"c291" - читать интересную книгу автора (Burt Andrew - Noontide Night)

10:18 A.M., Friday, February 25, 2000
Halifax, Nova Scotia

The MPs questioned Morgan about Nate's vanishing for a shorter time than he expected. Ten minutes after they'd escorted him to the jail for questioning, he was free to go. Sam gave him the third degree for an hour. There was absolutely no way Sam could jerryrig leave for Morgan now; he'd almost found a way, Sam said, but now... poof. Morgan cringed, showing genuine distress that Nate had left the unit in a jam; he'd sure left Morgan in a jam. Damnit, Morgan thought in mental flagellation, he should have talked Nate out of it; somehow. If anything happened to Jeremy or Desiree, it was Nate's fault. Yet he knew it was really his own. Hot metal twisted in his gut; trying to choose the correct future path was a minefield of regret. For every lash of Sam's tongue, Morgan berated his own weakness. Morgan cut a deal with God that they'd both work non-stop. Morgan snuck a stack of printouts to his bunk and whiled away his free time on Saturday and Sunday propped up against the pine boards, covered in a blanket of fanfold greenbar paper. The floor served as an auxiliary table. He was up at dawn, and hardly stirred until lights out. The other hacks seemed to respect this, letting him alone or offering quiet "hey's" or "what'sup's" as they ambled past to the showers. They understood the Hacker Possessed. By Monday he'd annotated fixes for half a dozen programs. Sam convened a meeting of all his troops, and outlined what he'd already told Morgan about their new mission to fix the errant software. He handed out login and password information to Littlefield and the other platoon leaders. As a bonus, everyone had been promoted. Littlefield made Sergeant. Morgan was now a corporal. Morgan sensed that the CyberCorps troops had passed some test, proven themselves somehow, and this was a slight nod of respect. What hurdle they'd overcome he couldn't imagine. Back in the Rotten Core Littlefield started to assign programs to Ortega and Morgan in his usual stupid-ass way, and of course reserved the easiest programs for himself. Morgan ripped the sheets of passwords from his hands. "I need this one, and this one, and this..." He yanked out the sheets for the programs he'd already fixed or planned to. "What the hell are you doing, Hyland?" Littlefield had regained a little of his bluster with the loss of Nate to back him up, but Morgan had learned he could just ignore him. Littlefield couldn't touch him. He was Golden. His fingers danced on the keyboards for hours, staccato bursts of fluted code, violins of space bars, timpanis of returns, great trumpets of function keys. Bach played in his head, Mahler in his heart. He dimly sensed the others around him, their pecking at the keys chopsticks to his concerto. Programs fell around him like hushed audiences, their perfection unmarred by even the quietest cough. Monday passed. Tuesday resumed seamlessly. One by one he checked programs off, tasting the sweetness of error-free runs on his first tries. He played for God himself with Satan at his back. Jeremy had been due today; it was a good sign. God would keep his baby alive so long as he played, played, played. It was on the sixth of the programs he'd corrected over the weekend that he heard the first discordant note. It was a quiet thing, the slightest, quietest note out of tune from the viola farthest back. The program was the classified one he'd imagined before might have function names of Find_Nearest_Spy_Satellite. No one, Sam had said, had touched these programs; they'd been completely frozen as is, until the maestros could weave their magic. Even the date on the file said it had been last modified two years ago, the same time to the second it listed on the printout. Yet the logic had changed. Slightly. Only a few characters off. A greater difference than random rotting of the bits could account for. The changes made sense, as if the theme had been shifted to a minor key. In one place, "af.mil" had become "af.ml". The name of a certain computer from where the program retrieved its input had been subtly altered, so it no longer referred to an Air Force machine, but some unknown box in the west African country of Mali. The program was, almost literally, getting its data from Timbuktu. From the test system, inside the Air Force's protective firewall that (ostensibly) prevented outside intrusions, he opened a connection to the real system and dataport. The protocol prompted for identification and password; which Morgan didn't know. He tried some gibberish to satisfy himself that it refused him entry, and broke the connection. He then opened a connection to the address in Mali. The firewall happily let the connection proceed, since it was an inside, safe site asking to talk to an outside site. Firewalls only prevented the reverse. The machine in Mali (or wherever it physically was) responded with a prompt for identification and password. Morgan still didn't know any, but suspected this was a sort of Trojan horse, and wouldn't care (in fact, it might be glad to steal a real password or two). The true source of the data wanted protection to make sure it didn't disclose data to unauthorized users. This fake source wanted to give away its (presumably) fake data to whatever program asked for it. Morgan typed in "The quick brown fox" for the identification and "jumped over the lazy dogs" for the password. Data spewed onto the screen. Morgan had analyzed the program enough by now to suspect that the data elements were mostly latitude and longitude coordinates. The variables were all disguised as "var1234," but the constants encoded in the calculations were not. Numerous values of "60" and "180" dotted the program, as well as 69.171, which Morgan recognized as the number of miles per degree of longitude at the equator, and the fact that it was in an equation whose form he recognized as one used in spherical geometry, cinched it. These were coordinates on the Earth. But this was no ordinary joyride hacking. Given the facts that someone had hacked this program (or else the "last modified" date would have changed; only a hacker would set that back to its old value), the fact that the program and presumably data were classified, and that these were geographic coordinates, Morgan's knew he'd stumbled onto a sure-certain case of cyberwarfare. He meticulously documented his discoveries. He remembered what Sam had said about the troubles the CyberCorps was having with its "soldiers" hacking their own systems. Perhaps not. Joyriding hackers wouldn't bother setting up systems in Mali just to feed false data to a program. That didn't fit the mold. Boy, would they be surprised when he showed them evidence that an outside influence was behind it; probably a foreign power. They'd be proud. He'd get a promotion. More importantly, maybe the leave he'd been denied to find a ham operator and contact Desiree. He checked his watch; four o'clock. Still time to catch Sam. On a whim, he looked at the geographic data. They all appeared to be within ten degrees of each other, a few hundred miles. What was at 34 degrees latitude, 43 longitude? He scooped up his proof for Sam and zigzagged through the cubicles constituting a huge chunk of floorspace beyond the Rotten Core; he remembered someone had a globe out there. It was an old rickety thing, with "U.S.S.R." in giant red letters, and it smelled like his grandparents' house. He spun it around. Hmph. 43 by 34 was in the middle of the Atlantic, a ways east of Bermuda. How boring. Why so much activity for this one little patch of sea? He imagined an armada of warships cordoning off an area for God knew what purpose. Then Morgan smacked his head. He was being American-centric. He hadn't messed with geographic coordinates since he was a kid. The latitude was North, but he realized the longitude had been designated by a '0' bit. It was 43 degrees East. He dragged his finger a quarter way around the globe, across the bumps of northern Africa and the Mediterranean to the other 40 degree meridian. It bullseyed Iraq.

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Chapter 29.1

10:18 A.M., Friday, February 25, 2000
Halifax, Nova Scotia

The MPs questioned Morgan about Nate's vanishing for a shorter time than he expected. Ten minutes after they'd escorted him to the jail for questioning, he was free to go. Sam gave him the third degree for an hour. There was absolutely no way Sam could jerryrig leave for Morgan now; he'd almost found a way, Sam said, but now... poof. Morgan cringed, showing genuine distress that Nate had left the unit in a jam; he'd sure left Morgan in a jam. Damnit, Morgan thought in mental flagellation, he should have talked Nate out of it; somehow. If anything happened to Jeremy or Desiree, it was Nate's fault. Yet he knew it was really his own. Hot metal twisted in his gut; trying to choose the correct future path was a minefield of regret. For every lash of Sam's tongue, Morgan berated his own weakness. Morgan cut a deal with God that they'd both work non-stop. Morgan snuck a stack of printouts to his bunk and whiled away his free time on Saturday and Sunday propped up against the pine boards, covered in a blanket of fanfold greenbar paper. The floor served as an auxiliary table. He was up at dawn, and hardly stirred until lights out. The other hacks seemed to respect this, letting him alone or offering quiet "hey's" or "what'sup's" as they ambled past to the showers. They understood the Hacker Possessed. By Monday he'd annotated fixes for half a dozen programs. Sam convened a meeting of all his troops, and outlined what he'd already told Morgan about their new mission to fix the errant software. He handed out login and password information to Littlefield and the other platoon leaders. As a bonus, everyone had been promoted. Littlefield made Sergeant. Morgan was now a corporal. Morgan sensed that the CyberCorps troops had passed some test, proven themselves somehow, and this was a slight nod of respect. What hurdle they'd overcome he couldn't imagine. Back in the Rotten Core Littlefield started to assign programs to Ortega and Morgan in his usual stupid-ass way, and of course reserved the easiest programs for himself. Morgan ripped the sheets of passwords from his hands. "I need this one, and this one, and this..." He yanked out the sheets for the programs he'd already fixed or planned to. "What the hell are you doing, Hyland?" Littlefield had regained a little of his bluster with the loss of Nate to back him up, but Morgan had learned he could just ignore him. Littlefield couldn't touch him. He was Golden. His fingers danced on the keyboards for hours, staccato bursts of fluted code, violins of space bars, timpanis of returns, great trumpets of function keys. Bach played in his head, Mahler in his heart. He dimly sensed the others around him, their pecking at the keys chopsticks to his concerto. Programs fell around him like hushed audiences, their perfection unmarred by even the quietest cough. Monday passed. Tuesday resumed seamlessly. One by one he checked programs off, tasting the sweetness of error-free runs on his first tries. He played for God himself with Satan at his back. Jeremy had been due today; it was a good sign. God would keep his baby alive so long as he played, played, played. It was on the sixth of the programs he'd corrected over the weekend that he heard the first discordant note. It was a quiet thing, the slightest, quietest note out of tune from the viola farthest back. The program was the classified one he'd imagined before might have function names of Find_Nearest_Spy_Satellite. No one, Sam had said, had touched these programs; they'd been completely frozen as is, until the maestros could weave their magic. Even the date on the file said it had been last modified two years ago, the same time to the second it listed on the printout. Yet the logic had changed. Slightly. Only a few characters off. A greater difference than random rotting of the bits could account for. The changes made sense, as if the theme had been shifted to a minor key. In one place, "af.mil" had become "af.ml". The name of a certain computer from where the program retrieved its input had been subtly altered, so it no longer referred to an Air Force machine, but some unknown box in the west African country of Mali. The program was, almost literally, getting its data from Timbuktu. From the test system, inside the Air Force's protective firewall that (ostensibly) prevented outside intrusions, he opened a connection to the real system and dataport. The protocol prompted for identification and password; which Morgan didn't know. He tried some gibberish to satisfy himself that it refused him entry, and broke the connection. He then opened a connection to the address in Mali. The firewall happily let the connection proceed, since it was an inside, safe site asking to talk to an outside site. Firewalls only prevented the reverse. The machine in Mali (or wherever it physically was) responded with a prompt for identification and password. Morgan still didn't know any, but suspected this was a sort of Trojan horse, and wouldn't care (in fact, it might be glad to steal a real password or two). The true source of the data wanted protection to make sure it didn't disclose data to unauthorized users. This fake source wanted to give away its (presumably) fake data to whatever program asked for it. Morgan typed in "The quick brown fox" for the identification and "jumped over the lazy dogs" for the password. Data spewed onto the screen. Morgan had analyzed the program enough by now to suspect that the data elements were mostly latitude and longitude coordinates. The variables were all disguised as "var1234," but the constants encoded in the calculations were not. Numerous values of "60" and "180" dotted the program, as well as 69.171, which Morgan recognized as the number of miles per degree of longitude at the equator, and the fact that it was in an equation whose form he recognized as one used in spherical geometry, cinched it. These were coordinates on the Earth. But this was no ordinary joyride hacking. Given the facts that someone had hacked this program (or else the "last modified" date would have changed; only a hacker would set that back to its old value), the fact that the program and presumably data were classified, and that these were geographic coordinates, Morgan's knew he'd stumbled onto a sure-certain case of cyberwarfare. He meticulously documented his discoveries. He remembered what Sam had said about the troubles the CyberCorps was having with its "soldiers" hacking their own systems. Perhaps not. Joyriding hackers wouldn't bother setting up systems in Mali just to feed false data to a program. That didn't fit the mold. Boy, would they be surprised when he showed them evidence that an outside influence was behind it; probably a foreign power. They'd be proud. He'd get a promotion. More importantly, maybe the leave he'd been denied to find a ham operator and contact Desiree. He checked his watch; four o'clock. Still time to catch Sam. On a whim, he looked at the geographic data. They all appeared to be within ten degrees of each other, a few hundred miles. What was at 34 degrees latitude, 43 longitude? He scooped up his proof for Sam and zigzagged through the cubicles constituting a huge chunk of floorspace beyond the Rotten Core; he remembered someone had a globe out there. It was an old rickety thing, with "U.S.S.R." in giant red letters, and it smelled like his grandparents' house. He spun it around. Hmph. 43 by 34 was in the middle of the Atlantic, a ways east of Bermuda. How boring. Why so much activity for this one little patch of sea? He imagined an armada of warships cordoning off an area for God knew what purpose. Then Morgan smacked his head. He was being American-centric. He hadn't messed with geographic coordinates since he was a kid. The latitude was North, but he realized the longitude had been designated by a '0' bit. It was 43 degrees East. He dragged his finger a quarter way around the globe, across the bumps of northern Africa and the Mediterranean to the other 40 degree meridian. It bullseyed Iraq.


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