by Len Marshall
‘Just imagine,’ he said to himself, ‘that I’m the one de-cyphering these nasty viruses and that all threats have been mitigated.’ This technique had been introduced to the entire workforce by Ajay, the CEO, who had taught it to many of his workers in order to change their mindset. It was called the Law of Attraction.
He had told them whenever their subconscious mind conjured up something disturbing about their future, they should clearly imagine their goals without thinking too much about the means and ways of achieving them. Help will come from unexpected sources he had told them. Most of them, however, ridiculed the logic of this in a real world situation. Farrell thankfully was much more opened minded.
The computer attack continued with full force. “Look here, they’re inside our network.” Farrell shouted, back in the room from his world of imagination and now looking at the screens in front of him. He wanted to know which server the hackers would try to break into now after bypassing the second firewall.
Amazingly, nothing happened even after ten minutes of intrusion. They were looking at the logs for any update triggered by any activity. Thankfully nothing, when, just then, he noticed that they had someone inside the DNS gateway server. They were altering authentication certificates and they were being reconfigured.
Farrell informed Victor immediately, “The certificates are being reconfigured.”
“What do you mean reconfigured?” Victor asked.
“The certificates are being altered,” he replied.
Victor was furious because the hackers had breached the defenses of what he would consider to be a cyber-fortress. “What the hell?” he said in a flabbergasted tone. “They’re out now and it seems that only the one hacker was able to penetrate into our gateway which now has a new set of authentication certificates configured. I’m going to inspect these now but I can tell you that this mysterious hacker was the same one we encountered earlier today in our honeypot server.”
He continued, “Whoever this hacker is, he is not only very familiar with our network but also knows a way around this malicious payload. He also continues to attack us from various origins. This means that we have something on our network that information is required by many destinations from anywhere on the planet. Perhaps more than one source at the same time and our network has been rendered into a cyber-battlefield.”
Victor made the observation that, apart from themselves, at least two other parties were competing for control of this server. He could not explain how he had imagined a very similar scenario only a few minutes earlier and was equally amazed by the fact that what he had visualized had become reality so quickly. This remained a mystery even though he was aware of the Law of Attraction. ‘The network on the server was secure for now at least,’ he thought.
This was not the first time he had summoned help while under pressure without doing a thing about it yet help had come instantly purely by releasing the thought. Whenever he did this, the server responded and outside help came quickly. Now he was thinking about bringing the matter to Ajay’s attention and asking him to help by advising him as to the best line of action. Suddenly, he had another picture in his mind where he and his boss Ajay were discussing this matter with two other people. They were all discussing a response strategy but Victor was not able to figure out who the other two people were in his vision. He was only able to see two figures, no more than faint silhouettes.
Chapter Three
“Religion is the opiate of the masses.”
Karl Marx
“However, the opiate of today’s masses is computers.”
Len Marshall
He had completed the first phase of his task in the US. He had marked all his potential targets and, except for one, had succeeded in bugging them. Now he was able to hear every word that was spoken among his target group. Listen and report. He recalled his mission there once again. He was to take care of the situation as instructed in case anyone from this group became a potential threat to the plans of his benefactors.
Now he was tailing his primary target. He wanted to tag one remaining female member of the group. He had her picture but did not know her whereabouts. He continued tailing his target into a restaurant. He was in the disguise of an elderly man with glasses and a pencil mustache.
Lee took a seat three tables away from his target and ordered coffee. He could see the back of his target who was waiting for someone. Lee took his mobile out and initiated an app which showed an animation of a magnifying glass accompanying the text “Searching Target Device” below it. Soon his mobile was connected to another mobile device with its microphone turned on. He connected his mobile to his earphones and took a sip of coffee while staring at the back of his target. Soon a blonde girl appeared in the restaurant to meet his target. A smirk appeared on his face. He had his next target right in front of him.
***
“Why have you only just told me about these attacks today?” Ajay was clearly shocked after learning about the cyber-attacks on Waverley Davis.
Victor was at a meeting with Ajay, arranged immediately after Ajay had received Victor’s email only a few minutes earlier. He continued, “You should have informed me right from the onset of the attacks.” This, being a matter of major concern, had forced Ajay to cancel his diary of endless meetings for that day, just to urgently address this situation.
“Well, I had to assess the scale of the attacks and initially that was not clear,” Victor said quietly. “As head of security, I made an assessment that these types of attacks from various hacking groups seeking access to our server are considered normal activity, so I didn’t bother you with it,” Victor replied defensively.
“Your email said that there was no data lost or theft from our server even though our firewalls were breached. How do you explain that?” Ajay asked.
“It appears, strangely enough, that there was someone in our network, there just to help us. It’s a complete mystery and totally unfathomable,” Victor replied. “Running analyses time and time again, my expert opinion is that our network was a target for more than one attack and it became a battlefield where one group tried to stop the other group, so both were acting at the same time. In short, we are victims of two or more groups of hackers who are vying for control more than anything else. It could be that that someone has found out about one of our military security strategic projects and wants to copy it,” Victor said.
“I was told about that possibility but didn’t take it seriously,” Ajay said. “More importantly, what measures are we using to protect our network?”
“We’ve put various measures in place to increase the security of all network nodes in the research and development department of each division but so far we’ve no idea what they actually want,” Victor replied.
“Can you expand upon your previous statement that you were told about this possibility, what does that mean?” Victor added.
“As you know, Victor, this is not the first military related project we have rolled out here at Waverley. This time, however, it’s highly classified and of a much more secretive nature. That’s all I can tell you because of the secrecy clauses in the contracts,” Ajay concluded.
Victor understood the need for discretion and remarked, “That’s all I needed to know right now.” He understood the motives of these hackers. “I’ll run various attack scenarios and mitigate the vulnerabilities to plug any loophole in the military division’s network,” he added.
“We need to keep a lid on this,” Ajay continued. “Victor, who else is aware of this particular situation?”
“Within Waverley Davis, you are only one of eight people after myself, my assistant Farrell and five others working in my team,” Victor informed him.
“Thank you and I would like to keep it that way if we can,” Ajay added. “No one else must know about this. Please increase the security as you deem necessary an
d please make sure that nobody externally gets to know about this situation. We’re not going to give the world’s business media any ammunition to paint us in a negative light. Those media-tech savvy reader types do not usually understand technical issues and believe whatever they read or listen to in the media.”
We must remember that even the reputations of large multinational companies like Sony and IBM received negative publicity after both were hacked. We, as an organization, cannot afford that sort of PR disaster.” “I can understand that Ajay, you can rest assured no one will ever know anything,” Victor said a little nervously. “To maintain secrecy and continue to deal with this matter covertly, don’t even mention this business, not on the telephone anytime whether on or off office premises please. We’ll discuss this on a need to know basis and, even then, only when the need arises.” Victor thought that Ajay was behaving perhaps a little over cautiously and maybe a little too insecurely but understood the need for overzealous caution. On the other hand, Ajay’s reaction was driven by the inherent fear of losing the trust of his clients and their confidence in his ability to provide unparalleled security, At least for the security of the customers of Waverley Davis, as investors in the military software business.
After all, Ajay had spent most of his working life making big strategic decisions in the business world and, as such, was well-aware of the rapid pace in which technology was reshaping our world.
His confidence in Victor and his team was not even shaken after the attacks.
Meanwhile, Victor was once again reflecting that this malware was different because it was not exploiting vulnerability in an existing case but creating its own weaknesses to gain access to the server. On the whole, it was impossible to spot, let alone stop.
Victor once again had disturbing visions of possible scenarios which his imagination was creating.
The question was what was his inner mind trying to tell him?
***
Ajay had left for home early after his meeting with Victor.
He awaited the arrival of the report regarding enhanced network security that he had instructed to come to his home address.
Luckily, when Ajay reached home, Jacob was already there. They both sat in the lounge where Jacob was watching a local baseball game, the New York Yankees versus the Baltimore Orioles.
Masahiro Tanaka hit a tremendous pitch as Ajay looked up but there was a very unnerving silence between them. “Home run,” he quipped. Both kept watching the television screen for few minutes.
Their last encounter was playing on Jacob’s his mind and he wanted to say sorry to Ajay but was struggling to find the right words. He glanced at his father’s face and thought he looked tired and seemed thoughtful about something serious. “Dad, are you ok? You look really tired.”
“I’m perfectly alright, thanks,” replied Ajay.
He continued to gaze at the television screen but Jacob realized that although Ajay seemed to be concentrating on the baseball, his mind was actually elsewhere.
“I think maybe I should have some rest after all,” Ajay said as he stood up.
Jacob was still thinking about the other day and their previous conversation. He wanted to say sorry for his behavior when his Dad had been answering his questions about having free will. He had thought about that day over and over again and now, when he had finally met up with his father again, he found him to be very tired. “Is it due to me? No, it can’t be. He was happy when I saw him talking on the phone when I was leaving for the gym,” he thought. “Then what’s bothering him like this?” he wondered.
***
There was no attack during the next three days and Victor was happy. He had reconfigured and redesigned a few more network nodes and wanted to brief Ajay about it. He was in Ajay’s office. “Good job Victor, I hope we’re safe now,” Ajay said after looking at the report regarding the new network security measures. “We can never say that with certainty in this day and age,” Victor replied ruefully. “However, the network is now much stronger than it was before.” After a brief pause he added, “I was thinking you should consider involving the FBI just in case.”
“Victor, I’ve already told you about the options of doing that. Press releases, clarifications, retractions, colorful stories on social media and the internet about us. We simply can’t afford all of that,” Ajay said.
“Ajay, we need the FBI. Not as protection but to help us find the culprits. This could be a matter of national security. We can’t take the law into our own hands,” Victor argued.
“So, you’re telling me that our own team is not capable of keeping our network secure?” Ajay asked.
“No, Ajay, that’s not the case. We are more than capable of keeping the network secure but we can’t apprehend the culprits, that’s a task for the FBI. They can establish the origin of this attack,” Victor said.
“We need to talk to someone inside the FBI cybercrime department who can be trusted with such information.”
Victor knew exactly who to speak to.
***
Neil was Jacobs’s closest friend and also worked in the Waverley Davis Finance Department. They had grown up together and, despite having similar preferences in many things, they both had their own passions which had led them to make different choices in their professional education once they had finished their mainstream schooling.
Jacob had opted to pursue his technical dream whilst Neil had attended a financial education institute. He had joined Waverley three years ago when Jacob was still in MIT. Over the years, many people had come and gone in both their lives but they had remained constants in each other’s. Their friendship was known throughout the firm. Jacob enjoyed this permanent connection to the place and so became a regular visitor to Waverley.
That day he was there in Neil’s office. Neil was surprised to see him there so early; he usually came in the afternoon. Jacob’s surprise visit excited Neil because he wanted to share his big secret with his best friend.
“Nothing can resist a human will that will stake even its existence on its stated purpose,” Neil read a Benjamin Disraeli’s quote.
“Inspiring, isn’t it? You know, nothing has inspired me more than that quote - to have a clearly defined purpose in life is important for the success of our will,” Neil said with a smile.
“I don’t know about that my friend but that’s not why I’m here,” Jacob said.
“Do you need some advice?” Neil asked, thinking that Jacob might be there to seek his opinion on some financial matter regarding his idea of setting up his own IT firm.
“It’s about Dad. Do you think he’s behaving in a strange manner? Does he seem worried to you lately?” Jacob inquired.
“What do you mean? He’s the same as always, full of energy and positivity. I just saw him a few minutes ago” Neil replied but Jacob was standing quiet and still. “Sit here and tell me what’s bothering you about him.”
“He’s not right, Neil. I’ve never seen him tired like this and he’s been like it for the last three days.” Jacob voice held concern. “Actually, sometimes I think he might be disturbed because of me,” he added soberly. “Other times, it feels as if he’s hiding something from me.”
“Why do you think that?” Neil asked.
“We had an argument earlier this week at dinner when he tried to explain a few things about life to me and I didn’t agree with him,” Jacob said. Neil was still perplexed. He was well-aware of their disagreements on topics related to spirituality.
“What’s happened Jacob, what did you do?” Neil asked.
“I shouted at him and the next day when he came home, he seemed tired and disturbed. Now I feel disappointed with myself,” Jacob told him.
“Jacob, I’ve always been envious of you, that Ajay is your father, not because of his wealth or social standing but because of his amazi
ng mind. He always has an answer to whatever you ask and here you are not ready to give him a chance to share with you the secrets of life which no university teaches to its students. Nobody knows this better than me.” Neil considered Ajay to be his professional and personal mentor in life. Jacob went quiet.
Neil’s parents had moved to the UK two years ago and now he was all alone in the US. He would spend lots of time with Ajay, sometimes working in the office or at Jacob’s house whenever he could find time while Jacob was away at university, especially after the death of Martha. He would always listen very ardently to Ajay’s advice.
“You know what, Jacob. Once, your father told me that humans keep stumbling upon the right answers for the wrong questions and the wrong answers for the right questions. I could never understand the meaning of that until today. Now, looking at you, I’ve just realized that you keep stumbling on the wrong questions and when the right answers are given, you react like you did to your father.” Neil’s analysis shocked Jacob.
“How can you...” Jacob wanted to protest but Neil raised his hand stopping him midway. He got out of his chair and said to Jacob, “My friend, don’t say anything right now, just go home and think it over and try to find out within yourself if you are asking the right questions.” To Jacob, at that moment he sounded just like his father.
“But rest assured I’ll investigate to see if there really is something bothering your father,” Neil said.
Jacob nodded firmly as if to say to Neil, “Please do and I promise that I’ll think about what you’ve said.”
Neil was not sure about Jacob’s commitment although he had sensed that it was the perfect time for him to try to erase some old beliefs from Jacob’s subconscious so that he could be prepared for a new mindset. He had decided to make a serious effort to dismantle the thoughts set in stone in Jacob’s mind about the meaning of success in life in order to break the bondage. He knew that this attempt was bound to meet with resistance but a new building required the dismantling of the old which Jacob had constructed in his subconscious over the years.