Chasm Waxing: A Startup, Cyber-Thriller
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“We need you to review your encounter with Rahmati, in light of our logs and data from the remaining Jerusalem Swarmbots. We must identify how he commandeered the drones. And, given that your AI found the Ark, I’d like to see what other insights it can yield. What can your AI tell us about Rahmati? What are his intentions with the Ark? What’s his game plan for the Middle East? What are his next steps in US relations?”
Josh responded, “We can absolutely help with the Swarmbots. But, let’s talk about the second part. Becca and I want to start a new AI company. We want our company to focus on a stronger, more general AI. I want to move way beyond cybersecurity. I believe that may help find the answers to some of your questions.”
“The Accelerator can invest in the startup,” offered Shields. “We never flagged your clearances, so you’re both still in good standing. You can use the SCIFs and access NSA technology.”
“General, with all due respect,” said Josh, “I don’t want to be business partners with you. I don’t want to do demos for you, or sit in board meetings with you. My dad and I will fund the company.”
Now Jared negotiated. “I propose that in return for free rent at the Accelerator, we’ll license the technology to you. We’ll use your facilities’ clearance and the SCIFs.”
“And,” interjected Josh, “I want access NSA’s new GPU-accelerated, NVIDIA supercomputers and an office on the 5th floor. I don’t want any interaction with Vish. Additionally, I want CyberAI to remove any claim to my independently developed AI code.”
“And I don’t want to see Samantha,” said Becca.
General Shields smiled at the negotiating forces of nature across the table from him. Josh and Becca had grown up. “Done,” he said, emphatically. “Welcome back Josh. Welcome back Becca.”
Chapter 37 – eM
10:00 a.m. (EDT), Thursday, April 1, 2021 – Columbia, MD
Suite 502, ElectricMind’s Offices, Defense Innovations Accelerator
“It feels good to be back,” said Josh.
“I’m a little surprised myself,” replied Becca. “I thought I’d hate it. But, I hate Rahmati more.”
“Yeah. And I want that Ark back. It belongs to Israel, not Rahmati. By the way, Samantha came by here again this morning. You were down meeting with Swarmbot.”
Becca shrugged her shoulders and pursed her lips. “I don’t have anything to say. I’ve been cordial to her in the hallways and cafeteria. I just don’t want to go there.”
“I understand. I do think her hands were tied.”
“Maybe they were. But, I gave Gamification every waking hour. Samantha could’ve done more. At the very least, she could’ve told me why I was quarantined from Gamification’s best people and its most important projects. Instead, she tried to convince me that I was imagining things. Anyway—new subject. I love working with Chris Fischer. He’s super-smart. We should try to get him for ElectricMind, if we ever need a robot brainiac. He knows drones and autonomous robots inside and out.”
“How are you coming with identifying Rahmati’s Swarmbot hack?” asked Josh. General Shields had read Becca and Josh into SWARM.
“We’re stumped. I’ve tried every attack vector I know. I’ve not been able to take over a single process; let alone commandeer a dozen Swarmbots. My thesis is that the hackers found a flaw in how the Swarmbots store their AES encryption keys.
“Chris disagrees. He thinks it’s not a likely scenario because they used open source, trusted libraries for the AES keys. Those libraries have proven to be rock-solid over the years. He’s pushing for a simpler explanation; you know Occam’s razor and all. The Swarmbot logs show nothing out of the ordinary.
“The op center handed off all the Swarmbot communications to Rahmati’s hackers in Jerusalem. It worked no differently than the handoff that occurs when the op center takes control of the Swarmbots from Gamers. This Swarmbot hack is beginning to scare me.”
“Is it possible that Rahmati’s crew just brute force attacked the encryption?” asked Josh.
“No. Swarmbots use military-grade encryption for the satellite comms, AES-256. The NSA certifies AES-256 for TOP SECRET. AES is the safest encryption algorithm in the world. Everyone uses it, even Apple. AES-256 encrypts iPhones.”
Josh’s question reverberated through Becca’s thoughts. “Wait, now that you say that, let me go back and look at the Swarmbot’s peer-to-peer networking capability. Maybe I missed something in Swarmlink.”
“I’m totally confident in you, Becca. You’ll track it down. Chris is right. It’s probably something simple that we’re just overlooking. I’m close to being able to help. Hey, while I have a second…I just wanted to say that I really enjoy working with you. I think we’re a great team. When I got fired from CyberAI, I felt like I was surrendering from an important battle. Now, we're in this together—and we’re battling as one. You make me better.”
“Aww, that’s sweet. I love working with you too. You’ve helped me, be more of me. You rescued me from my dark place and freed me to walk in the sunshine. I think our adventure is just getting started. I’m fired up to work together to grow ElectricMind into a billion dollar company. Watch out Nucleus!”
Josh finally decided on a name for the AI. They couldn’t keep calling it, ‘Josh’s AI.’ He labeled the artificial intelligence, ‘eM.’ He pronounced it just like the letter, ‘M.’
Josh set up eM to ingest data about Rahmati. Some information came from the web, but there were other sources as well. This included SIPRNet and JWICS. Lin ordered the NSA to install the classified drops in a newly constructed SCIF in ElectricMind’s offices
*
Muhammad Rahmati was now operating out of his headquarters building in Babylon. His high-speed communications backbone finally linked to Tehran. The fiber optic installation went faster than normal because Chinese engineers laid the cable beside railways.
With high-speed, encrypted comms, Rahmati rushed to assemble his own team of cryptographers, analysts, and hackers in Babylon. They were to work in conjunction with Group 24 on Suleiman and Rodina.
Both Iraq and Persia purged their countries of all Western spies. Rahmati could tell from decrypted intercepts that the US and the UK were now operating entirely blind. They had no more reliable HUMINT in either Iraq or Persia.
“I’m glad you’re finally here, Javan. We’ve gone through a lot together to reach this day. As you can see, there’s no traffic in downtown Babylon,” chuckled Rahmati. Babylon was still under heavy construction. It housed few residents.
“Well, I’ll remember that,” laughed Javan, heartily. “I’ll need to find another way to rid Tehran of excess citizens. Evan Prison is not big enough.”
“Good point. Governing the country would be much easier without all the people.” Rahmati and Javan cackled in unison.
“The Americans are up to some intriguing things,” said Rahmati. “We need to execute the third phase of Operation THUNDERCLAP soon. We both know that our possession of quantum computers will leak at some point. Or, the Americans will guess of their existence, especially with the hack of the Swarmbots. Although, I imagine they’re still scratching their heads about that one. While we have the keys to America’s Kingdom; we need to act.
Javan nodded. “Ultimately, I agree with your call on commandeering the Swarmbots. It was the only way to get in, secure the Ark, and make sure the Jews wouldn’t rally around the idea of building their Temple. We don’t have time to deal with that issue right now. Until the Americans figure out the hack, they’ll shut down the SWARM program.”
“I thought long and hard about taking the unexploded drones. It was just too risky. There could have been a back door somewhere. But we do have all the engineering diagrams and schematics.”
“I don’t want to have to deal with those things in Persia,” exclaimed Javan.
Rahmati said, “I have other concerns. If the Americans can find the Ark; given enough time, they can ascertain the location of Suleiman and Rodina. Granted, they�
�re deeply hidden, but so was the Ark. I want to interrogate those kids that escaped in Jerusalem. How on earth did they find that cave after 3000 years?
“In any case, we’ve got to move quickly and force the Americans to the bargaining table. We must be more successful than the Japanese or Al Qaeda, when they surprise attacked America. We need to hit fast—and then offer them a face-saving way out. Just like Pearl Harbor, the American’s aren’t ready.
“Right,” said Javan. “I know one thing; we don’t want an Iraqi Hiroshima or Persian Nagasaki. We need to ensure that the Russians and Chinese will cooperate, and not renege when the situation gets tense. We’re laying out the chess board. Once the plan is implemented, there are only so many moves everyone one can make. Hopefully, we force the American’s to respond accordingly.
“We’re set to launch our Persian social media and e-commerce sites. Our engineers have versions in both Farsi and Arabic. Once you get your entire infrastructure set up here, we’ll ship you the Arabic servers.
“Muhammad, with your popularity, you can begin pushing everyone to the .ISLAM domain. We’ve made sure the search engine is very robust, and we’ve hired some former Persian and Arab engineering executives from Silicon Valley. I love that we’re taking this page right out of China’s playbook. There’s no Atom Search Engine in China, only Baidu. I’m excited we’re going to follow that same model and create businesses headquartered in our countries, to employ our citizens.”
“Indeed,” replied Rahmati. “This Islam-First economic policy is genius. No wonder China has grown so fast.”
“How’s everything going here?” asked Javan.
“It’s moving forward better than I anticipated. The amnesty, coupled with the fact that I’ve eliminated spies, has allowed us to decimate Daesh. You probably saw that we just retook Tikrit. Whenever we eliminate Daesh, we usually have to completely rebuild. We’re spending a truckload of money on laying fiber. We aren’t going to have a world class economy without guaranteeing access to high-speed Internet to all Iraqis.
“Of course, 93% of all Iraqi state revenue is derived from oil. You guys are in a better place. Your economy is a little more diversified. But, we both need oil prices to rise. We’ve got to build out our infrastructure more quickly. The greatest human tragedy over the last 100 years is that our rulers pocketed all the money from Allah’s resource, made for His people.
“Allah created oil for Muslims to prosper. Instead, kings and dictators consumed it for themselves. The world is buying less and less Middle Eastern oil. Now is the time to act. Every year, Americans pump more shale oil and buy more electric cars. Europe is similar. We can’t stop the flood, but we can realign our economies before the damn breaks.”
*
“General Shields,” said Becca, “I’ve worked non-stop to replicate the Swarmbot hack. I’ve tried everything I know. I haven’t had any success. For the past two weeks, I focused heavily on Swarmlink. After a conversation with Josh, I thought there could be a hole in the peer-to-peer comms. But, Swarmlink uses the same encryption libraries as the satellite comms, AES 256.
“The Swarmbot operating system is embedded SELinux, the hardened version of Linux developed by the NSA. I’ve checked the ports and protocols, over and over. Everything is correctly configured. I don’t have an answer for you. I can’t tell you how Rahmati did it.”
“Chris, what’s Swarmbot Corporation’s opinion regarding the hack?” asked Shields.
“Ken, Hideki, and I have looked at this from every angle. Now, anything can be hacked. But, none of us know how they did it. Our best guess is that Rahmati’s team used a zero-day exploit. We just haven’t found the source of the compromise yet. We all know that Iran is very good at hacking. We think Iraq is still in the Dark Ages. But, both of them are very chummy with the Russians and Chinese. They could have received a zero-day, or zero-days, from them—there could be more than one.”
A zero-day was a never-seen-before cybersecurity attack or virus. Hackers paid big dollars for zero-days. Since they were brand new assaults, no anti-virus software was able to recognize the attack’s signature. The NSA stockpiled zero-day attacks, as did may other nations. They’d be unleashed during times of heightened tension or war. Stuxnet contained multiple zero-day attacks.
“I’ve surfed the Darknet and trolled for any attacks that resembled the Swarmbot exploit. We couldn’t find any candidate hacks. We also offered big money in the hacker chat rooms for zero-days that match our parameters. So far, no one has responded to our offer. We’re stuck. But, we all feel a zero-day attack is the most likely scenario.
“We’ve considered if someone may have placed a backdoor in the Swarmbot’s chipset. That’s a favorite technique of the Chinese. But, we source all of our chips from US factories. Nobody has reported an exploit like this.”
Becca steadied her nerves. “General, I have to bring this up. It’s the only possibility that we haven’t seriously considered. What if Rahmati cracked the AES encryption algorithm?”
“That’s impossible,” responded Shields, tersely. “The NSA certifies those algorithms.”
The General directed his gaze to Josh. “Does the AI tell us anything new?”
“As we speak, I’m working through the files that Lin had delivered from the NSA Records Center. The ones relating to Rahmati’s father are old. The records include handwritten notes that need translation. Then, I have to digitize them for eM. Did you know that Abdullah Rahmati played a role in the Iran-Contra Affair?
“Also, there was an interesting Mossad file on Abdullah. It claims that Abdullah was one of the handlers for the guy that shot Pope John Paul II in 1981, Mehmet Ali Agca. Abdullah Rahmati was quite a colorful character.
“I’m working on training eM’s neural network to understand the Swarmbot technical documentation. That’s a bigger process than ingesting the Iran-Contra documents, because I have to teach the AI to understand technical literature.”
Becca added, “I’m also reviewing the Swarmbot technical documentation again. It’s possible someone leaked those documents. Perhaps the hackers identified a latent vulnerability by reading the documentation.”
“Swarmbot doesn’t think that’s likely,” said Chris. “We’ve carefully read through the technical literature many times. But we welcome a fresh set of eyes.”
“This is all very disappointing,” replied the General. “The best answers for the compromise of my $100M investment are: an unknown zero-day attack, I’ve got a mole, or Rahmati broke the Swarmbot’s AES-256. I can’t redeploy the Swarmbots until we identify the exploit. You guys have to do better.”
In measured tones, Becca said, “General Shields, I’m concerned that our problem is bigger than the compromised Swarmbots. Your SWARM analysts tell me that all of our assets in Iraq and Persia have gone offline. What if their disappearance and the Swarmbot hack is related?”
General Shields groaned. “The CIA has lost a substantial number of human assets in Iraq and Persia. We haven’t lost all of them, but we don’t trust the information from any of them. We’ve never seen a packet of SIGINT from Rahmati, not even an email. He’s in Babylon, using new fiber that’s recently been lit. It connects him to Tehran. I can tell you that plans are being worked to rectify this situation. But Becca, it’s not like you to be obtuse. What are you saying?”
A small ahem removed the frog from Becca’s throat. “I’m not trying to be an alarmist, but it’s not just that Rahmati hacked the Swarmbots and used them to execute our crew. He knew everything about our mission; from our names, to the fact that we were looking for the Ark. He was way too prepared.
“Couple that with that fact that our HUMINT in Iraq and Persia is totally compromised, and I think we need to extend our worst case thinking. There may be no mole. It could be that he’s derived an algorithm to defeat AES-256. Not just the AES in Swarmbots—all AES 256. I know we all think that’s impossible, but we’ve got to start considering that possibility, as remote as it is.”
Becca focused on the word, digital. The thought crossed her mind, What if Rahmati isn’t using a digital computer?
Chapter 38 – Quantum Probabilities
10:05 a.m. (EDT), Thursday, April 29, 2021 – Columbia, MD
Suite 502, ElectricMind’s Offices, Defense Innovations Accelerator
General Shields looked deeply into Josh’s eyes. “Tell me again Josh. I’ve set up a meeting for later this morning with POTUS. I’ve requested the attendance of the new Director of the CIA, Roscoe Tanner, and POTUS’ National Security Advisor.”
Josh was afraid the General’s hopes for eM were too high. He replied sheepishly, “eM hasn’t made as definitive a prediction as when she located the Ark—”