‘Ghoshal, there’s something else I wanted to talk to you about. It’s nothing, really. A mere blip, I’m sure, and it has not reached the market. But I don’t like bad news being published about us.’
‘About the data theft news? In DC?’
‘So, you’ve heard about it?’
‘Yeah, I read it. I was thinking, is he the same guy who put up those figures back in 2001? Remember, when the results were accidentally uploaded on our website and other websites copied it … markets slipped … remember?’
Rana thought back to that day.
On 10 April 2001, it was reported that, due to a software glitch, the official website of Sathyamev had flashed its fourth-quarter results much before the financial results were approved by the board. Trade and news websites around the world saw the incomplete quarterly results and uploaded the same results on their websites. As expected, Sathyamev’s shares fell sharply. Although the official homepage was fixed, the damage it did to the company’s market valuation remained.
Rana stared at Ghoshal’s face and shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘We should have known that something was missing from the story when we got hit by a technical glitch.’
Rana reached over to the intercom on his desk and pressed a button.
‘Good afternoon, sir,’ a lady’s voice sounded out of the speaker.
‘Can you ask Pranjal to report to my office? Ask him to get me the details of the 2001 website glitch.’
Rana paused to observe Ghoshal’s reaction for a moment. ‘Atul Ghoshal, you’ve made me reconsider a few things I thought were rolling smoothly. But we’ll sort things out at our end. It was good of you to come!’
‘Been a pleasure to see you, sahib,’ replied Ghoshal.
Rana stood up and shook his hand. ‘Keep in touch.’
In five minutes, Pranjal Hazarika was ready with his laptop to explain the origin of the website glitch in 2001. Samba Rajput had joined them as well. Pranjal stared at the screen studiously, avoiding Rana’s eyes.
‘Sir, websites cannot be hacked … but sometimes they can be defaced … or hacked. Our website is hosted on a secure server. The website management team, sir, is different … so … I will not know …’ mumbled Pranjal.
‘You mean it can be hacked, right?’ asked Rana.
‘No, sir.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, sir …’
‘Okay, you can leave.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
Pranjal left silently. As chief information officer, Pranjal had all the knowledge required to manage technical issues, but he lacked interpersonal skills.
Rana stared at Samba. There was a moment of uncomfortable silence.
‘Samba, what kind of people do you recruit?’ said Rana.
‘You wanted a technically sound person to head the division. Somebody who does not poke around into others’ affairs, right? This guy seemed to fit the bill.’ Samba paused, as if he was unsure of his stance. ‘I was thinking, is it possible that the technical glitch was an attempt to deface our website? Instead of leaving a hate message, Kanha opted to post our undeclared Q4 results?’
Rana’s eyes hardened. ‘He’s turning into a threat. I’ve warned you before.’
‘Like his father, he has first-rate programming knowledge.’ Samba drew a long breath and continued, ‘In fact, his entire batch at the NIIIT turned out to be hackers.’
‘How do you know?’
‘The SISI team compiled a report. There’s another hacker by the name of Pankaj, who makes money from small-time hacks.’
‘Is he a hacker like Kanha?’
‘Both studied at the same centre.’
‘I get your point. Let’s set a thief to catch a thief …’
In less than four hours, Pankaj was at Rana’s penthouse office. It was cloudy and a bit chilly that evening, even by Hyderabad standards. But inside the room, the temperature was precise. Pankaj was wearing a leather jacket and held a motorcycle helmet in his hand – looking quite out of place in the clinical corporate setting. He removed his jacket and slung it over his shoulder.
‘You can keep your helmet on that table, there,’ said Rana, looking at him warily.
‘Nah, that’s okay,’ said Pankaj. ‘By the way, thanks for sending a Merc. Nice ride! Someone said I was here for a website-related assignment?’
‘That’s right. We think our website was hacked in 2001 by your friend Kanha. I want to know how this was done, and if we can fix it,’ said Rana.
‘Kanha?’
‘You may know him by the name of Kanu. His real name is Kanha,’ Samba interrupted. He was seated on a sofa at the other end of the room, drinking coffee. Pankaj turned around. Samba sat up and continued, ‘We have known him since he was a kid.’
‘That’s fine. We can discuss that later,’ Rana said. He tilted the laptop screen towards Pankaj. ‘This is my laptop. It has a password. Can you crack it? I’ll give you thirty minutes.’
Pankaj smiled. ‘Cracking passwords is for the films, Rana Saab. Your laptop has a login code with a minimum 512-bit encryption. More than a trillion combinations. This could be traced, but not cracked. If you give me access to your system with a fast Internet connection, I can tell you where your website is hosted, the platform it’s built on, and the way its weakness can be exploited. Give me two hours, and I’ll slow down your website so much it will take more than three minutes to load your home page. Even at 3.5 mbps. Give me twenty-four hours and your website will be gone …’
‘You can slow down my website?’
‘Ouch! I thought you knew?’
‘Knew what?’
‘Your entire bouquet of websites – what was it? Indiasomething.com Yeah? The websites you owned were the target of a continued DDOS attack. The cyber squad didn’t like your proclaiming that you bought a bunch of websites for what? Rs 500 crore? I think the DDOS began in 1999.’
‘DDOS?’
‘Denial-of-service-attack. Ah, distributed denial-of-service, to be exact! It’s a syndicate that will overload your web server with too many requests. I can’t believe none of your team members has informed you that your Allsify business was dying a slow death. The squad planted many unreliable contents on your website, killing your sites softly with love! Everyone in the IRC knew about it!’
‘IRC?’
‘Underground Internet Relay Chat networks. C’mon, don’t tell me you don’t know about IRC.’
Rana looked at Pankaj, his eyes wide. The bits and pieces of the Allsify business puzzle were connecting together.
At one point Sathyamev’s subsidiary, Allsify, was the leading light of the online marketplace. It had acquired www.indiavishwa.com at an outlandish price of Rs 499 crore and the company was set on its mission to becoming the online value shopping mall of the future. Its stock price on the international technology stock exchange, Nasdaq, had galloped from an offer price of $18 a share to $174, bringing its valuation to a sky-high four billion dollars.
Unfortunately, the Allsify team couldn’t figure out a way to monetize the hype. The gloss of ambitious acquisition and grand vision couldn’t rub off the blotch: a loss of Rs 21.6 crore on a revenue of Rs 10.4 crore. The problems with the website’s ranking and functionality persisted.
Allsify fell. And it fell big. In less than three years after the company went public, Rana was forced to write off huge investments in the loss-making subsidiary and sell off all his stake for the paltry sum of Rs 33 crore.
Rana could feel the heat on his face and a sweat breaking out. All his efforts had come to naught because of his own nephew. ‘Samba, go smash that rotten kid!’ shouted Rana. ‘Allsify drowned because of him. I always knew there was something very wrong happening with Allsify.’
Samba got up slowly and walked over to Pankaj. ‘Can you tell me who did it?’ he asked.
‘It’s a coordinated attack. It’s international. You can’t even put blame on any single country, never mind a single person,’ replied Pankaj.
; ‘You’re telling me there’s no way to know if a person has done it?’
‘Well, I guess it’s possible, but that would require at least 50–100 dedicated computers. As I told you, your attack was more sophisticated and planned. They didn’t take down your website. Instead, they just slowed it down.’
‘Thanks, Pankaj. You’re hired,’ said Rana.
‘But I don’t want a job!’
‘Why not? It’s very well-paying.’
‘I can’t work in your nine-to-five environment. Programming is a craft. It’s rigorous. You can buy the artwork but you can’t buy the artist. If you buy the artist, you kill the craft.’
‘That’s fine. Your place. Your work hours. Your craft. My money.’
‘That sounds like a deal.’ Pankaj thumped his fist on the table.
NINE
27–31 December 2006
A
t 10.15 a.m. on 27 December, a man wearing a hooded black jacket walked into the SJR Canteen near Sathyamev’s Ojas Tower in Secunderabad. He took a corner seat and ordered a coffee as he fiddled with his mobile phone. When he left the place, a box containing several floppy discs occupied the seat he had been sitting in. A few minutes later, a man wearing dark, thick-rimmed glasses and a buttoned-down shirt collected it and silently slipped out of the canteen.
Kapil Sharma, a twenty-three-year-old programmer and one of the brightest interface designers at Sathyamev, sat alone at the Karkhana branch, nursing his thoughts over a warm cup of espresso. A voice intruded on his thoughts.
‘Kapil Sir, there’s a parcel for you,’ the office boy said, handing him a package.
‘For me?’ asked Kapil.
‘Yes, sir. This box was delivered in the afternoon at the reception.’
Kapil studied the shipping label. ‘Artwork? Any idea … who delivered it?’
‘No, sir. They didn’t inform.’
‘Okay, I will check …’
Around the same time, a junior Sathaymev technician received an unexpected parcel at his desk through SpeedFast Courier Services. The sealed envelope attached to the parcel had an introductory note: ‘Norman Antivirus Update.’
He tore open the envelope and pulled out two CD-ROMs. He inserted one into the CD drive. Immediately, his system went into auto-run mode. Instead of opening the correct folder, the system displayed a blue screen and, after 30 seconds, rebooted with an additional desktop shortcut icon – Norman Antivirus Update.
Kapil sat at his desk with a zip drive in his hand. The printed instructions prompted him to insert the zip drive into his system and check the content. As he did so, a folder containing a ‘PSD’ document – Sathyamev1_artwork.psd – appeared on the screen. He double-clicked the file, but instead of opening the file, the system shut down.
Kapil quickly restarted his machine after ejecting the disc. But the system functioned abnormally slow. With a landline phone receiver to his ear, he dialled the helpdesk number.
‘Hi, this is Kapil. Can you send someone to the Design Studio to check my system? It’s responding very slowly. Thanks!’
He put down the receiver, thinking the zip drive may have contained suspicious files.
But Kapil didn’t know that the malware on his system had triggered a highly sophisticated, self-replicating version of itself that was now taking control of other connected systems.
Within minutes, the malware controlled hundreds of computers at the Karkhana office.
The Sathyamev Karkhana office branch had just three tech support personnel along with their supervisor, Badal Singh, and they were being overrun with requests.
The computer crisis became the talk of the office. Everyone, from the top boss to the data entry staff, wanted tech support to fix their problem first.
The list of lodged complaints varied: My navigational folder doesn’t open; my Word document is taking forever to open; my Excel crashed without warning; my browsers jammed up in between navigation sessions.
The Karkhana office was in disarray, while Badal Singh shuffled among the employees.
At 12.30 p.m., Kanu called the Karkhana office landline number and punched the extension for the tech support section.
‘Tech support,’ came the female voice, accompanied by a clattering sound from the keyboard.
‘Hi, this is Govind, from the Norman Cyber Security office. I spoke to Mr Pranjal Hazarika. He asked me to get in touch with the IT supervisor. Can you tell me who handles IT in your branch?’
‘Badal Singh,’ replied the representative.
‘Yes, Badal. Sorry, I forgot his name,’ apologized Kanu. ‘May I know your name, please?’
‘Shirisha,’ she replied.
‘Can you put Badal on the line?’
‘No, sir. He’s on the third floor. There’s a critical issue, which is why … He’ll be back in about thirty minutes.’
‘Okay, then can you ask him to get in touch with me when he returns? Or, even better, can you give me his cell phone number?’
‘Sure, sir! Please note down …’
When Kanu called Badal Singh’s mobile number five minutes later, he introduced himself and mentioned Pranjal Hazarika and Shirisha by name. ‘A short while ago I spoke to Shirisha. I understand you guys are facing some kind of crisis. Could you describe exactly what’s happening?’
Badal felt helpless as he confessed the problems at hand. ‘Yeah, there’s been some kind of malware attack. Our designer put a zip drive that contained malware into his computer. It’s starting to spiral out of control.’
‘No problem. At Norman Cyber Security, this is exactly what we specialize in. Can you tell me if you are in front of the computer right now?’
‘Yeah, I am.’
‘Do you have access to FTP?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Please disconnect and log out from the network connection. FTP is not the place where you want this malware to move. First, we must isolate it from spreading to other drives. But before we do that, can you tell me if you are connected to the Internet?’
‘Yes, I am. Should I disconnect from FTP?’
‘Please do that first. The next thing you should do is download a file from our Norman Cyber Security website. Google search for “Norman DDS 9612-patch”. It’s executable. Run it and change the password settings on your system.’
‘What is the file again?’ asked Badal.
‘DDS 9612-patch.’
‘Yeah, it’s showing. Should I click on this link?’
‘As long as it’s on the Norman webpage. Do you see it?’
‘Yes, it’s there,’ Badal replied.
Kanu had worked meticulously to make sure the webpage extension had the look and feel of the original Norman webpage. Even the domain, with the long URL of the scam website, matched the original. There was no way Badal could have noticed the difference.
‘Are you there?’ Kanu asked.
‘Yeah, give me a minute …’
‘Take your time. I’ll stay on the line. Reboot your system after running the file. You will get your system back,’ said Kanu.
Back at the Karkhana office, Badal leaned forward as the monitor turned black and rebooted. The display screen lit up with the Windows start-up chime audible in the background. Badal entered his recently changed password, and the familiar Mickey Mouse wallpaper appeared on the screen along with the other desktop icons. The newly-opened menu notified that the computer had been cleaned of 22 malware files.
Badal opened a few folders and the response time seemed normal. He clicked on a browser icon and the website home page loaded up in no time.
Relieved, Badal spoke into the handset. ‘Everything is up again now. It all seems to be working. Thank you so much … your name again, please?’
But the line was dead.
That very moment, Kanu turned his attention to a small window that looked like a ‘command-prompt’ dialogue box. He had secretly established an interface with the malware-infected system at Sathyamev. His machine was paired with ad
ministrator privileges. Kanu could impersonate a keyboard and enter text on his own computer without Badal’s knowledge. On Badal’s screen, everything looked normal.
Kanu opened the FTP folder ‘SYS-KAR’ that housed the Karkhana’s employees’ folders. A massive vault of information was his for the taking.
The two flat-panel monitors on his desk indicated that files from the replicated screen of Sathyamev’s office – the one containing the Mickey Mouse wallpaper – were being moved into an anonymous folder.
The next morning, when Badal turned on his monitor, he did not, at first, understand the reason behind the mysterious message: Files from SYS-KAR had been moved to Anonymous. Press OK. He pondered over the notification for a while before pressing OK. He then opened the SYS-KAR folder, but it was empty. The Karkhana employees’ files were all gone. ‘God! There’s no data … it’s all gone …’ he panicked. ‘This is gonna kill us …’
A secret meeting was convened at Sathyamev’s nineteenth-floor conference room in the early hours of Thursday morning. The secrecy was motivated in part by the reluctance to concede that Sathyamev’s systems could be easily penetrated and in part by the fact that they were terrified of breaking the news to Rana Rajput directly.
Samba Rajput presided over the meeting attended by Venkatesh, Pranjal and Badal. Their goal was to determine how to bring back the infected systems to a normal functioning level.
‘How long do you think, Pranjal, it will take to partially restore the network? I believe this is the day our investment in backup servers will come in handy. Is that right, Pranjal?’ asked Samba.
Pranjal, feeling his professional survival was at stake, stammered, ‘I’m sorry, sir. I do not blame Badal. But it’s only human –’
Samba didn’t let him finish. ‘Oh! Shut up, Pranjal. How many times will you say sorry? I don’t want to hear that. I want to know your plan of action –’
Venkatesh took over. ‘I believe the contingency plan is in place and being acted upon as we speak. By now, a large majority of our systems will have received a login notification to back-up files. We’ve personally called and requested all employees to refrain from leaking the news – even to the drivers and security personnel. I am sure this can be contained within two hours.’
Digital God Page 9