking us to be a part of this, we have the right to know. No detail is too small. Spill.”

  He hesitated for a moment and then said, “Quodan.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Xavier jumped up from his seat. His swivel chair spun around wildly. “Quodan? The extremist terrorist group from Iran responsible for blowing up the train station in Italy and three major hotels in Prague? You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “I wish I was.”

  “Wait. You’re saying the Chinese are interacting with extremists?” Elvis said, his expression incredulous. “That’s low. Really low.”

  “It’s purely business.” Slash’s voice held a hard, cold edge. “I told you this had progressed to an ugly stage. The Chinese and Quodan share a mutual goal—they just go about accomplishing it in different ways. It shouldn’t be that much of a surprise that the two groups have decided they can profit from each other, at least for now.”

  Quodan as a player was a surprise to me—and definitely not a pleasant one. Ugly, indeed. My stomach churned. “How can you be so sure they are working together, Slash?”

  “The NSA has intercepted multiple correspondence threads linking the Chinese to Quodan. They are willing to sell intelligence information to Quodan even if the price isn’t right. It’s all in the name of the end game.”

  “Man, you’ve got to give me a minute to wrap my head around this.” Elvis pressed both hands to his temples. “Unfathomable. Unreal.”


  “Unfortunately it’s our reality right now.”

  My head was spinning, too. I needed to think, sort things out. The implications of such a partnership were staggering. “Okay, even if the Red Guest is behind this hack, supported by Quodan, you know better than most that reverse engineering and morphing a code for self-destruction...it’s rogue. So much could go wrong. If something does go wrong, that’s on us. We’re talking about thousands, no, millions, of innocent people who could get hurt.”

  Slash’s expression didn’t change. At all. “I know. That’s why I’ve got to get this code just right. That’s the purpose for this request for consult. Each of you has unique strengths and talents. I can build the code myself, but I would appreciate a peer review. But I’m not asking any of you to go any further than that. This code, the rest, it’s on me. Alone.”

  I couldn’t believe what he was saying, what he was taking upon himself—the responsibility, the darkness. I felt sick. “Look, Slash, we don’t even know for sure these latest hacks came from the Red Guest.”

  “No. Not yet.” He stood, unhooked his sunglasses from the front of his shirt and put them back on. “But we will. Who’s in?”

  Elvis exchanged a long glance with Xavier and then me. Finally Elvis nodded, keeping his eyes on me. “I’m in.”

  Xavier seemed to wrestle with the thought for a moment, then swore. “Damn it, guys, my bachelor party is Saturday. This Saturday. That’s six lousy days. This better not interfere with that.”

  It seemed both ridiculous and thankfully normal that he would be concerned with that.

  A smile touched Slash’s lips. “Trust me, Xavier. Even I wouldn’t let world events interfere with your bachelor party. I can write the code before that. I’ve been working on it for some time already.”

  My mouth gaped open. Slash had been working on a black code...for some time? And he’d never mentioned it to me?

  “Okay,” Xavier said, leaning back in the chair and linking his fingers behind his head. “We all know full well the best people to do this are right here in the room. So, yeah, I’m in, too.”