Palm Sunday

by William R. Vitanyi Jr.

  After three days of similar activity by this and numerous other teams, the agency completed its ambitious effort to upgrade its external hardware. Now it only remained to switch on the new equipment.

  ***

  Agent Sharon was once again at odds with Dave Roberts. Ever since the raid on ScanDat the system set up by Professor Walthrop had failed to detect any further intrusions into the Internet infrastructure. Sharon’s boss insisted that the plug be pulled on the project.

  “With all due respect,” said Sharon, “we never found the mechanism by which they accessed the data stream, and whoever was behind this remains at large.”

  “Then find them using more conventional means. Professor Walthrop’s services are no longer needed, nor are they authorized. Thank him for his efforts and send him on his way.”

  “But why, sir?”

  “It’s a resource issue. Walthrop’s system did what it was supposed to, right? So let’s mark it down as a success and move on.”

  “But…”

  “That’s all.”

  As Sharon turned to leave, the lights went out. A moment later the backup generators kicked in, and lighting was restored.

  “Power failure,” said Sharon. He looked at the ceiling, and remembered his computers. “Gotta go!”

  He ran for the stairs, not trusting the elevators in this situation, and within minutes he was at the computer center. Justin was inside the glass enclosure, feverishly working at one of the consoles. Sharon punched in his security code and grabbed the door handle. It remained locked. He entered the code again, this time more deliberately, with the same result. He rapped on the window, and when Justin turned around, beckoned for him to open the door. He jumped up from his seat and turned the handle from the inside.

  “Did you forget your code?”

  “No, it wouldn’t work. What’s going on here?”

  “I’m not sure. All the systems started going haywire.”

  “All?”

  “Well, most,” said Justin. “The main CPU is on line, but we aren’t having much luck reinitializing the internal network. The lights keep going on and off because they’re tied into the environmental control system, which is functional, but flaky.”

  “Virus?”

  “If it is it’s a bad one. Nothing I’ve ever heard of would do something like this, unless…”

  “We were targeted.” Sharon finished his sentence.

  “That’s what I think.”

  “Go to alert three; complete sanitation of all internal processors. Dump the logs and then restart everything.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Justin immediately started the emergency process, and in short order the majority of the data center’s computers were in a state of maximum purge. They would be restarted with nothing but the bare requirements needed to run, and even this minimal set of files would be scanned for unwelcome visitors.

  “Preliminary scrub complete,” said Justin. “The main server is free of unknown elements.”

  “Are the buffers clear?” asked Sharon.

  Justin watched the log scroll by on his secondary station, now used only for the purpose of manually initializing the primary systems. “Yes.”

  “Initiate secondary scrub,” said Sharon.

  Justin rapidly entered commands. “All disk and memory caching is clean.”

  “Very well. Continue with the process.” Sharon was like a captain on the bridge of a ship, and that’s how he wanted it. When he gave an order, he expected it to be followed. He was pleased with how Justin responded.

  “Everything’s been cycled except the mainframe, sir.”

  “Hold off on that,” said Sharon. “I want to see where we are. Give me a status report on the security subsystem.”

  “Local network?”

  “Yes.”

  Justin punched in several commands, and waited for a response. “Green board, sir. No warnings.” But there was a hesitation in Justin’s voice.

  “What?” asked Sharon.

  “I’m not sure. I activated the sniffer in promiscuous mode, so I could see all the network traffic.”

  “Are you seeing anything?”

  “Yes. But there should only be local traffic, since we’re only online internally.”

  “And?”

  “I don’t know what this is,” said Justin. “There are packets, but it’s almost like a random IP generator is pumping service requests across the line.”

  “That’s impossible. We aren’t connected to the outside world right now.”

  “I know, sir, but see for yourself.”

  Sharon peered closely at the display. “We’ve got a big problem.”

  “Sir?”

  “This isn’t the work of a simple hacker.” Sharon folded his arms and turned away, deep in thought. He looked back at Justin with concern. “I think you should leave the room.”

  Justin was shocked. “Sir?”

  “I’m about to do something that may cost me my career,” said Sharon. “And I don’t want to bring you down with me. You’ve done an exemplary job so far, but you really should leave the room now.”

  Justin stood up. “With all due respect, sir, whatever it is you have in mind, I trust you, and I want to stay.”

  Sharon hesitated. “Very well.” He looked at the other operators, who were out of earshot. He gestured towards Justin’s workstation. “Log on to the mainframe in restricted mode.”

  Justin sat down and quickly opened a connection to the center’s powerful main processor. “I’ll need a password for executive access.”

  “Alpha345Omega,” said Sharon.

  Justin completed the logon procedure. “I’m in.”

  “Move to the root directory, and type ‘cset_crn’.”

  Justin did as he was told. A command file executed, rapidly changing directories and setting additional security parameters. On three more occasions Justin was prompted for passwords, which Sharon supplied. Finally all that remained was a flashing cursor.

  Justin looked at Sharon. “Now what?”

  Sharon looked around the room. No one was watching. “Type in ‘OMNIVORE’.”

  Justin’s eyes grew wide. Now he understood. The FBI had developed an Internet monitoring program called Carnivore several years earlier, but it was the subject of much controversy due to its potential for abuse. Omnivore was its new and improved younger brother, and the public didn’t know about it yet. Without the go ahead from his superiors, Sharon should not have been activating the program. In fact, he knew that such permission would not be granted, but at the moment precious seconds counted.

  “I told you this was big,” said Sharon. “You can still leave.”

  Justin hesitated for only a moment, then turned back to his keyboard and entered the command. The cursor blinked several times before a string of encrypted characters flew across the screen. Then it went black.

  “Now what?” asked Justin.

  “Now we wait.”

  ***

  In Slocum’s living room the group was divided over what they should do next. Kayoko thought that Stanley and Katherine should try to go back to work. Katherine was dubious.

  “I don’t know, Kayoko,” she said. “We didn’t exactly leave in good graces.”

  “Remember though, Katherine,” said Stanley. “We didn’t actually quit. Nor were we ever officially terminated.”

  “We left without saying a word; do you think Klugman is going to welcome us back with open arms?” asked Katherine.

  “There’s a bigger issue,” added Slocum. “What about the agency? They won’t stop looking for you–for us–and they’ll almost certainly know your place of employment.”

  Kayoko shook her head. “No. Even if they do know, it will take them a day or so to find out that you’re back, and that will be enough.”

  “Enough for what?” asked Katherine.

  Kayoko smiled. “To get the equipment we’ll need from ScanDat.”

  “You want us to ask for ou
r jobs back so we can rob our former employer?” asked Katherine.

  “You know what the stakes are,” said Kayoko. “And you said that you could only get at the agency’s system if you had access to your company’s equipment.”

  Stanley shook his head. “It’s not as simple as that. The equipment we need is pretty big. It’s not like bringing home a laptop.”

  “Then it will take some more planning,” said Kayoko. “In the meantime you should go back to ScanDat and see what you’ll need, and how to get it. You should also acquire whatever additional information you can about the agency’s data stream while you’re there.”

  Katherine thought about it. “If we go back, we’ll be expected to do our normal jobs, which is a big enough challenge in itself.” She turned to Stanley. “What do you think?”

  He shrugged. “It’s not so much the added work that concerns me, but the fact that others will be nearby, and concealing our actions won’t be easy.”

  “Difficult, but possible?” asked Kayoko.

  Stanley and Katherine exchanged glances. They had managed to do it once before.

  “It’s possible,” said Katherine.

  “Let’s not forget the wildcard,” said Slocum. He noted the puzzled stares of the others. “The FBI. They must have detected your efforts the first time. You’ll have to be more careful.”

  A moment passed as they considered this, but it appeared that a consensus had been reached.

  Kayoko put it into words. “Then we’re agreed? We take a solemn oath to bring down the agency, whatever the cost?”

  This time there was no hesitation, and in the living room of Slocum’s apartment, the agency’s worst nightmare was born.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Omnivore was relentless. Not a single byte of data escaped its probing tentacles, and while a clear picture emerged of the current state of the data center’s network, little was revealed about the cause of its present difficulties. Though there were clearly two distinct areas of concern–an infection of various desktop systems, and a loss of Internet connectivity–a common denominator had yet to be found. Initially it appeared that a faulty router was responsible for the cascading failures, but a check of this equipment proved that such was not the case. The hardware passed all diagnostic tests with flying colors. Then the configuration file for the device was examined, and they thought they had their answer.

  “This is all messed up.” The network technician shook his head in disbelief. The file responsible for directing the behavior of the router was badly scrambled, and would have to be repaired. “It’s no wonder that we can’t get in or out of the Internet. These entries are gibberish.”

  Agent Sharon received the report with a measure of relief, pleased that the cause of at least one of the problems had been isolated. “You have a backup copy of the config file, right?”

  The technician nodded. “Yeah. It will take a few minutes to restore the original.”

  “Get on it,” said Sharon.

  The technician replaced the corrupt file on the router with the good copy. It took less than five minutes. “We can reboot the router now. When it comes up it should have the good configuration loaded.”

  The operation was carried out, and as expected the device performed normally. The technician ran a trace route command to one of the other machines on the network, verifying that the path through the router was now intact. The trace successfully reported the address of each point traversed between the two computers, including the router.

  “How’s it look?” asked Sharon.

  “We’re back in business,” said the technician.

  Sharon nodded. “Nice job.”

  It was progress, but there were still many other systems to be fixed. Sharon walked over to Justin, who was struggling with the environmental control system.

  “How’s it going?”

  Justin barely looked up. “Slow. There’s something here, but it’s very cleverly disguised. It’s a process, an executable of some kind. It briefly starts up, does something, and disappears.” He looked at Sharon apologetically. “I’m sorry, sir, but that’s all I have right now.”

  “Just stick with it,” said Sharon. “You’ll get it.”

  Sharon had been encouraged by the progress with the router, but their inability to quickly restore the other systems had him worried. If Justin didn’t find something soon, he’d be forced to have him start to rebuild from scratch. That would be time consuming. From the other side of the room the technician who had worked on the router called out.

  “We lost the Net again.” He immediately rechecked the configuration file. It had reverted to its earlier, confused state. “This is whacko.”

  “What is it?” asked Sharon.

  “It went back to how it was before. Exactly how it was.”

  “Are you sure you saved the config file when you replaced it?”

  “Yes, it was working. I had just pinged a few of the other stations, and then I got kicked off. This is really weird.”

  A ‘ping’ was a technique for interrogating another device on the network to verify connectivity. The ability to ping a device indicated that the pathway to and from it was intact.

  “Maybe there’s something wrong with the hardware that’s not showing up in the diagnostics,” said Sharon. “Do we have a spare router?”

  “One. I’ll get started on it.”

  ***

  “Are you nuts? How could you two just take off like that, without any notice or anything?” Klugman was not as receptive as Stanley had hoped, but he thought he detected a slight softening in his tone, perhaps a willingness to hear his explanation.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Klugman, but it couldn’t be helped. A close friend of mine was in serious trouble, and there was simply no time to do anything but run and help him.” Stanley held the phone tight against his ear.

  “What about Katherine? Did she have a friend in trouble, too?”

  “In a way, yes,” said Stanley. “She agreed to help me with my son. As you know, my wife died not so long ago. My son is still pretty sensitive when it comes to unexpected changes.”

  Klugman let a silent moment pass. “All right, Whipple. You can come back.”

  “Katherine, too?”

  “Yes.” His voice became sterner. “But you’re going to have to work twice as hard to make up for lost time. Boyd is just about worn to a frazzle from trying to pick up the slack.”

  “If I know Boyd, he enjoyed every second,” said Stanley.

  Klugman didn’t disagree. “Yeah, well, I’ll expect to see you and Katherine first thing in the morning.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Stanley hung up the pay phone and looked at Katherine. “We’re in!”

  “Good. Let’s go back and tell the others.”

  The use of the pay phone had been Slocum’s idea, to minimize the risk of the call being intercepted. As they started to walk back, Katherine pulled up short. She grabbed hold of Stanley’s arm, forcing him to stop.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “What are we doing, Stanley?”

  “Are you having second thoughts about our agreement with Kayoko?”

  “No, it’s not that.” She hesitated. “It’s about…us.” She gazed uncertainly into his eyes.

  “Katherine–we really need to talk.”

  “Uh oh. You’re giving me the ‘we need to talk’ routine.”

  She should have expected the blank look on his face. It was typical that either he didn’t know what she meant, or didn’t know how to respond. He was so logical, yet so considerate, and the two traits were often at odds with each other. The result was the head-lighted deer look that faced her now. She couldn’t help but laugh.

  “What?” he said.

  “You’re such a sweetheart,” said Katherine. “And you don’t even know it.”

  He shifted his weight uncomfortably from one foot to the other, the awkward schoolboy without a romantic line. He said nothing.

  “So what do
we need to talk about?” asked Katherine.

  “Huh?”

  “You said we needed to talk.”

  “Oh, right,” said Stanley. “There’s a lot of uncertainty. You and I seem to be headed in a direction that’s…”

  “Intimate?”

  His eyebrow lifted momentarily. “Yes, I suppose.”

  “And how do you feel about that?” asked Katherine.

  “It’s good. We get along well, Bobby likes you, and we have a lot in common.”

  Katherine nodded. “But you think we should put things on hold until the situation with the agency is resolved, right?”

  “That, yes, and the ScanDat project. Not to mention that we are living with a bunch of other people right now.”

  “It does sort of cramp our style, doesn’t it?”

  Stanley felt like he was letting her down. It bothered him that she might think he didn’t care.

  “Honestly, I do have feelings for you. It’s just that there’s so much going on right now.”

  “I don’t want you to feel pressured over our relationship.”

  “I just want to do it right,” he said.

  Katherine took his arm and started walking back. “Come on. Tomorrow’s a big day.”

  ***

  Agent Sharon’s people spent several hours trapped in a frustrating sequence of repeating events. The main router’s configuration file would be replaced, the router would work fine for about ten minutes, and then the file would become corrupted again, and they would start all over. Agent Sharon had long since pulled Justin off the environmental control system and ordered him to find out what was happening. He didn’t simply assign him the job, he ordered him. This, Justin knew, was serious stuff.

  “Whatever is causing this,” said Justin, “is clearly resident somewhere in the network.”