Black Rose

CHAPTER 28

"How are we going to stop Gutenberg?" Elizabeth asked. Everyone was in her office.

"Can we get into his computer?" Nick said. "There could be something on it to tell us what they're doing."

"It depends," Stephanie said. "If it's online and I can find it, I can hack into it."

Stephanie was the Project's secret weapon. She had a gift with computers, one that couldn't be taught. No one could keep her out once she decided to get in. Sometimes it just took a little longer.

"I always wondered how you did that," Lamont said, "get past all the firewalls."

"How do you do it, Steph?" Selena asked.

"Do what?"

"Get past the encryption protocols."

"You really want to know? It's a little hard to explain."

"How about the short version?" Nick said. "I always wondered myself."

"Do you know what an RSA algorithm is?" Stephanie said.

"Doesn't it have something to do with prime numbers?" Selena asked.

"That's right. A prime number is something that can only be divided by one and by itself. Most encryption schemes use prime numbers in a mathematical formula. Basically, what you do is create two different keys based on your formula. There's a public key and a private key that have interlocking patterns. Anyone might know the public key. That's what you use to encrypt the message. The private key is used to decrypt it. Without the private key you can't understand the message, even if you intercept it. If you want your data to be secure, you apply your formula and the computer encodes it. Any data, not just messages back and forth."

"But couldn't someone with the right skills figure out the key by using some kind of pattern recognition program?" Selena asked.

Stephanie nodded. "That's right on the money. They could, except that whoever writes the program adds in something called a padding scheme to prevent exactly that. It injects random factors into the equation. That makes the message almost impossible to crack unless you have the private key."

"But you figured out how to do it," Lamont said.

"I did," Stephanie said. "It got me into a lot of trouble. When I was eighteen I hacked into the Pentagon just for fun. Two days later the FBI showed up at my door. Scared the hell out of me."

Everyone laughed.

Stephanie smiled. "Anyway, it worked out. Instead of throwing me in jail they gave me a job with NSA. That's where Elizabeth found me."

"That's a hell of a story," Ronnie said. "But I still don't understand how you do it."

"You can't expect a Marine to understand stuff like that," Lamont said.

Ronnie started to say something but Elizabeth cut him off.

"Shall we get back to the purpose of this meeting? Steph, I like Nick's idea. Can you do it?"

"I can get into Gutenberg's corporate computers," Stephanie said. "Those will be active all the time. His personal computers are a different story. I have to be able to intercept something when he's online. Then I can slip in a program that will let me access the computer any time it's turned on. From there I can break whatever encryption scheme that's running and read everything on it."

"You said intercept something. Like an email?"

"Yes."

"Then why don't we send our pal Gutenberg a message?" Nick said. "When he responds, you'll have him."

"That would work, but why would he respond?"

"I guess it depends on what you say."

"You could pretend to be someone he'd have to answer," Selena said.

Steph looked thoughtful. "Once I'm into his bank's server, I could send him a message from one of his executives. It would look right. Gutenberg would think it was legitimate and answer it. The computer he used would be mine after that."

"Keep it simple," Elizabeth said. "Once that's done, see what you can do about Krivi."

"So now we wait and see what Steph comes up with?" Nick asked.

"Now we wait," Elizabeth said.