Operation Desolation (2 page)

There were five people taking part on the panel, seated on stools. A large monitor was sitting conspicuously in the center stool and a huge screen to the right of the stage displayed a live image of the panel. Ritter was on the end while Jeff's friend, Janata Chacko, sat next to him. Chuck, as he was known in the West, was just shorter than average, stout, and with wild black hair. He had become a sloppy dresser since he'd left the CIA but had cleaned himself up for today as the discussion was being streamed live over the Internet.

Beside him, wearing her trademark purple plastic-framed glasses with neck lanyard, sat Agnes Capps. Approaching fifty, she'd carved a name for herself by publishing articles and books related to computer and Internet security and to government policy. Outspoken and popular with the media, she had no respect within the cyber-security community as most people believed she was faking it—she simply didn't understand certain key issues. She was a clever writer and combative interviewer, though, which she' parlayed into a successful career.

On the other side of Anonymous was a man in his early thirties, new to Jeff, wearing a dark suit with a neatly trimmed reddish beard.
FBI,
he thought at once. FBI agents were tolerated at these conferences as most attendees recognized the need for a law enforcement presence on the Internet. These cyber feds generally knew their stuff when it came to computers though they lacked the eccentricity of the committed professional hacker.

Clive opened with a few brief remarks, then introduced each of the panel participants before gesturing to the flat screen. “And from somewhere on the Internet we have a spokesperson for Anonymous. I understand he's already with us.”

With that an image materialized from the screen, slowly resolving into a Guy Fawkes smiling mask, floating on an ebony background, which served as the public face of Anonymous.

“We are here,” the voice said. The speaker used a program to cause his voice to sound slightly disembodied. The audience tittered.

For all the novelty of the Anonymous presence, the discussion followed a predictable pattern. The man in the suit, who was in fact an FBI agent named Norm Allender, made the point repeatedly that hacktivism was an enormous and growing threat. “Because of it the day may come when the kind of open, unrestricted Internet you enjoy today will no longer exist,” he said more than once in more than one way. “What I want, what I believe we all want, is a secure, universally accessible Internet.”

Capps was pitching her latest book,
Hacktivism, Twitter, and Facebook: The Age of Cyberprotest and Flash Revolutions,
this time taking the position that governments constituted the greatest threat to the Internet. Whenever she repeated a detail, she'd lean forward and point a finger at the FBI agent, who took it all in with good cheer. “Hacktivism is a mere drop in the bucket compared to you. You need to be stopped,” she said, much to the amusement of the audience.

Chuck dismissed the notion that hacktivism was evil or inherently destructive. “It is a legitimate form of social protest,” he argued, to a round of applause. “They bring accountability to systems that want to evade it. Their positions, whether you agree with them or not, come from a deep sense of morality. These attacks are a form of civil protest intended to identify legitimate issues. If it wasn't for hacktivism I can see the day Big Brother takes over.” Several booed Big Brother. “When that happens, the real Internet will only exist as an underground movement.”

“It has already begun. You should join the cause,” Anonymous intoned. “Your heart is in the right place.”

“This is absurd,” Ritter interjected. “This freak in his plastic mask has no business here. What's he afraid of? Why not come out from behind his screen? Hacktivism is simply evil. If Anonymous has its way, nothing we do in our computers or over the Internet will be private. Chuck and Agnes here worry about Big Brother when it's actually teenagers like this one on the monitor here who are the threat to us all!”

More boos came from the crowd, though there was a ripple of light applause. Ritter wasn't alone in his view.

Capps returned to her book, particularly a chapter devoted to the invasive surveillance techniques reportedly employed by the FBI. “Internet providers cannot meet the requirements of your subpoenas—the technology doesn't allow it—so they end up giving you far more information than you have a right to. Cyber agents like you use the extra data on innocent people you collect this way to create massive databases. The Fourth Amendment implications are striking yet you continue doing it. Why? Why are you at war with the American people?” She shouted this last question amid general hoots of approval.

“We are not at war with the American people,” the FBI agent said, but before he could continue Capps interrupted.

“Not at war! What about Carnivore? You've been trolling the Internet for decades monitoring e-mail, Twitter, text messages…anything you can get your hands on. You've built a customized packet sniffer that monitors all of a target user's Internet traffic and you don't care about any incidental data you garner from others in the process. What do you do with all that information? Tell us!”

“You are not immune,” Anonymous said. “We have penetrated law enforcement before. We will penetrate you!”

There were scattered cheers.

And so it went until Clive wrapped up the discussion to allow the panel to field questions from the audience. The woman next to Jeff shouted out, “What's next for RegSec, Anonymous? Inquiring minds want to know!” She looked up at Jeff with a grin.

Laughter, then the voice from the monitor said, “We will crush them!” With that his image slowly faded into the background, leaving behind just a mocking, nearly hysterical laugh.

Following a quick lunch with Clive, Jeff settled in the speakers' room, taking one of the tables and chairs made available for speakers to prep. He spent the next hour reviewing his PowerPoint slides and practicing the talk's demos, occasionally stopping to chat with other speakers he knew who came in. He glanced at his watch and saw that it was after three, so he packed up.

After locating the room for his presentation, he walked to the front where a draped folding table about four feet high sat on a dais. Behind it was a screen. He placed his water bottle on the table, took his laptop from its bag, and connected it to the projector cable. Then he attached the wireless mic clip to his shirt and opened his PowerPoint. He was ready to go as people streamed in and took seats. Despite other conflicting presentations, there were about 250 people in the room. He smiled at Chuck when he noticed him sitting in the front row.

His talk, entitled “Statistical Analysis of Network Traffic: Finding the Needle in the Haystack,” was well attended, not just because he was popular in the cyber-security community or because he'd once worked for the CIA or even out of an interest in his topic. His role and that of Daryl Haugen in uncovering and muting an Al Qaeda cyber-attack on the West was widely rumored though it had not appeared in the traditional media.

Daryl was now his partner in their company, Red Zoya Systems LP. They were also a committed couple and living together, but she was in Oregon on a forensics case so he'd made this trip alone. He missed her very much despite her occasional text messages and phone calls.

Jeff began by trying out some new jokes, all techy so that only such an audience as this could relate and appreciate with laughter. He followed these with live demos of his log analysis tool. The tool digested massive log files pulling out discrete pieces of relevant information, typically source IP addresses, size of requests, types of requests, then applied statistical analysis to find potentially anomalous activity. Its effectiveness increased with the amount of data it analyzed.

The data he displayed showed suspicious activity on the anonymized logs from some of the clients he'd done work for. He stepped the audience through another of his own tools, which assisted him in locating anomalies in computer data and helped him focus on malware. When he finished there was a hearty round of applause, followed by a stage rush from those wanting to ask questions and to exchange business cards. If this was any taste of what it was like to be a celebrity, he wanted none of it.

Following his presentation, Jeff and Chuck went to the hotel bar for a drink. After settling in a booth, Jeff ordered a glass of white wine and Chuck asked for one of the beers they had on tap. Jeff asked what he was working on. There were several projects but the biggest was with Combined Technologies International.

“They're remaking the company and have been contracting out a lot of work recently.” Chuck sighed, then took a drink before continuing. “I can't say I like working for them all that much. Sometimes they make me feel as if I'm on the wrong side.”

Talk turned to Jeff's current project, and though he couldn't reveal his client, they discussed how he'd been hired to defend against a threat made by Anonymous. Chuck might guess he meant RegSec, but Anonymous routinely threatened any number of companies. Jeff asked, “You can't really support the activities of Anonymous. They've caused enormous harm to companies who've done nothing wrong.”

“Yes, there's been some of that.”

“It's primarily a group of teenage script kiddies who get off on the anonymity and from feeling as if they're part of something bigger than themselves. Even the adults associated with Anonymous are hardly grown-ups. Just look at how they pick targets and how foolish some of their so-called attacks are.”

“I concede all of that but without groups like Anonymous, without hacktivism, the trend on the Internet is toward some form of Big Brother; if not by the United States government, then by some international regulatory body that will have control of all the vital choke points. Surely you can see that?”

“No, I don't,” Jeff said. “Computers and the Internet are evolving so rapidly and new technology is so often taking center stage that it's beyond central control. The danger we face is from groups like Anonymous as they develop the ability to take down the Internet presence of any company or organization with which they disagree, as they access private records and make them public. Security is essential for the Internet to grow and all hacktivism is a threat to that.”

“Mind if I join you?”

Jeff looked up and saw it was Ritter. He moved over to make room. “We were just discussing hacktivism.”

Ritter had a double of amber liquid in his glass. He took a long pull, then said, “I was surprised to hear your views on the panel, Chuck. I've always taken you to be more responsible than that.” He ran a bare hand across his nearly bald head.

The two men had never much cared for one another and Jeff feared this could turn ugly.

“I think I'm taking the responsible position,” Chuck answered. “Someone has to keep everyone out there honest, you know? You can't trust governments or Fortune 500 companies to do it. If they had their way you'd have to clear your Internet presence through a layer of bureaucracy, at great expense, and then be subject to arbitrary control by outsiders. We need to keep the Internet open, not threatened by governments.”

“And what about this threat from Anonymous against RegSec?” Ritter asked. “Surely you don't support them there?”

Chuck gritted his teeth before answering. “What RegSec did was immoral. It helped destroy the financial lives of tens of thousands of innocent people. And why? To increase its unseemly profits. The company even took bailout money! As if they needed it, you know? Then did you read what Hinton did after the court verdict? It was like spitting in everyone's face. And he publicly called out Anonymous. How stupid can you be? No, I have to say in this case I'm in agreement with Anonymous. Someone has to do something about RegSec. The government and courts won't.”

“The government tried,” Jeff suggested.

“My point exactly,” Chuck said. “They tried. But companies like RegSec are above the law, you know? They pay Congress to make sure of that. The little people, we average people, get the shaft.”

Before Ritter could answer, Jeff tried changing the subject. “What have you been working on, Dillon?” He immediately regretted the question.

“We're downsizing.” Ritter finished his drink, then waved at the waiter for a refill.

“They're outsourcing any new work to avoid permanent hires. Congress is spending money like a drunken sailor but somehow the people I work for have managed to get none of it.”

“You're still working, though?” Chuck asked, sounding concerned. No one liked a colleague finding himself out of work, not in this economy. They might be specialized in a growing field but hard landings were all too common.

“Me? Sure.” From a CTI colleague the previous month Jeff had heard that Ritter had failed to keep up with the latest technology. This coupled with his age would make him an unattractive hire. “I guess you two heard about my divorce? Well, it caught me by surprise. I had no idea….” His voice trailed off. “At least haven't been laid off.” He looked directly across the table at Chuck when he said that.