CypherGhost

by D S Kane

  Ann sent an email to Jon Sommers: “Hello, hero. We need to talk. I think the mysterious hacker who tried to down the aircraft I was on will be too difficult for William and Betsy to find without my help. They’ll need some backup. Looks like no love from the other hackers at the Swiftshadow Group. Please, please, contact me ASAP.”

  She sighed. Something would happen soon. She felt her body tense, as if she were circling her enemy in a boxing ring.

  CHAPTER 14

  December 1, 6:16 a.m.

  Motel Six, East Palo Alto, CA

  The CypherGhost sat at the desk in the Motel 6. Shabby, but much cheaper and, in actuality, not any less secure than the motel less than two miles away in upscale Palo Alto. She had intended to stay just one day and move on. Instead, she settled in with her notebook computer to hack her next target, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee. She decided to search for any leverage that she could apply to force the entire government to stop attacking hackers.

  The government firewall was a joke. But once within the server, what she saw sent her into a frenzy of fear. Encrypted correspondence, easily decrypted, between FBI Assistant Director Bernhard Sicci and his underlings marked her for death, not capture. One of the emails between two of the underlings called Sicci the “Ass Dire.” But now, she wasn’t laughing.

  The Ass Dire stated that “a trial would expose the nation’s lack of defensive capabilities to hackers. “If that happens,” the chair’s email read, “all the American intelligence services would lose their backdoors, and individuals and corporations might implement better, more powerful point-to-point encryption. Make an example of the hacker who tried to bring down that aircraft. It’s the only workable solution. Or, we can simply imprison all the hackers. All of them, right now.”

  In spite of the laws against government use of bitcoin, she discovered a payment trail by accessing a blockchain fragment that originated through a ghost server connected to the Ass Dire’s secret home server. The law on bitcoin made transactions using it illegal as of the previous month. This law had disappointed so many banks that were already up to their necks in processing bitcoin and similar transactions. The new law forced the banks to have to unwind all bitcoin transactions. When the banks responded to the legislation by stating there was no way to do this, the Congress had passed additional legislation ordering software corporations to develop the means to accomplish the unwind.

  Now, the government was using an outlawed type of transaction to do its own dirty work: assassinate the CypherGhost.

  She slammed her fist against the desk. Sitting back in her chair, she realized she’d never expected anything like this to happen and she felt her anger starting to build. Assassination? She might be the first but, she was sure, she wouldn’t be the only hacker sentenced in absentia to die. Because of her, all hackers were now marked. She cursed out loud. Rage now fueled her.

  She thought about her conundrum and saw an opening. She decided to use bitcoin transactions to damage the FBI. The CypherGhost copied the correspondence from Sicci’s server and edited it into an anonymous blog piece. She posted the story on Medium for all its subscribers to read. Now let them try to use bitcoin to kill me.

  The CypherGhost knew her only chance—every hacker’s only chance—of survival, would be to fight back. This will be a real war with real casualties. I will have to murder thousands. I’ll need help. I can’t do this all myself.

  She posted a hacker challenge on the various hacker message boards, including 4chan, neworder.box.sk, torjanfordge.com, astalavesta.box.sk, packetstormsecurity.org, alt. 2600, alt.virus, phrack.org, and antionline:

  If you think you are safe out there, read this note I hacked from the US Senate’s chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee. It is his message to FBI Assistant Director Bernhard Sicci. Don’t say you were never warned. HACKER CHALLENGE: Uproot the system from its core. Discredit everyone who wants us dead. If that doesn’t work, use your hacking skills to kill them all.

  She was sure that within one day the war would start.

  * * *

  Ann read the CypherGhost’s anonymous post.

  She wasn’t sure what she should do, and forwarded the note to Cassie, along with a short message: “This hacker is going to get us all killed. I’m flying home. See you tomorrow morning.”

  She bought passage on a direct flight from San Jose Airport to Reagan. She pulled her suitcase from under her bed and packed her clothing. Then, she packed her notebook computer and her coursework from Stanford. Now, she was ready and called a cab to take her to SFO.

  * * *

  Cassie forwarded Ann’s note to William, Betsy, Avram, and Jon. Cassie’s cover for the forwarded note was short:

  Ann is flying back to Washington. This is getting more perilous by the day. Let’s all meet tomorrow over lunch to discuss alternatives. We might all be in danger now.

  CHAPTER 15

  December 1, 11:38 a.m.

  US Capitol Building, Washington DC

  Arthur Endor’s flip-phone cell chirped. He fished it from his pocket as if it were burning hot. He hurried to a hallway outside the main flow of traffic and found an out-of-the-way doorway. Once there, the echo of footsteps from the heavy traffic of chatting lobbyists and congressmen was not so deafening.

  He viewed the screen, stopped frowning, and took a deep breath to calm himself before he accepted the call from Ruth. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  “Arthur, I just received a return message from Assistant Director Sicci. We’ve been corresponding for almost a week and I thought I should bring you into the loop before we finalize any decision on the hackers.”

  “Funny thing. My subcommittee just heard his testimony. He hasn’t a damn clue as to the identity of this super hacker. He’s worthless. Don’t trust him. I—”

  “Arthur, we’re way past that. I think we need to exterminate all the hackers. They’re a clear and present danger to the security of the United States.”

  “Ruth, I know that in your capacity of head of the Senate’s Intelligence Committee, you have tons of power. But this idea is dangerous. Preposterous. We can’t send the National Guard out with orders to shoot anyone carrying a computer. Law requires a trial before conviction, and then sentencing before anyone can be killed.”

  He imagined his counterpart seething as she held her cell to her ear. “Right?”

  It was nearly twenty seconds before she uttered her reply. “They’re terrorists. So if we don’t kill them, we can at least hold them without the right to an attorney and no specific right to a trial. Right, Arthur?”

  “I’m not so sure. Let me think about this, but please, until you hear from me, don’t do anything rash. We have elections coming up next year. Don’t injure our party.”

  “Fuck you, Arthur.” She terminated the call. Arthur shrugged, and dropped his cell back into his pocket.

  Arthur thought, Ruth Cantor has always been a first-order bitch. But now she’s becoming a first-order, dangerous bitch.

  * * *

  The Hart Senate Office Building also served as a hotel room of last resort for senators when sessions ran too late into the night for them to commute to and from their apartments before the next morning’s early sessions. Some senators even used their office as their apartment in Washington. On this night, it was too late for Ruth Cantor to drive to her home and then return before tomorrow’s important early morning committee meeting. She had pulled a blanket out of the closet and settled into the couch in her office when her cell buzzed. She scanned its screen before deciding not to let the call roll into voicemail.

  “Ruth? It’s Sicci. We have an unfortunate developing situation. It appears that a bunch of unidentified hackers have discovered and destroyed every one of the FBI’s databases, and all our offsite backups. I thought this was impossible, but they came in all at once, initiated multiple DDoS attacks as a diversion for the hackers who deleted the files. It was a coordinated enterprise. There were too many attacks fo
r our systems to handle. Once a group of hackers managed to pass the firewall, it was a lost cause. Our systems have now been corrupted to the point we’ll have to rebuild them all from scratch. It’ll take over a year—maybe more.”

  Cantor sat up, stunned and speechless for a few seconds. “Damn. I told Arthur I wanted all the hackers terminated and he told me I should wait until we had a bigger event, something to motivate the public. I guess we just got that.”

  The FBI Ass Dire said, “You bet you did. We don’t even employ most of the programmers who originally built our systems. Those projects are legacy systems, some over a decade old. Most of those that were contractors are now working elsewhere. A few that were our own employees have retired and some of the older ones have passed on. The cost of staffing the project will be enormous. We must find and imprison the perpetrators. They’re all terrorists!”

  The chair replied, “Okay then. I have a few questions, since there isn’t much I can do without warrants. Get those warrants to me right now, one arrest warrant for every hacker you can name. Can you print arrest warrants without your computer systems?”

  “We were printing the warrants but we hadn’t finished when the system crashed. We do have printed records. They’re mostly over ten years old, filed before our current system, and they don’t cover everyone. We can run a manual operation to scan, match, and print warrants for those we had missed, but it will take a few days. Maybe a week.”

  “Another question. Are you absolutely sure these hackers are United States residents? Positive this wasn’t a cyberattack by a foreign enemy?”

  The FBI Ass Dire took nearly a minute before replying. Cantor could hear him breathing on the other end of the line. She said nothing more, letting him sweat. “Well, no. But we do know that the hacker who tried to crash that aircraft was within our borders during the attempt. Isn’t that enough?”

  Ruth sighed. “You don’t even know if the names you’re going to place on these warrants are people located within the United States?” She squeezed the phone so hard its plastic cracked, cutting her palm.

  He didn’t respond, but she could still hear him breathing.

  She took a deep breath. “Oh, fuck. Look, I guess I can make it sound like each warrant is for a real person. Do your prison camps in Nevada have enough space for all the hackers? Are they ready right now?”

  “Yes. Enough to secure over two million in the camps. We’ve just had an NSA Director of Systems Security do an inspection tour of the logistics. So, we’re good to go.”

  Ruth said, “Alright then. Call me when you’re ready to execute the arrest warrants.” She terminated the conversation and turned the ringer on her cellphone off, then pulled the covers to her neck and closed her eyes. But it took hours before the excitement of the coming hacker roundup wore off and she finally fell into a dreamless sleep.

  When she woke, she straightened the clothing she’d worn yesterday and washed up in the office bathroom. Soon, she was back in the Senate Chamber, working nonstop to gather votes to turn her pending measure into law.

  Later that afternoon, while Ruth was in the restroom, the FBI Ass Dire called her again. “We’re almost finished printing arrest warrants for about 25,000 hackers who live in the United States. It will make the news in a few minutes. We’ll start by arresting those. I estimate that there are over two-point-five million hackers we have records for, living in the country. We’ll batch them out, twenty-five thousand at a time. Figure it will take about two weeks using local police and running ten batches of arrests per day.”

  As she stood at the restroom mirror combing her hair, she saw a smile on her face. It was pure nasty.

  CHAPTER 16

  December 1, 5:43 p.m.

  Holiday Inn, Sunnyvale, CA

  After using the microwave to cook a leftover pizza slice, the CypherGhost watched a national news telecast that detailed how local police and National Guard troops in every state had been given the names of over 25,000 hackers residing in that state, all accused of being cyber terrorists. The gray dusk faded away, making the interior of her room visible from outside. She closed the blinds.

  For the first time, she questioned whether her work was constructive or self-defeating. Although the pizza had been bought fresh yesterday from a small pizzeria, it tasted like it had rotted.

  The talking head on television claimed the hackers were being placed in a “holding facility.” She hacked the FBI and discovered multiple concentration camps built in Nevada and Wyoming, large enough to hold over 2 million people.

  So, she thought, this is only now starting.

  She shed a few tears as the knowledge that she was responsible for the fate of her brethren sank in. I began this as a personal vendetta. No more. Now it’s people I don’t know being treated like the people I hunted. I should have know they would escalate. So, now I’ll have to escalate. She thought for a while about what her response should be.

  She made a pot of coffee, showered, and dressed. Then, she sat at the small desk in her room and went back to work. She had a copy of the FBI’s databases on one of her portable hard disks, courtesy of a hacker who had posted the files onto a Serbian server.

  It didn’t take long for her to find the database’s password, located on a server in Saudi Arabia. Now, she could read the records off her local copy of the FBI’s employment database. She had access to one of the few complete, usable working copies of the database in existence. She ran a program to substitute the names of FBI employees for those of the hackers whose names were on the warrants file at the FBI.

  But very soon she realized that the warrants being acted on at the NSA were printed before the database was hacked. There was no way to substitute her electronic copy of the warrants since the FBI’s database was no longer operable. As she watched the arrests on television news, the CypherGhost finally realized her error. She knew she’d wasted her time, and time was a resource she had in scarce supply.

  According to reporters, over one hundred and twenty-five thousand hackers had been arrested.

  And more were being arrested all the time.

  CHAPTER 17

  December 1, 5:52 p.m.

  The Swiftshadow Group headquarters,

  2099 K Street NW, Washington DC

  Long after sunset, Cassie, William, and Betsy sat huddled in the conference room. The mercs had all gone home for the evening, since no one expected trouble.

  Avram and Jon had left the meeting when the shouting started between Cassie and William and Betsy. Avram and Jon exchanged looks, and then they both rose from their chairs and exited the conference room. Avram said they were going to their own offices.

  Cassie glared at William. “You can’t have Ann help you. She’ll be safer at home. The proposed legislation defines all hackers as terrorists, so we’re all in danger, but at least she’ll be more difficult to find at the house.”

  William shrugged. “Not that much harder to find. And there will be one less of us to solve our problem. Cassie, we don’t even have a critical mass. We need more hackers to figure out who and where this terrorist hacker is.”

  Betsy nodded. “If we can’t even locate the hacker who caused the fuss to begin with, we’re all fucked. We need Ann.”

  William sat in silence for a few moments. He threw his arms up in the air. “We’ve been all over this many times. We’re stalemated. Look, I’m done for the night. Let’s try again tomorrow.”

  Cassie glared back. “What good will that do?”

  Just then, they heard boots marching down the corridor toward the office. Many boots. They looked at the security cam’s video on their computer monitors and all three hackers quickly drew long, thin packages from their pockets. Each one pushed their package around their underwear and up into their rectums.

  Military sentries wearing helmets and toting automatic rifles trotted through the conference room door. At the head of that group was one soldier holding four sets of stapled documents. He said, “I’m Major Patrick Milli
cent. We’re looking for Rochelle Brown, William Wing, Ann Silbey Sashakovich, and Cassandra Sashakovich. Do you know where we can find them?”

  Cassie replied, “What business do you have with us?”

  Major McGillicuty said, “Are you one of them?”

  Cassie nodded. “I’m Cassandra Sashakovich.”

  “I have a warrant for your arrest.” He turned to Betsy. “Are you Ms. Brown or Ann Sashakovich?”

  Betsy shrugged. “I’m Brown. So let me guess. You have a warrant for me, too?”

  Major McGillicuty nodded. “Are you William Wing?”

  William shrugged. “Yeah.”

  “You’re all under arrest.” Instead of reading them their rights, McGillicuty just said, “Under the Patriot Act. Please stand so we can cuff each of you.”

  Jon and Avram came running into the conference room.

  Avram asked, “What are they charged with?”

  Major McGillicuty asked, “Who are you?”

  “I’m General Avram Shimmel, head of a United Nations chartered group.”

  McGillicuty said, “Then you’ll be coming along with us. I have your name listed as a person of interest. No cuffs, if you behave.” He looked at Jon. “Who are you?”

  Jon shrugged. “I’m just the office manager.” Jon held out his driver’s license.

  McGillicuty checked Jon’s ID and shook his head. “You’re free to go.” One of the soldiers entered the conference room and whispered into McGillicuty’s ear.

  McGillicuty said to the soldier, “Secure the facility.” Then the major asked, “Do you know where Ann Silbey Sashakovich is?”

  Betsy, William, Cassie, Jon, and Avram all shook their heads before the squadron pushed everyone but Jon out the front door of the office.

  Jon sat alone and tapped his fingers on the conference room table. He’d need a plan to get his friends released from incarceration.