Counting from Zero (24 page)

Later, just before he fell asleep, Mick wondered how things had come to this.
 
He now was almost afraid to communicate with his friends – he didn’t want to drag anyone else into his mess.
 
Being tailed, presumably by the government, would complicate things for him.
 
He was annoyed at himself for the afternoon’s theatrics.
 
With a bit of thought he probably could have confirmed the tail without them knowing.
 
Now they knew that he was aware of being followed.
 
He realized, however, that one of the goals of the surveillance was probably to unnerve him.

The next day Mick left for the train station, heading to Logan for his flight back to New York.
 
He had a short wait in the First Class check-in line.

“Checking in for the 11:10 to JFK,” he said, handing over his
drivers
license to the woman behind the counter.
 
She typed for a moment.

“What is your date of birth?” she asked.
 
He told her.
 
“What is your middle name?” she asked.

“I don’t have a middle name.” he replied.
 
She looked up at him, surprised.
 
“It’s just Mick O’Malley.
 
Here’s my passport, if you want to see that,” he continued, handing it over to her.
 
She looked down and continued typing and paging through screens.
 
She picked up the phone and pressed a button.

“Yes, yes…
 
OK,” she said hanging up the phone.
 
“Mr. O’Malley, if you could step over here.
 
My supervisor needs to talk to you.”

“What is this in reference to?” Mick asked, looking at the time.

“In just a moment my supervisor will explain.
 
If you could wait right here, thank you.”
 
She motioned for the next person in line to come to the counter.
 
She did not return his driver’s license or passport.

Three minutes later, the supervisor came over.

“Mr. O’Malley?
 
I’m Jay Bishop.
 
I apologize for the delay.
 
I just need you to come to my office so I can ask you a few questions.”
 
The supervisor picked up a printout and what he presumed was his driver’s license and passport.

“OK,” Mick replied, trying hard not to become annoyed.
 
He had lots of experience with officialdom, and knew that showing anger or annoyance only made these situations much, much worse.
 
He patiently followed the supervisor past the ticket counter and up the stairs to a small office.
 
The supervisor motioned for Mick to sit down.

“So, Mr. O’Malley, you do not have a middle name?” he asked.

“No.”

“And is this your correct address?” he asked, holding up the drivers license.

“Yes.”

“And your date of birth?”

“Is correct on both the passport and drivers license, yes.” he replied.
 
“Can you please tell me what this is about?”

“Well, Mr. O’Malley, your name is on the Transportation Safety Administration No-Fly list, so I’m afraid you won’t be able to check in for your flight today.”

“What?
 
That’s ridiculous?
 
I am a frequent flier!
 
I fly all over the world!
 
How could I be on the TSA list?
 
There must be a mistake...
”
 
A burning feeling spread through his body as he made the connection with the events of the previous day.

This is no random bureaucratic snafu – this is another message to me!

A uniformed police officer entered the room, startling Mick.

“Don’t be concerned.
 
We just need to ask you some questions...” Bishop began as the policeman sat down and pulled out a notebook.

Three hours later, Mick left the office after answering a bunch of questions about his recent travels and history.
 
He also made them telephone a higher-level supervisor and spoke to the supervisor himself.
 
The responses were the same each time: he can go to the Transportation Security Agency website and file a Department of Homeland Security Traveler Redress Inquiry form.
 
He was told they would review the case and give him an answer in a reasonable timeframe.
 
There was no way he was going to board a plane today.
 
He was just happy to not be detained further.

Mick needed to decide on a course of action.
 
He considered going back to Jocelyn’s, but again decided against it.
 
He needed to get back to Manhattan.
 
Looking for a change from the train, Mick jumped on a bus and was at a car rental counter a few minutes later, arranging a one-way rental.
 
According to his GPS, it was just over 4ØØ kilometers or about four hours of driving at this hour.
 
At the rental counter, he had another unpleasant surprise.

“Mr. O’Malley, I’m afraid your credit card was declined.
 
I’m required to keep the card – my apologies.”
 
He rarely used credit cards due to privacy concerns about credit card companies collecting databases of purchasing habits and data.
 
Renting a car was one of the few cases when Mick needed to use a credit card instead of the prepaid debit cards that he mostly used.
 
He tried to think the last time he used this card.
 
He decided it had been a while.

This is very odd…

He took the train instead.

Back in Manhattan, he filed the TSA online paperwork, although he did not expect it would do any good.
 
He wondered how he would do business if he couldn’t fly.

Next, he checked his U.S. bank accounts, and confirmed his worst fears.
 
His accounts were frozen!
 
This explained the declined credit card at the rental counter.
 
For now, he had no access to his money.
 
No one at the bank would talk to him about it or tell him what he could do to regain access to his money, but he presumed it was done using anti-money laundering laws.
 
He decided not to check his foreign accounts – they were only for emergencies, and he still had plenty of cash and a couple of debit cards – enough for the moment.

The government was definitely putting the pressure on him.
 
He wondered exactly which branch of government they were, if they had National Security Agency connections, and if his guess about Ft. Meade in Maryland, just outside of D.C. was accurate.

Mick decided to tell no one – no one except Kateryna, with whom he had planned a video call that evening.

“Mick, you look terrible!” was how she started the call, looking at his high definition image in alarm.

“Thanks, and so do you!” he joked weakly, even though she looked fantastic, as always.
 
“I was denied boarding on my flight back to New York, so I had to take the train.
 
Apparently, I’m on the No-Fly list.”

“No way!
 
You’re kidding me right?
 
You are pulling on my leg or something?
 
This is crazy!” she began.

“I am totally serious, Kat.
 
No joking.
 
I am persona non grata at airports until I get this cleared up...
 
I am so mad, I don’t know what to do.”

“Mick, I am so sorry!
 
I wish I could help in some way.
 
I presume you’ve called your contacts and spoken to everyone you could.”

“Yes, I did that.
 
No one can help me, and I don’t have any friends in Homeland Security, unfortunately.”

“Me neither.
 
Wow.
 
This is hard to comprehend.
 
Do we live in such a society now?” asked Kateryna.

“Kat, please keep quiet about this No-Fly list thing.
 
I really hope to have it sorted out soon, and I don’t want to lose any consulting jobs as a result.”

“Of course, Mick!
 
You know you can trust me...”

“Don’t worry – I’ll sort it all out,” he managed a grin.

“I know you will,” she replied.
 
They signed off shortly.
 
He had decided not to tell Kateryna about his bank
accounts
as it would have required explaining his ‘interview’ with the government.
 
Mick was also now operating on the assumption that his apartment was bugged.
 
With his use of encryption for all his communication, it was the only way for the government to listen in to his conversations.

After a fitful night’s sleep, Mick decided to take the morning off and do something fun.
 
The engine in one of his bikes needed new rings, which fit between the piston and the cylinder walls.
 
When the rings no longer provide a tight seal, the engine has low compression and runs poorly.
 
Mick had been saving the job for a day when he was in the right mood, and that day was today.

Mick wheeled the 1978 Ducati 9ØØss on to the work stand, and raised it about a half meter off the ground, putting the engine at a comfortable level for working.
 
He removed the fairing and windshield, the gas tank, and the seat.
 
He disconnected the exhaust pipes.

Mick pulled up a stool and set to work on one of the cylinders.
 
He removed the valve cover and paused to admire the pair of desmodromic valves, used to regulate the flow of the fuel into the engine and the exhaust gases out of the engine.
 
Mick even got out his camera and a flash unit and took a few pictures, admiring the unique desmo valves, the ultimate in Italian engineering in high revving racing engines.

Mick continued removing components until he had one piston exposed.
 
He was getting ready to remove the old rings and install the new ones when he suddenly realized he wasn’t into the job anymore.
 
Mick put down the tools and went back to his apartment, frustrated.

Mick checked his messages and found a PGP encrypted mail from Mathison waiting for him.
 
His pulse raced with anticipation as he opened it.
 
He let out a shout after reading the first few lines – Mathison had done it!
 
He had broken the encryption and included the keys for a few of the messages.
 
Mathison had not read any of the messages, respecting Mick’s privacy, and also not wanting to get involved.
 
Mick read Mathison’s summary of how he had broken the encryption:

...
 
I noticed a pattern where there would be an initial exchange of three messages, which would then be followed by a number of messages in one direction, then a number in the other direction.
 
I suspected the first few messages might be a key negotiation.
 
I analyzed them and determined that it was a simple
512 bit
Diffie-Hellman exchange – hardly strong at all, but enough to keep most people out.
 
I used the BoltCutter distributed network to break a few messages for you.
 
I’ve given you off-peak access to the network, so if you script it carefully, you should be able to break about three messages per day.
 
Good luck with whatever the hell this is!

Cheers,

Math

Now that he had a way to break the botnet encryption, Mick planned to learn all about the operation of the botnet, and in particular, the hostnames and addresses of the control servers, or boot servers.
 
This might ultimately lead to a way to disrupt or destroy the botnet.

One step at a time.

Mick set to work.

Breaking encrypted messages, or reading them without knowing the secret key, takes a lot of computation on a powerful computer, and each set of messages exchanged within the botnet network used a different key.
 
Mathison used a distributed computer network for this work, which combined the computational power of thousands of computers, effectively turning them into a supercomputer.
 
His offer for Mick to use the BoltCutter computer network for a few minutes each night was incredibly generous one.
 
Such computational power was available to a very few, and almost no one unaffiliated with a government or large corporation.
 
However, he would only be able to decrypt about three messages per day with the off-peak access, so the analysis of the botnet control messages would take time.
 
However, he had confidence he could figure it all out.