Sting of the Drone

25

The heavy rains from earlier in the week were still moving down the creeks and into the streams that fed the Potomac, making it high, fast, and almost milk chocolate in color. Raymond Bowman sat on what he thought of as his bench, high above the rest of the Foggy Bottom neighborhood, on Navy Hill. His field of view included the green forest patch of Theodore Roosevelt Island in the middle of the river, with the high-rises in Virginia beyond. To the right was the giant Kleenex box that was the Kennedy Center and beyond it the riverside in Georgetown. To his left was what he thought of as an architectural travesty and an even more dubious use of money, the building housing the U.S. Institute for Peace.

It was where he came, behind Donovan Hall, a few hundred meters from his office, to think. The gray sky, the aroma from the black Dunkin’s Bold, the breeze off the river all combined to relax him enough that he felt for the first time in months that his mind was clear, that for a moment his brain was not racing, processing, planning. And then Dugout sat down next to him.

“I think it was because the Navy guys were using the new Thuraya satellite over the Mediterranean,” Dugout began, as he balanced his mug of green tea and his iPad on his lap.

“I was just sitting here quietly thinking about how George Washington and his friends lost money on the Potomac canal and locks. What the hell are you talking about, Thuraya, and by the way, hello,” Ray replied. “Happy Dead Turkey Day. Shouldn’t you be watching football or stuffing yourself while visiting family members?”

“Happy Thanksgiving, yourself. What I should be doing is having dinner with my band. Here, have a Cohiba. It’s your Dead Turkey Day present. I know you will never buy these things for yourself. You wait for me to be your Enabler.”

Ray unwrapped the cigar and smelled its freshness. “You, in a band?” he asked.

“Yeah, tenor sax in a jazz combo. My undergrad degree is in music, from Berklee. Anyway, you do realize that it’s like drizzling out here? I saw you sitting in the rain on the video cam feed and thought, maybe I should come out and give you a weather report,” Dugout said.

“You’ve hacked our own video cameras?” Ray asked. “Yes, I know it’s drizzling. It’s nice. You know Wild Bill Donovan created this complex up here in like ’43? First real home of U.S. Intelligence.”

“Yes, I knew that,” Dugout replied and handed Bowman a box of wooden matches.

“You know that he had a drone program?” Ray asked. “He put little bombs on this species of really big bats and released them to fly behind Nazi lines.”

“That work?” Dugout asked.

Bowman lit the Cohiba and tried to blow a smoke ring. He failed. “Shit no, of course, it didn’t work. Now what was that you said about the Navy?”

“So, I’ve been working on how that Navy drone went down in Libya,” Dugout replied. “The Navy uses a commercial satellite for its link from its drones in the Med, using X band frequencies. Sometimes when their bandwidth gets too thin, they drop the encryption. It’s against policy, but the operators do it when they have to.”

“So, that’s what they did on the Sea Ghost op in Libya and somebody was waiting. The bad guys had probably seen it happen before and just kept a bot on that link looking for it to happen again. When it did, zap, they slipped into the data stream and nose-dived the bird into the sand. Just your luck it happened when you were trying to stop the Hezbollah guys from stealing some sarin.”

Ray continued gazing out at the river. “The Antonov had engine trouble later. Crashed off Cyprus.”

Dugout chuckled. “I heard. Engine trouble? Is that what you call it when an Israeli F-15 sends four, count them four, air to air missiles through your fuselage and you and your planeload of sarin plunge into the Med?”

“Don’t eat the fish next time you are in Cyprus,” Ray replied.

“I’ll try to remember that for when I finally get my leave approved and I get to have last year’s vacation,” Dugout said.

“Suddenly everybody is messing with our drones. Hezbollah, Pakistanis,” Ray said, turning to look at the man sitting next to him on the bench.

“Well, first off, I doubt it was Hezbollah who messed up the Sea Ghost. They just happened to have been the unplanned beneficiary,” Dugout replied. “I think whoever put the bot out to look for when the Navy dropped sync on its encryption on the link to its drones is likely the same guy who stole the Pred in Pakistan,” Dugout smiled.

“I would normally say you have gotten way too paranoid and are also making the analytical mistake of thinking all the jigsaw pieces are from the same puzzle, but I know that smile. You got something, don’t you?” Ray asked.

“So, the digital master control system on the satellite over the Med and the one being used by the satellite over the Indian Ocean when they stole our Predator, turn out to be using the same operating system. And in both cases the hackers who took control used the same Oh-Day to exploit a vulnerability in the code. No one else, as far as I can tell, has ever used that Oh-Day. So, I would conclude that it’s the same guy in both cases,” Dugout said.

“I have no idea what you just said,” Ray replied. “The only O’Day I know of is Anita O’Day, jazz singer. You should know her if you’re a jazz guy.”

Dugout frowned. “Oh-Day as in Zero-Day. You drop the Zeer part and you get Oh-Day and besides lots of people call zero ‘oh.’ It’s cyber speak for a new trick, a virgin hack, something that no one has known about until that first day when one guy uses it. Point is that the same guy hacked both satellites using a nifty exploit he developed. No one else seems to have used it yet, anywhere.”

“Let’s say I believe that for a minute about the satellites,” Ray said. “It fits into your theory that the drone targets are fighting back. But explain to me how my getting sued fits in. Somehow the family of a victim from the Vienna operation got a video from the security camera across the street from the hotel. It shows the drone going in. As far as I knew, the only people who had that tape were the Austrian Security Service.”

“I checked,” Dugout said. “The Austrians didn’t give it up intentionally. The reason that tape got into the hands of the family of the victim is that someone hacked the Austrian Security Service. Not all that easy. Maybe something Pak ISI could do, maybe. Then they mailed the video to the family’s attorney.”

“Okay, so it might be Pak ISI hacking into networks. But a lot of what is happening to us is on the ground out there, not in cyberspace.” Ray said. “Somebody lures us to a house where they have stashed kids. No hacking there. Some of the targets are shooting back with Stingers; we’ve lost four Preds to that. No hacking there. The improvement in their defensive tactics with the use of cars in crowded areas for meets, the tunnels. Those are not technical solutions.”

“Right,” Dugout reacted. “So, I’d say one explanation is that you’ve got two groups maybe working together, the al Qaeda or maybe Taliban guys on the ground in AfPak and then some hacker unit, like maybe in the Pakistani intelligence, the ISI, or maybe in the Iranian Rev Guards.”

“Yeah, I think you’re half right,” Ray said. “I think it is two groups, but I’m not sure it’s the Paks or Iranians. Could be the Russians just to mess with us. See if you can run with those theories, but add another. Look for a nonstate actor, a Wikileaks Collective on steroids, maybe a group of college kids in Boston or Palo Alto.”

“Okay, I’ll look at all those possibilities, but I am telling you now that it’s no hacker collective or group in Boston or San Fran,” Dugout said as he stood up from the bench and brushed raindrops from his windbreaker.

“Why not?” Ray asked.

“‘Cuz I know all those guys, what they’re capable of, how they’d do it if they could. They’re wicked smart, but the guys we’re up against? They’re a lot better than anyone I know.”