Counting from Zero (5 page)

What kind of dinosaur am I going to do business with today?

He read the text of the voicemail and discovered that Vince had moved the meeting an hour earlier (elevenses?).
 
There was just time to make it, and yet another session he had weakly planned to listen in to was blown off.

“Dr. O'Malley, it is a pleasure to meet you – heard so much about you!” Dr. Vincent Della, Senior Vice President of Engineering at LeydenTech began after handing over his business card, doing an impressive Nihon-style two-handed handover.
 
Mick, of course, had no cards, making him a non-entity in the business world here in Nihon.
 
When asked for his business card, he usually mumbled something about finding his public key on the web.

“Thank you, call me Mick.
 
May I call you Vince?
 
So, your company makes modern day Leyden jars?” Mick began, referring to the first electrical energy storage devices, named for the town of Leiden in the Netherlands, and used by the early experimenters with electricity, including Ben Franklin.
 
When he first heard the name of the company, Mick recalled a sketch of tall lightning rods attached by wires to a bank of enormous foil-covered glass jars.
 
Leyden jars were the forerunner of today's electronic capacitors, and ultimately memory storage devices used by all computational devices today.
 
Effectively, Ben Franklin worked on the first single bit RAM (Random Access Memory) storage devices.

“Yes, we do make energy storage systems.
 
Let me give you a little background on the company.” Vince began and proceeded to recite the publicly available information that Mick had already committed to memory.
 
Vince then paused and continued.
 
“We are very interested in getting your help with a problem that we are having.
 
Our servers have been attacked, and some of them compromised.
 
The signature appears to be one that others haven't seen before.
 
A few other consultants have drawn a blank.”
 
Mick suppressed a smirk and the urge to ask if he were talking about Miles, his co-panelist.
 
He would be able to find out later.
 
“At your earliest convenience, we'd like you to come out to New Mexico and start work.
 
I've had a standard contract drawn up but couldn't find a fax number or postal address for you.”

Keeping his countenance, Mick asked for Vince's admin contact information so he could be in touch about establishing a secure shared document server for the contract and other legal and technical documents.

“By the way, just so you are not surprised, I'll be conducting a Level 2 background check on you.” Mick began.
 
“I will expect something similar from you, unless you have government clearance, in which case you could simply ask them about me,” Mick explained.
 
He had his own mechanism for learning when someone was investigating him, so he always was up front with his clients in case they had similar mechanisms.
 
One couldn't be too careful these days, Mick mused, then thought of some of his even more paranoid friends, and amended the thought to
generally
one couldn't be too careful.

The conversation waned and a suitable day two weeks away was chosen for Mick's visit to New Mexico, after his trip to Seattle the following week.
 
On the walk back to the conference, Mick stopped to examine a motorcycle parked on the sidewalk.
 
At first, he had difficulty identifying even the manufacturer, since the bike had been heavily customized as was common in Nihon.
 
It had a new gas tank, fenders, and seat with all branding removed.
 
Even the wheelbase had been extended in the rear swing arm.
 
He identified a common Yamaha type of carburetor, wide profile tire, and was able to guess the model, giving him some satisfaction
.
 
He felt an itch in his right wrist, missing riding his favorite Ducati motorcycle back in New York City.
 
During this visit he had enjoyed seeing lots of motorcycles, although few Italian.
 
Mick was pleased to see so many bikes that weren’t Harleys – his least favorite brand of motorcycle.
 
A check of the weather forecast back home made him happy, as Saturday was forecast to be clear; he should be able to ride when he got home.

Later in the day, Mick's own presentation went well, discussing some new ideas he had been exploring lately.
 
Even though he had done it a thousand times, Mick still felt a few butterflies just before speaking and a satisfaction when it was over and he felt he had made a connection with his audience.

Chapter 4.

From the
Security and Other Lies Blog
:

How can I make my email communication more secure?
 
I_heart_raptorz

Email in general is completely insecure, but using encryption software such as PGP can make it much more secure,
I_heart_raptorz
, and I use it all the time.
 
Using encryption, I can send an email that no one besides the recipient can read.
 
By checking the digital signatures on emails from my friends and colleagues who also use PGP, I can verify that they sent the email, and that the message content has not been tampered with along the way.
 
If you have ever received an email with the phrase "Begin PGP Signature" in the message, followed by a bunch of numbers and letters, then you have received a PGP signed email.
 
Here’s how PGP works.

PGP software (which, BTW, stands for Pretty Good Privacy) is an add-on to your mail application.
 
Whenever you receive an email that has been signed or encrypted using PGP, the software automatically checks the signature and/or decrypts the message.
 
You need to create a PGP key pair in order to digitally sign emails that you send.
 
A key pair is the combination of two large numbers uniquely generated by you.
 
The numbers appear to be random digits, but are in fact related mathematically.
 
You keep one number secret (known as your private key) and you publish the other number (known as your public key) in a key directory, on a web page or key server.
 
You can also share your public key with your friends and colleagues.
 
As long as you keep your private key secret, you can use it to secure your email.
 
Here’s how it works:

To digitally sign an email, PGP performs a mathematical function known as a hash to produces a message digest – a fixed length representation of the contents of the message.
 
The private key is then used on the message digest to produce the digital signature, which is then included in the email after the "Begin PGP Signature" message.
 
The recipient of the email can verify the signature using PGP by performing a similar operation using your public key.
 
If the operation works, the signature is validated, and the recipient knows you sent it.
 
Or at least the recipient knows that the sender knew your private key!

Encryption works in a similar way.
 
If someone wants to send you an encrypted email that only you can read, they fetch your public key, perform some mathematical operations on the message using the public key, then send the encrypted results instead of the message – it just looks like gibberish as it goes over the Internet.
 
To decrypt the message, you use your private key, and voila! You, and only you, can read the message.

So to use PGP, you just need to install the application, keep your private key secret, make your public key available to those you communicate with, and then get your friends to do the same.

Good luck,
I_heart_raptorz
, and send me a PGP signed email when you are up and running!

-> Your question not answered this week?
 
Argue for your vote on the Shameless Plugging area of our discussion forum.

Chapter 5.

Mick O'Malley
– enjoys slurping ramen in noodle restaurants.
 
(2 comments)

The next morning, Mick received a response from Vince to arrange the details of their upcoming meeting.
 
This time, Vince had managed to sign his mail properly with PGP – a good sign for the future.

Being Wednesday, it was time for Mick to change all his passwords.
 
He thought for a few minutes then typed:

A11urBasesDontblong2us

Mick borrowed
a butane
lighter from a smoker and used it as a makeshift soldering iron to repair the broken Ethernet connector in the NOC, restoring full Internet connectivity and making the techs happy.

Later, he was listening to a rather dull discussion of attack classifications when someone sat down next to him.
 
He looked over and saw it was Kateryna.

“Good morning, Mick,” she said quietly.

“Good morning,” he replied evenly.

“Enjoying the presentation?” she asked, leaning towards him.
 
Today she was wearing white jeans with a wide belt, and a denim shirt, and looked pretty good.
 
And, he could smell her perfume, not a common thing in this country where cigarette smoke seemed to infuse everything.
 
He flashed a mock frown at her and she smiled at him, producing an instant reaction.
 
“I have a couple of questions I'd like to ask you – could we get a coffee?”
 
He said yes without a moment's hesitation and followed her out of the room.

“I have overall design responsibility for our company’s future firewall products,” she began as they sat down with their coffees, “and I'm having trouble figuring out how they can handle new services such VoIP and video conferencing.
 
Here’s the problem.” Kateryna launched into a description of the problems she was having.

Mick listened to her description, occasionally interrupting with clarifying questions.
 
He made some suggestions that he thought were fairly obvious, but, judging by Kateryna’s reaction, apparently were not.
 
A half an hour flew by as they conversed over their coffees, and the topic wound down.

“Wow – this has been really, really helpful, Mick.
 
Thanks a lot!” she said with feeling.

“My pleasure, Kateryna,” he replied, smiling at her.

“Please, call me Kat,” she responded.

“My pleasure, Kat.”

They passed the next few minutes in silence, as Kateryna thought hard about her firewall problem, and Mick thought hard about her.

Then he noticed Kateryna looking past him, and turned to see Liz eyeing him with a curious look.
 
He got to his feet.

“Liz, come over and meet Kat.
 
Kat, this is Liz,” he started.

“We met earlier this morning,” Liz said as she shook hands with Kateryna.
 
“Hi Kat.”

“Nice to see you again, Liz.
 
Mick is helping me with some firewall issues...” she began.

“Really?” Liz replied, giving Mick a look.

“Ah… why don't you join us?”
 
Mick asked.
 
As Liz was making up her mind, Kateryna glanced at her mobile and announced she had another meeting and had to run.
 
She took her leave as Liz sat down and ordered her drink.

“I had no idea you were so interested in firewalls...” Liz began.
 
Mick rolled his eyes.

“I was just helping her with a few issues – she did help us last night during the zero day...” he replied.

“Sure.
 
Whatever.
 
Look, Mick, I’m not going to make things difficult for you.
 
I think I have a good idea of where things stand between us,” she replied.
 
She quickly turned the conversation to her shopping yesterday and about an industry acquisition that was announced a few hours earlier in the press.

Is that it?
 
Maybe this week won’t be so bad…

After lunch, Mick spent a few hours writing some computer code for his open source project.
 
He did it to relax, the way others might flip channels on a TV.