Rogue Element

NSA HQ, Fort Meade, Maryland, 1210 Zulu, Wednesday, 29 April

Jesus, ten past eight. It was too early for serious brain-work, especially given the late finish the previous evening. Indeed, it felt like he’d never even left the joint at all. Bob Gioco’s mind didn’t function until he’d had at least two double espressos. The real stuff, full strength and black as sump oil. He had them both poured into the one Styrofoam cup. He sipped the hot, bitter liquid and felt it going to work on his synapses. This group was something special, and worth missing a couple of hours of sleep for.

The expertise gathered in the lecture theatre represented a whole new ball game for the NSA. It was part of ELINT, the division once concerned only with the interception and analysis of radar signals and missile telemetry, largely from the Soviet Union. After the dissolution of the Eastern Bloc, there was a proliferation of nuclear materials and other weapons of mass destruction, and of their delivery systems. And now there was an insidious new threat to world peace: computer terrorism. It was now entirely possible to bring a country to its knees, and cause widespread death and mayhem, simply by tampering with the appropriate computer network. ELINT’s new role was to provide early warning and counter-intelligence to prevent these dangerous new threats from ever coming to pass.

Gioco stifled a yawn while he settled into his chair and smoothed a hand across hair still wet from the shower, but an aberrant lock refused to obey the pressure and sprang up annoyingly.

Like all organisations, especially US government ones, the NSA had a passion for acronyms. The one for this gathering was COMPSTOMP: Computer Security, Tasking, Observation and Manipulation Protection. It was a fancy title for the NSA’s new anti-cyberterrorist node. The group had its problems — too much intelligence dedicated to information anarchy in the one place, Bob often thought.

A young mathematician, indeed the one giving this morning’s briefing, was the creator of COMPSTOMP, and a vindication of the NSA’s policy of poaching the finest math brains in the country. She had followed a hunch that hackers left individual and distinctive signatures — fingerprints — when they entered systems. She thought it doubtful that hackers would crack computer systems with a one-day pad mentality, never using the same logic process twice. It was more likely they would find a key that worked for them, then use it over and over because, she assumed, even people with above-average intelligence were lazy. If her theory checked out, then those fingerprints could be identified, catalogued and tracked. As it happened, she was right. Hackers used consistent processes, rarely changing them, and no two processes were the same.

The NSA supported the theory with a budget, and COMPSTOMP winked into existence. Within six months it had quite a comprehensive database containing over 4000 fingerprints. Each rap sheet detailed a hacker’s misdeeds, call sign, off-line name, address, employment records, all of which were continuously being updated and checked. It was a massive job, but it was paying dividends.

The overwhelming success of COMPSTOMP made the theory’s author, the twenty-one year old woman sitting on the floor amongst her comrades, a hero within the NSA. But COMPSTOMP was super secret, so her fame was limited. Hackers weren’t stupid. If they knew Big Brother was watching their every move, they would start employing their own counter-measures, such as altering their signatures, and the group’s effectiveness would be drastically impaired.

As was normal practice with the NSA, COMPSTOMP had new detection software developed in-house to employ in the fight to keep information secure. The most successful of these was called Watchdog. Watchdog alerted COMPSTOMP of a computer break-in in progress. COMPSTOMP would then check the hacker’s signature and determine his or her identity against the register. If the system was part of the nation’s defence, or essential to its national security, the hacker would be tracked and arrested. If he or she was extremely good and managed to break through the internal firewalls that protected the core of these systems from outside interference, an ultimatum would be given — join the US government willingly or become a reluctant guest of it in a small, dark cell.

So far, no one had taken the latter option and COMPSTOMP was largely made up of people who had been caught with their hands in the cookie jar. Oddly, there seemed to be little resentment about being spirited out of their old life and given a new one. The pay was extremely good and the work immensely satisfying, not least because of the enormous resources at the NSA’s disposal. COMPSTOMP was even encouraged to set up a dummy company, Fido Security, and lease the Watchdog database technology to other countries and large corporations. The income stream from this activity was now very healthy, which pleased the oversight committees on Capitol Hill no end. And, more importantly, it allowed the NSA to spread its information-gathering capabilities into unwitting rich new areas previously denied it.

Watchdogs were now patrolling the systems of companies as diverse as General Motors, IBM, Starbucks and Virgin. Quite a few countries had signed up — the Netherlands, Argentina, Indonesia and others. Not all these clients took the same level of protection. Watchdog could operate merely as an alarm system or a complete ‘back-to-base’ tracking system, although this latter option was extremely expensive because it made the NSA a de facto full-time employee. Of course, none of these customers had the slightest notion that, through Fido, the NSA was patrolling their hard-drives. Fido Security presented itself as a stand-alone high-end service company staffed by the best and brightest, one of the few Internet start-ups to survive the burst e-bubble because it had something unique and worthy to offer: total security.

Mostly the COMPSTOMP/Fido group discussed interesting ways to attack and defend systems, and the effects of any new technology coming on line. Gioco found these discussions exhilarating. Much of the talk was pure speculation but the air seemed to crackle when they were onto something new. Often, the consequences of their brainstorming brought real benefits to the NSA and its ability to meet its charter. They also discussed the fingerprints of the newcomers to cyberterrorism, most of whom had aggressive or obscure call signs like Howitzer and Pukeboy.

Today’s COMPSTOMP gathering, though, was low key. The world’s computers were enjoying a period of relative safety and security. There’d been a bit of a discussion about whether information should be contained by fire-walls or set free to benefit mankind. Bob had heard it all before. There were good reasons to keep information free but, in his view, better reasons against it.

‘In conclusion, then, over the last week all we’ve had is a bit of activity from one “Cee Squared”,’ said the brilliant young mathematician sitting in the lotus position on the carpeted floor. ‘The system notified the client of the penetration — they have the full package — and action, if any, was theirs to take or not. It was a low-grade intrusion, a small server off the main system and hardly worth worrying about. Cee Squared hasn’t been active for a long time. Thought he’d given the game away.

‘Anyway, the details have gone to the South-East Asia section head — that’s you, isn’t it, Bob?’ Bob held his finger up and gave a casual salute from the darkness at the back of the theatre. ‘And that’s it, really,’ she said, snapping the folder closed.

The group broke up and the room cleared quickly, leaving Gioco alone with his thoughts. There was something troubling him, but he couldn’t nail it.