Returning to Zero (Mick O'Malley Series Book 2)

by Alan B. Johnston

  “This just shows that you can’t trust any government,” Mick pointed out. “Not with that much power. And that’s why no one can be trusted with the control of Zed dot Kicker!” NØviz rolled his eyes.

  “You are like a broken CD,” he complained. “This is very boring. I think I have better things to do, such as cut my toe nails. And you,” he said looking at Jasinski, “don’t you need to update that blog you are always working on?”

  “Don’t be silly,” Jasinski replied, looking uncomfortable. NØviz noticed this and decided to push some more.

  “Oh, yes you do. You guys might like it—it is all about Privacy. Privacy and Secrets. Privacy and Ghosts. What is it called again?” he asked.

  “Privacy and Other Mirages?” Mick asked, a strange feeling coming over him.

  “Yes! That’s it. You have read it before?”

  “Ah, yes. Actually, it used to be my blog! Back then I called it ‘Security and Other Lies’ but it got renamed.” Mick said. Jasinski looked like she was trying to disappear in her chair.

  For a few years, before Zed.Kicker, Mick had enjoyed running his blog, answering questions from nØØbs and giving advice about how to use the Internet and computers securely. He had given it up just before setting out with Kateryna for Kiev to confront Cloud 8++.

  “So you gave her your blog?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “How, then, exactly?”

  “I gave up the blog and invited someone else to take it over. I loosened the security on the admin login and left it.”

  “And you hacked it and took it over?” NØviz asked Jasinski, an admiring look coming over his face.

  “Yes, I did. I thought there was too much emphasis on security and not enough on privacy. Privacy is the real problem today, as you well know,” Jasinski replied. She seemed to have recovered and was enjoying Mick’s state of surprise.

  “I knew someone took it over… but you? Why?” Mick asked.

  “I don’t know, it just felt right. I also thought I might get some clues about your whereabouts from RAPtOR—that it might help my research, but it didn’t.” Jasinski replied. RAPtOR, the Raptor Association for the Promotion Of Raptors, was the self-help group that Mick had formed for peer-to-peer assistance with security issues.

  Mick started with hand written flyers announcing meetings, and distributed them in coffee shops and cafés first in Greenwich Village then later all over Manhattan, encouraging others to hand copy and distribute. Eventually, he started seeing copies in all five boroughs and sometimes even in New Jersey.

  The meetups eventually led to online groups, connected together over the so-called “dark web” and only accessible using the anonymous browser Tor. The group kept to his initial rules of never sharing any PII, Personally—Identifiable Information, such as names, occupations, or even where they lived beyond general terms.

  His old blog “Security and Other Lies” was the closest thing the libertarian group came to a manifesto, and it also became a recruiting space where those new to privacy, so called newbies or nØØbs, learned the basics and became infected with the hacker lifestyle.

  In truth, a number of times Mick had considered reaching out to RAPtOR members to help, but had resisted. He realized he hadn’t thought about this group for quite a while.

  “So you did it to try to violate my privacy?” Mick replied, feeling angry for some reason.

  “Oh, don’t be that way. You said anyone could pick up the blog if they could crack the account. It only took a few minutes of re-search for that! I think I’ve done a decent job so far. You’ve read my posts—what do you think?”

  “I just read them,” Gunter replied, looking up. “Not bad, Jasinski, although I prefer Mick’s writing voice.”

  “OK, stuffy white males prefer Mick’s writing better—noted,” she replied.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Mick asked her.

  “You never asked. Are you really mad?” she asked. Mick managed a smile. Yet another part of his former life was gone. At least this part was not taken over by a stranger—he trusted Jasinski to give good advice and help.

  “OK, now this is also boring. Time for a walk,” NØviz announced, getting up with Jasinski following him.

  Mick and Gunter exchanged a look then followed them out the door, just out of earshot.

  “… so did you ever experience anything like that before?” Jasinski finished her question to NØviz.

  “Ah, what?” he replied. Jasinski frowned.

  “You’re not very good at paying attention, are you? It is probably all the beautiful young Germans walking by in their designer outfits.”

  “I was paying attention. You were asking if my family had any problems with Stalin? I don’t think so. My family survived since the revolution by keeping their head down and avoiding trouble. I somehow missed this trait, however.”

  They stopped at a cross-walk while cars and scooters zipped by.

  “I don’t trust that Gunter,” Jasinski began.

  “I’m with you, there. Actually, I don’t trust anyone.”

  “Trust no one, like Mulder, eh?” Jasinski glanced over but NØviz only had a puzzled look on his face. “Never mind.” she shrugged.

  “Why don’t you trust Gunter?”

  “Besides the fact that he is supposed to be dead? I read a file on him, or at least as much of it as I could easily get. He has worked for the CIA. Maybe he still does. He’ll report us tonight for sure.”

  NØviz stopped dead in mid-step. Jasinski almost ran into him, as she had been walking slightly behind him.

  “I see. You don’t want to talk to our CIA friend right now? Then let’s get out of here and leave these clowns behind,” NØviz said. “I’ve made my decision.”

  The group soon split up, agreeing to meet at a riverfront park the next day in the morning.

  The rest of that afternoon and evening Mick walked around alone in East Berlin. So much had changed in the year since he had been here, strolling with Kateryna on their way to Ukraine. It was, as it was then, a beautiful day. Strolling on Unter den Linden evidenced even more construction than last time. Sometimes it seemed Berlin was a nest of construction cranes and scaffolding, as the new Deutschland capital arose.

  Tomorrow, he would meet Jasinski again. It felt strange being with her here in Berlin where he had such vivid memories of Kateryna.

  What am I doing? Why can’t I just focus on the job at hand?

  Which was to get NØviz to do the right thing about the botnet. Unfortunately, it seemed much more likely that NØviz would do the wrong thing. Did he still believe in moral absolutes, like that? Last year he had been completely willing to give up everything to stop Zed.Kicker. Would he do the same today?

  I hope so! Nothing has changed, including me.

  Mick approached the Brandenburg Gate, spying the winged charioteer on the top that Napoleon had taken back to Paris when he conquered Prussia all those years ago. Today it was almost impossible to reconcile the view of Paris Square (complete with a marquee store of his least favorite brand of Seattle coffee) with the photos taken when the wall was still standing.

  He turned left and walked through the Holocaust Memorial. Mick always found it strangely inviting—it drew him in so that he often wandered around in contemplation on each visit to Berlin.

  On the other side of the memorial, Mick walked down a small lane. He didn’t pull out his GPS as he had memorized the location. He spotted a small walking tour heading towards him on the other side of the road, which confirmed he was on the right track. Another block further and he recognized the spot from the photos on the Internet. Two people stood reading the small sign, facing the parking lot. He waited for them to leave before walking up.

  The sign was labeled “Führerbunker” and showed the location of the underground bunker where Hitler spent the final days of World War II in Europe in May 1945. As the Russian tanks advanced on Berlin, Hitler hid here, denying the inevitable. With the Russian flag flying
over the burned-out Reichstag, he had committed suicide at this spot.

  Mick reflected on the end of the war in Europe. Of course, the war in the Pacific raged on for another year. Last year he had visited the place where the war ended in the Pacific, in Hiroshima where the first atomic bomb was dropped. There was another link between these two places. The research by the Reich early in the war on atomic fission spurned the Manhattan project in the U.S. which ultimately resulted in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Of course, the Deutsch interest was in nuclear power for U-boats rather than a bomb, but the wheels had been set in motion.

  Mick’s thoughts were interrupted by a message from Gunter. Gunter was still relaxing back in their room, but wanted Mick to bring some cheese and fruit back with him. His thoughts back to the bunker, Mick tried to imagine Berlin in ruins, tanks driving down the street, buildings reduced to rubble piles that were almost as high as the buildings. How did Berlin recover? How did the Deutsch people recover collectively from the guilt over the war and the Holocaust and move forward? Mick tried to avoid thinking of his own life in ruins, and all he had lost.

  No, it wasn’t lost; it was on hold, waiting. His sister was still in Boston, and his niece still read books and acted silly. One day, he wanted to be a part of their lives again. And maybe he could build a life of his own, that didn’t revolve completely around his work.

  Back with Gunter, he told him about the bunker.

  “Ah, yes. The mother of the ‘Downfall Meme’! I love those—they are hilarious!” was his response. It took Mick a moment to realize what he was referring to.

  “Ha! I had forgotten about that clip from that movie set in the bunker. Which one is your favorite? ‘Hitler attacks Grammar Nazis’?”

  “No, the DCMA takedown one!”

  “Of course,” Mick replied, sitting down next to him.

  “Those Untergangers are incredible.”

  After their meal, Mick decided to bring up something that had been bothering him for a while.

  “You don’t really like Russians, do you?” Mick asked Gunter.

  “No, I mean I have nothing against them as individuals, but as a culture and as a society.”

  “Your mother came from the DDR?” Mick asked, referring to the Deutsche Demokratische Republik, or the former East Germany.

  “Yes, she was from Leipzig, about an hour south of here.”

  “Where Leibniz was born?” he asked, referring to the 17th century mathematician who built mechanical calculators and developed binary arithmetic.

  “Right. She was a child during the war, but she saw a lot, as everyone in her generation did during the war. The Red Army came and stayed, and really did a lot of damage. My mother would never talk about it, but I think it affected her profoundly.”

  “I see,” Mick replied, recalling histories of Deutsch prisoners and civilians who were often mistreated by the Soviet Army.

  “And then, having to endure our country partitioned. And the Stasi. She lived just long enough to see the wall come down. She was so happy. She even read her Stasi file. The office is just down that road behind Nicholasplatz.”

  “Did she find out anything?”

  “Just that nearly half of her co-workers were informers. And one of my great uncles, too. The extent of the surveillance state was just incredible.”

  “I know. I visited the Stasi museum a couple of years back.”

  “I’ve never been—I must go sometime, for my mother,” Gunter replied, looking serious.

  Mick thought about the impact on a society of widespread mass surveillance, the evil that was done with that information, and the scars that it left.

  “It reminded me of the mass electronic surveillance we live with today. Instead of our friends and co-workers informing on us, our devices and applications report on us, and populate huge databases, searchable for every aspect of our digital lives.”

  “Well, not our devices and applications,” Gunter replied, referring to the fact that Mick along with most of his security-conscious friends didn’t use commercial software or commercial operating systems. Knowing that these systems all had “back doors” that leaked private information, they only used open-source software. Mick, and others like him, didn’t even trust binary distributions—pre-compiled versions of the software. Instead, Mick and his friends chose to compile the source code personally to generate the executable binaries installed on their devices.

  “No, not on ours. Although getting secure hardware is getting very hard to find these days. Did you hear about those CPU chips that were found to have a hardwired back door? Do we have to get all our chips checked?”

  “I’m actually thinking of always running two-year-old chipsets in all my devices. I know it will be slow, but by that stage, there are multiple sources for the chips, and they have been extensively reverse engineered in the gray market. The chances of back doors making it into these copies seems pretty slim.”

  “Interesting,” Mick made a mental note to look into this for the future. He had an idea that perhaps he could purchase multiple motherboards from different manufacturers and look for slight differences between them. “At the Stasi museum, I visited their Deep Packet Inspection building—where they opened all the snail mail!” Mick joked, referring to the current state-of-the-art Internet surveillance used by governments and spy agencies around the world.

  Back at the hotel, they turned in early in anticipation of a round of talks with Jasinski and NØviz. Mick was surprised how much he was already looking forward to seeing Jasinski again tomorrow.

  Chapter 17.

  From the Privacy and Other Mirages Blog:

  I consider myself a ‘white hat’ hacker. I enjoy testing systems and looking for vulnerabilities. Is this illegal? Could I find myself behind bars?

  Being a security researcher, official or unofficial, is getting harder these days. Certainly, probing or scanning someone else’s network without their permission is against the law in most countries. To do a ‘pen test’ (short for penetration testing), you will need written permission from the owner of the network.

  Doing your own vulnerability analysis against a system that you stand up and operate is, in general, allowed. However, some countries have laws making it illegal to try to circumvent copy protection, and often this is applied even when that is not the intent.

  Sometimes, even disclosing that a type of attack is possible can land you in trouble. Search for stories about researchers who have studied exploits against airplanes.

  Chapter 18.

  The next day, by the time he had finished his take away double espresso, Mick knew something was wrong. Jasinski and NØviz had not arrived at the park, and neither was responding on their mobiles.

  He pulled out his mobile and fired up RF scanning software. It gathered a broad spectrum of transmissions within about a block radius. He then compared the transmissions with the digital signatures he had gathered from both Jasinski and NØviz. No match. He felt bad at the time about capturing and storing this data about Jasinski, but he convinced himself it was for her own safety.

  They aren’t here. Where are they?

  “What? Again?” was Gunter’s initial reaction when Mick told him the news. Gunter had decided to skip the meeting, since his presence seemed to annoy NØviz. “Tell me you put a tracker on him? Or on her at least?” Gunter looked disappointed when Mick shook his head. “Idiot! Why not?”

  “Hey, I have my ethics! Besides, I thought we were getting through to him. I still think Jaz is with us,” he replied.

  “Ha! Did you see the way she turned towards him when he talked? No, you never see these things. She’s fallen for him!” Mick was shocked—he had noticed Jasinski acting a little differently, but he had not suspected that.

  Is it my destiny to always be double-crossed by women?

  Mick forced that thought out of his head. There was no point speculating in the absence of facts. Gunter’s intuition was nothing more than speculation.

  “I don’t
know about that. Anyway, she hates this botnet as much as the rest of us. She won’t give in. He might have taken off and she’s tracking him.”

  “Maybe,” Gunter replied, looking like he was trying to read Mick’s emotions.

  “We have a protocol established for communicating if we get split up. It will kick in twenty four hours, so we just need to wait and see.”

  “OK, wait and see. What shall we do for the rest of the day?” Mick knew exactly what he wanted to do—visit more museums. Berlin had an amazing variety of high-quality museums seemingly everywhere.

  That evening, as they drank cold beer and ate schnitzel, Mick and Gunter relaxed. Mick had killed time waiting for contact from Jasinski by spending the day on Museum Island. It was filled with Greek temples, Babylonian gates, Egyptian statues—there was little of the ancient world not represented. Mick thought the most interesting part was the riches of Troy exhibit. The most famous pieces, the gold jewelry that Schliemann believed to be the headdress of Helen of Troy, were only presented in replica. The Red Army had taken the originals back to Moskva. Mick thought the posted explanation of why the artifacts legitimately were owned by Deutschland (a bit of a stretch, as Schliemann had secreted them out of Turkey, although he later paid a sum to settle the case) but clearly not legally held by the Russians.

  Mick found his favorite Berlin Wall contemplation site. There were only few places left where it could be seen in situ, apart from a long stretch along the Spree river in the east. At this site, he could sit and look at the piece of history and let his mind wander. He could picture the wall extended in both directions. With razor wire on top, lights, machine gun nests, watch towers, etc. He imagined the no-man’s-land wasteland on the East side.

  Mick’s mind rebelled when he tried to put himself in the shoes of the East German wall builders. He had read about the political decision to build the wall, and the implementation of the policy. He tried to imagine how it would have felt as a Berliner to see the wall going up—or worse, to be a part of a construction crew building the wall. Did they really think it would work? Do walls ever work? Didn’t they see that it was a monument to their idiocy? They thought they were building security, but instead they built a symbol of their own insecurity. It was an admission that their ideals were a failure, a corruption. No matter how he tried, Mick couldn’t understand wall builders.