A Quest Within

by Len Marshall

  Ping thought about his answer then replied, “He’s working as a grid operative who will operate invisibly as far as you’re concerned. That’s one of the reasons for me making you meet him. Most of his work will be carried out in the United States, if he gets caught in the US, we, of course, will never acknowledge him or even accept him as a Chinese national. He already knows the operational protocol in diplomacy espionage so he’s trained to do only what he has to do in that particular scenario. Let us all hope that it will not come to that.”

  Things were making some sense at last for Jinn Wu but he still had questions. “Who will he assassinate there?” he asked cautiously.

  “Well who do you expect? Obviously,” he explained, “Fu Wang, his team and anyone else working with them. This is where he’ll be undertaking his mission and, in espionage terms, working as a spook. He’ll take care of all the equipment including the operatives involved. Clearing the grid afterwards even if they do not deliver.”

  “That is why,” Ping concluded, “we cannot leave any loose ends or unfinished business. Their elimination would turn this scenario into a murder investigation not a cyber-crime investigation.”

  Ping explained the cover story he had in mind. The Chinese Embassy would create a false identity for Lee in case he got caught. He proceeded to show that, that according to these documents, Lee was a North Korean business man undertaking overseas work on a placement to the US. He then handed a false passport and other papers including a work visa in a brown envelope to Jinn Wu. This practice was standard protocol on such a mission.

  Their meeting concluded. The next day, Jinn Wu left for the USA and, unbeknown to him, Lee was already there in New York on holiday as a Korean tourist taking a short holiday before he began work.

  ***

  Farrell was gazing at the heuristic analysis report of the most recent cyber-attack and, whilst studying it, a confused look developed on his face. This was only a few hours after he and Victor had had the conversation about the nature of hackers. “Does it contain anything serious?” Victor asked Farrell as he entered the room.

  “Not sure. But it seems something’s not quite right with this data analysis,” he replied still gazing at the reports.

  “Let me have a look.” Victor walked over to him spreading out his hand and, using a highlighter to mark a set of figures with a bright yellow ring, Farrell handed over those pages that he had already checked. Victor started to check the results too and after few minutes he also had a worried look on his face.

  Scowling at the figures, he commented, “How someone out there could have presented guess work like this about our internal internet provider schemes is a complete mystery to me.”

  Victor read for a few minutes then continued, “Certainly, someone who has a good understanding of our internal network’s location addressing scheme is not just a ‘nerdy mind with some crazy idea’, my man of volar.” Victor’s reply left Farrell speechless. He was fully aware why Victor had used the literal meaning of his name.

  “So what do we do now boss?” Farrell asked.

  “We’ll have to take a look into the payload of these traffic packets apart from tracing their origin.” Victor was thoughtful. “If the attack is sophisticated, it seems that they are not after something specific but they want to stay in the network undetected for a longer period of time. Had they intended just to bypass firewalls they would have adopted bypassing techniques but they didn’t even try any of those. The malware encapsulated in these packets seems very sophisticated. We’ll have to examine that in order to understand their end game.”

  Victor continued to decipher various dynamics of the attack. “So we’ll have to put that payload in a sandbox to study it. If someone has gone to these lengths, he’s not attacking us just to cripple us. He certainly wants to take over the network. This is definitely not their last attempt,” he concluded.

  “We can only sniff a few packets to put in a sandbox for testing now before the next attack. We don’t know when that will be. What are we are going to do until then?” Farrell asked.

  “We’ll find the rat inside this organization who provided the opportunity to these hackers by leaking the IP scheme of our internal network,” Victor said with a determined look on his face.

  ***

  “How was your session at the last seminar?” Ajay asked Jacob about his experience at his latest outing. They were having dinner together several days later and, although Jacob was not yet ready for this sort of conversation, not answering his father’s question was also not an option.

  “It was interesting, Dad, but not good enough for my liking. I’ve got more questions than I had before I went there” Jacob said after some hesitation. This came as no surprise to Ajay but he was happy that now at least his son was discussing this topic with him. Until recently, Ajay could not have had this conversation with him because Jacob would become annoyed about the subject.

  “What questions do you have on your mind, Son?” Ajay asked, hoping that he would be able to help to clear Jacob’s thoughts.

  “Well Dad, I’m not sure what the purpose is of a higher power in the cosmos if human will is the most critical element capable of changing and reshaping the reality?” Jacob asked calmly. Ajay had not expected this particular question but was well aware that in order to maintain his son’s interest in the conversation he would have to come up with a satisfactory answer. He needed some time to think so he chose to ask a counter question.

  “Did you ask this question in the seminar?”

  “No Dad. Neil called and I had to leave just before the usual Q & A session at the end,” Jacob lied. He had left the seminar midway and Neil had not called him that day at all. He had figured out that his father was trying to avoid his question. He wanted to keep Ajay on the topic he had introduced.

  “Ok. Let’s talk about human will first,” Ajay started. “What do the latest quantum physics experiments tell us about the connection between reality and human observation? They tell us that...”

  “That reality doesn’t exist if you’re not looking at it,” Jacob intervened. He had also read about the experiments carried out by a lab in Australia.

  “Exactly!” Ajay’s voice got louder. “So what does that tell you about the impact of human observation and the nature of reality?” he asked.

  “These experiments you’re talking about were conducted in a controlled environment to study certain laws of quantum physics. But, still, I’m not sure if we can declare the nature of reality as illusionary based on these findings,” Jacob argued.

  “I want you to concentrate on the role of human observation here more than anything else. And do you have any proof that contradicts these findings?” Ajay asked and Jacob knew that he had a very tight space in which to maneuver now. Scientifically, he could not disprove the experiments which had revealed that reality has a direct link to human observation. Now he wanted to change the topic. It was easy for him to reject the spirituality hiding behind the laws of physics but from the same standpoint, it was impossible for him to deny quantum physics.

  “And, as for our reality, what we believe determines what we make true,” Ajay told Jacob.

  “This is where I always lose you, Dad,” Jacob protested. “Why does belief always comes into a discussion about making rational choices?” he questioned with more than a little agitation in his tone.

  “Because all our reality is built upon our perceptions. In fact, it’s our thoughts that create our reality which is why we are defined by what we look for and we look for what we need in our lives,” Ajay replied in a calm manner. “Ancient philosophers spoke of this two thousand years ago. Try to understand, it’s not something we humans have discovered recently. The Roman philosopher Marcus Aurelius, a Roman Gladiator and philosopher, said, “That our light is what our thoughts make of it.”

  He continued, “Ju
st look at this particular dichotomy. It’s your belief wrongly, that, it’s our conscious mind that makes our decisions and is the focal instrument within the human that enables us to make rational choices. This is in fact inaccurate; although our conscious mind helps, it’s not the engine of life.”

  Jacob looked perplexed and had a growing feeling that his Dad was talking absolute rubbish. In fact, he had never heard such nonsense.

  Ajay tried again, softening his tack somewhat. “What you need to understand, Jacob, is that there is immense power in your subconscious mind.” He explained that you need to realize that fact, concentrate on the creative side of your subconscious and that, when you understood that dichotomy, you could in fact shape reality.

  This lecture was a little on the heavy side for Jacob and was delivered as if he was in a philosophy class. He still thought this was all rubbish saying “Dad, please, can we have this conversation at some other time. I’m tired of this fantasy of yours which always makes me wonder how a pragmatic individual like you can say things like this!” Jacob shouted.

  After dinner was eaten, they sat, barely exchanging a single word, almost in complete silence and then each left for their respective rooms shortly afterwards. Jacob put the conversation out of his mind as he always did. Ajay was deeply troubled as, once again, he was saddened by the fact that he could not make his son understand what he wanted him to grasp.

  ***

  The next day, Victor and his team were once again made busy with another cyber-attack by the hackers. This time Victor had prepared for it and had a plan ready. He had configured the network in such a way that all the incoming network data packets were waiting to be sorted, like huge fishing nets full of fish with some rogue ones as well. The data packets could be captured this time in a few isolated servers for the Waverly Davis technicians to study later on.

  In network jargon, he had created a honeypot. He had secretly put software in place which put them safely in a demilitarized zone on the network thereby ensuring that the internal networks remained secure. His plan worked but only for a few minutes. Suddenly the attack changed tactics where the inward flow of traffic into the honeypot simply vanished, just as had happened during the previous attack. However, this time he captured some encrypted packet payloads from the outside source meaning he could ascertain the actual payload data identity attached with these packets.

  Victor typed on the server dashboard keypad at breakneck speed to stay up with this encryption thinking, “Here’s something I’ve never seen before.” His command prompts sent the server software directly into the isolated DMZ area command mode. Enter, enter, enter quickly he pressed on the keyboard and his command created new lines on the screen. He was now connected to the isolated network which they had placed in DMZ in order to gather cyber-attack forensics.

  “This is one very clever virus attack,” he snorted. “This is more sophisticated than the average malware or viruses usually are,” he explained. “This means that they tried to send a portion of an encrypted file on an outbound interface. Normally you need to have disabled interfaces and then opened many logical ports. However, with this virus and malware, both are designed to do specific tasks and only work if their target network has any vulnerability which can be exploited. Difference is, this is much more subtle. It can create its own vulnerabilities.”

  “Explained simply,” he continued, “a user’s web browser is hijacked by a drive-by download and redirected to an exploit kit which probes the user’s computer and applications for vulnerabilities. Once vulnerability is found, a malicious payload is downloaded onto the victim’s computer (infection). Finally, the malware (in this case also called ransom ware) attempts to extort money from the victim or, in our case, destroy our product or worse disable it. With that in mind I’m wondering if the payload had actually reprogrammed itself after I made the changes to the network security.

  More worrying for me, is how someone could have changed it afterwards and how come in such a short span of time? This must therefore be either an internal plant or, because of the clever complexity, an outside attempt to hack us.” Victor was concerned in any event after watching the sophistication of this payload. Worse still, that it could be an inside job.

  If it is the latter, he thought, then we’ll have to find whoever is responsible inside our company network. If they can design something like this, with this payload, I’m certain they can mask their outside attack within our network as well. The more important questions are the reasons behind the attack on our server and what they are trying to achieve here.

  Victor continued to investigate, reading data and considering the breach. The more he thought about it, if his suspicions were right, then they had always been a step ahead of us in this game. The more he thought about it, the more he became convinced that someone from inside Waverley Davis was responsible. In any event, it pointed to a very skillful individual who was conspiring against the firm.

  “This is a similar attack to a hi-tech industrial espionage operation,” Victor commented.

  Regardless of the question of the final agenda, he added that the main concern was the need to focus on the central problem which was to keep the network secure without spreading any panic.

  “I think that we need to bring it to the urgent attention of Ajay,” Farrell ventured.

  “No, before we do that, first we need to understand the threat,” Victor replied.

  As soon as the words left Victor’s lips, he was interrupted by Farrell shouting, “You must see this!” Victor quickly looked at the screen to where Farrell was pointing and was astonished to see their captured data had somehow been deleted and now there was no trace of it at all. They had seen it just moments before.

  “Someone just deleted the captured data,” he said. “And amazingly it looks like all the opened ports have been closed,” Farrell added with a confused look on his face.

  “We’re not the only one accessing that isolated node; someone else is also in there live online now,” he said.

  “Yes and whoever is doing this, they’re actually removing the malware and restoring the server to its previous state.” Victor was also bewildered how this could get past their firewall and complicated grid defense system, most of which he had designed, let alone be a live cyber-attack.

  “I’m trying to trace the Internet Protocol to identify this hacker,” Farrell muttered.

  In an instant, the session was terminated by them. Just as quickly, they were gone.

  “Wait, none of this makes any sense,” said Victor “First someone attacked us, got into our honeypot and then someone else came in to help to remove all the traces. What is happening or, more importantly, what does this make the second intruder?” Victor mused. He now had had more questions than answers.

  “We need more time to get to the bottom of this,” Farrell said, stating the obvious.

  “Yes and as quickly as possible. We can’t keep this away from Ajay’s office for too long now. We need to break it to him before someone else does,” Victor added in desperation.

  Within ninety minutes, another attack began. Only this time, the hackers were a lot more prepared for what they expected by way of defense. They had by-passed the perimeter firewall security in a mega-second, trying to get into the internal network inside the isolated area DMZ which was set aside for isolated node capture. In computer security terms, a DMZ or demilitarized zone (sometimes referred to as a perimeter network) was normally well-protected by firewall security. In this attempt however, the firewall was by-passed in seconds and immediate internal access was achieved.

  Victor knew that the Protocol in his operating system definitely used DHCP on this network server. The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is a standard network protocol. That meant servers like DHCP and DNS were all located on the other side of this firewall with access to control servers and if storage servers
were accessed then they would be massively compromised. If there was any breach of the usual network firewall, a DNS server area on his mainframe was the target attacking web host software registered to intercept the collective Domain Name System. He knew that this attack specifically targeted his DNS server. That meant if extreme firewall violation had occurred then it was it had reached the destination they had intended.

  More worryingly, he had to consider a breach in the internal firewall could mean possible access to his web and mail servers. This was a potential doomsday scenario for the Waverley Davis network. Something a military computer security firm like this could never afford.

  These hackers were too audacious, not giving enough time for Victor to properly analyze payload and attack patterns. To make it worse, for every attack they kept changing, using different techniques. This meant the cyber security team of Waverley Davis had to try to guess the hackers’ next move. Victor also decided to increase the resources dedicated to the analysis of the job. He knew in order to keep the network secure he would have to put more positive security hardware in place urgently. This meant he had no choice but to tell the CEO about their current predicament.

  But for now, they had an attack to fend off as they were under attack for the third time that day. Meanwhile, Farrell, along with everybody in his team, was really nervous. Thankfully for Waverley Davis, Farrell had a better tolerance level for panic and, on the outside at least, he appeared calmer than the others. He was a little like a swan though as, right to the pit of his stomach, he was worried. He visualized the media in a post attack scenario where the Waverley Davis name would no doubt appear in the leading newspapers and on the major TV channels. Imagine a more negative impact of adverse media coverage than telling the world about flaws in its own cyber security.

  Then another scenario entered his head where he saw himself having to resign and leave Waverley Davis altogether, shuffling out of the building, head down and hung in shame. He took a deep breath and changed the image in his mind, thus forcing his subconscious mind to imagine another scene. In this version of events, the attack had just been diverted by some unseen force.