Zero Day Code, page 15
part #1 of End of Days Series
General Chu Jianguo had his own favourite lesson from Sun Tzu’s Art of War, but he muttered only the first half to himself now.
“Victorious warriors win first and then go to war.”
He did not think it prudent to finish the aphorism.
While defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.
On a satellite display Chu watched the South Sea Fleet, ostensibly on a training cruise east of Hainan, begin the long swing to the southwest, heading for the southern coastline of Vietnam. On the screen immediately next to it was a computer-generated infographic map. Chu watched the map show the East Sea Fleet head out from Ningbo and Shanghai to secure the eastern approaches against the South Korean and Japanese navies.
It was time.
Alarms would already be ringing in the Pentagon and throughout the capitols of allied powers. Chu knew it to be most unlikely that the Americans had penetrated his operational security, no matter how much he might worry about NSA hackers and the CIA’s counterintelligence division. But there could be no hiding the sudden movement of so much military power out in the open. He accepted that somewhere across the Pacific, other men stood in grander facilities than his own temporary war room, and pointed their fingers at satellite or computer-generated imagery of the PLA’s mobilisation. They would right now be making their first calls, interrupting the luncheons of other American generals and admirals and senators, and possibly even the President himself.
It was time to put out their eyes.
Time to win first and then go to war.
“All is ready, Colonel?” Chu asked.
“Of course, sir,” Tsien replied. “You can release the first package here.”
Colonel Tsien indicated a keyboard resting in front of a desktop computer. A single bright red key, labelled ENTER, stood out from the other black keys.
Chu had not prepared any words for such a momentous occasion, and it was not in his nature to grandstand anyway. In the end, he was a simple soldier, and he knew how to pull a trigger.
Or in this case, to press an ENTER key.
He glanced at his oldest surviving friend. Song Jiasheng nodded once, his face the unreadable clay mask of a terracotta warrior. They both knew what this meant.
General Chu Jianguo pulled the trigger.
Pentagon war planners had long prepared for a digital Pearl Harbor. USCYBERCOM was created in 2009, initially with a defensive mission to secure the US military from the sort of devastating ‘assassin’s mace’ attacks which the NSA had long prepared to unleash on America’s rivals. When Cyber Command envisaged full-spectrum online warfare it imagined GPS satellites raked from the heavens, datalinks severed between sensors and shooters, firewalls breached, and soft civilian targets compromised by brute force DDOS attacks. It did not expect weaponised porn. Or hostile Facebook status ops. Or the swatting of the Secretary of Defence.
General Chu had been tasked by the Central Military Commission with a very delicate balancing operation. He had not been ordered to take the mace to the US military, striking it down with one mortal blow. To do so was to invite massive retaliation from a foe which remained an existential threat to the PLA and to the People’s Republic itself. Chu had instead been told to prepare an operation that would merely cripple the American giant, removing it from the coming fight just long enough for the Chinese side to effect a complete transformation of the strategic and political reality in its immediate neighbourhood. To this end, Unit 61398 of the 2nd Bureau had made ready a most unusual strike package.
When General Chu Jianguo pressed ENTER on the keyboard as indicated by Colonel Tsien he released a barrage of malign code that triggered consequences varying in effect from annoying and inconvenient to utterly disastrous, at least for the individuals on the receiving end. One packet of black scripts altered the Facebook relationship status of a randomised selection of married US military personnel to ‘it’s complicated’. Another revealed to FBI agents investigating paedophile rings, the presence of thousands of child porn images carefully planted on the personal computers of senior State Department officials. In Washington DC, heavily armed police officers stormed the family home of the US Defence Secretary, responding—they thought—to an alert that a violent schizophrenic with a knife had broken in and attacked the Secretary’s wife, while a Secret Service tactical response group raced to the same address after receiving a credible report that DefSec’s family had been targeted by terrorists wearing stolen police SWAT uniforms.
Launched from compromised machines in Iran, Iraq, Venezuela and North Korea, thousands of singular attacks affected individuals identified as critical actors in US government emergency management processes. These small, bespoke ambushes, tailored over many years, exploited the earlier theft of tens of millions of records from the US Office of Personnel Management. They effectively constituted a bloodless decapitation strike. The Secretary of Homeland Security, for instance, found herself suddenly locked out of both of her phones, her laptop and even her office. While she was attempting to deal with that inconvenience, her husband arrived at the front gate of the DHS Complex on Nebraska Avenue, red faced and out of breath. He had ridden their son’s bicycle over, because his car had been impounded for late lease payments, and the sheriff’s office had sent two deputies to evict him from their family home after the bank had foreclosed on their mortgage.
The Secretary of Homeland Security was a former drug company executive. Her husband owned sixteen Chik-fil-A franchises. Their home was fully owned, unencumbered by any mortgage. Her husband’s car was indeed leased for tax purposes, but his food service company paid that lease, and it was more than solvent. People did like their Chik-fil-A, after all.
At least they weren’t arrested by IRS agents for tax evasion, like the head of FEMA.
Or forcefully quarantined by the CDC, like the Administrator and deputy administrator of the TSA, who were attending a conference in Houston at a hotel which was suddenly red flagged as a hot spot for a bird flu outbreak, a few minutes before their respective spouses received emails containing explicit videos—deep fakes, as it happened—of the FEMA boss and his second-in-charge enjoying a vigorous sexual encounter in the roof top pool of the same hotel.
These thousands of individually targeted civil servants, were dwarfed in number by the millions of serving military personnel who found themselves in arrears on credit cards and personal loans they had not opened. Their personal accounts were frozen by the automated systems at banks and S&Ls and credit unions. Partners and dependents called in panic when they couldn’t buy gas or groceries.
Islamic State pages on the dark web released statements claiming responsibility for the attack.
Wikileaks dumped a cache of documents into the wild that ‘revealed’ plans by the CIA to effect a coup in Thailand.
The hacker collective Anonymous released the President’s tax returns to the Washington Post and New York Times.
Thousands of businesses small and large where paralyzed by ransomware, widely recognised to have come from North Korea, using tools stolen from the NSA by Edward Snowden.
Half of the officers in the LAPD received text messages telling them they had been put on administrative leave pending an Internal Affairs investigation into credible allegations of corruption and brutality.
And there was more, much more.
But given the porous, interconnected nature of the online world, some of the effects spread rapidly to Europe and throughout the Asia Pacific, leading to increased disruption. Some effects, the general knew, would even manifest themselves here in China. Indeed, there was another unit of the 2nd Bureau busily faking reports of massive disruptions to the PRC from ‘criminal internet gangsters’. And all of it was merely a distraction for the assassin’s mace.
A few seconds after General Chu unleashed digital hell on the United States, the IT systems of nine food distribution companies melted down.
The tens of thousands of employees who worked for those companies found themselves individually subject to a plague of cyber assaults that replicated the attacks on more significant and nominally powerful figures such as the Secretary of Homeland Security, the administrators of the TSA and the frankly dumbfounded boss of FEMA. He was, at that very moment, standing in the foyer of his Houston hotel, wondering what the hell his wife was screaming about so hysterically on FaceTime, and why a bunch of guys in moonsuits had just rushed the concierge desk.
16
This Is Not How It Worked In All Those Tom Clancy Books
The email from Michelle’s data mavens satisfied General Panozzo that the Chinese had targeted the IT systems of the main food distribution companies in the continental US. Panozzo’s hot take? So fucking what? James was half an hour convincing him that it was any more serious than the other cyberattacks that had caused so much chaos yesterday and which, thankfully, seemed to have eased off overnight.
“Everyone’s got back-ups,” Panozzo said grumbled in thick New Jersey accent. He sounded like a Harley Davidson on a cold morning. “So what? You saying ‘dese guys don’t back up some muffin orders so I gotta tell the president to call out the marines? Because I’m telling you Mishy,” he said, ignoring James and talking directly to Nguyen, “that’s gonna be a helluva hard sell given the mess we’re cleaning up this morning. You read the morning brief? We got hospitals lost all their patient records until they pay some Nigerian asshole a bitcoin ransom to give ‘em back. There’s a permanent traffic jam in LA now and people are shooting each other from their cars. My kids are ringing me because the Xbox ain’t working no more. And you seriously want me to escalate your breakfast issue?”
“General, it’s not the muffins, okay,” James said, pushing back into their exchange.
Panozzo glared at him.
“It’s everything. It’s…” he had a lightbulb moment. “It’s logistics. That’s what you guys always say, right? Armchair generals talk about tactics. Professionals are all about logistics, or something?”
He snagged Panozzo’s interest with that.
“Something like that, yeah.” The general sighed. “Go on.”
James rubbed his hands together, like an anxious conjurer trying to coax the magic into his fingertips before he plunged a hand into the top hat looking for a rabbit that might not be there.
“Look,” he said. “A modern city usually has enough food on the shelves to keep everyone fed for about a week and a half. Perishable food is, you know, perishable, and a grocery chain or a supermarket starts to lose money when a non-perishable or a long-life item like, say, a tin of beans and franks, sits on the shelf unsold for too long. The shelf space has to earn its way, right? Their own sales data lets them run just-in-time ordering software so that the shelves are always packed with stuff that always sells very quickly…”
James had Panozzo’s attention, but he stopped, suddenly realising something he hadn’t thought of earlier.
“Jesus,” he said, turning to Michelle Nguyen. “I’ll bet it’s not just the distributers. I’ll bet if you check with your NSA guys, they’ll tell you that Krogers and Walmart and Safeway and all the big grocery chains all got probed yesterday too. Can you do that now? Can you check?”
Michelle, who looked like she might be regretting having even asked Panozzo to see them, looked to the general for permission. He nodded, like what-the-hell, and she flipped open the lid of her laptop and ripped out a quick email query.
“Anyway,” James went on, “you take out those systems at the source, the food source. You take out the distribution and re-ordering systems, and a modern city runs out of food a week later.” He paused for a second, then added. “Unless there’s panic buying. Then it’s maybe a couple of days. And when people can’t feed themselves and their families? Like in New Orleans after Katrina? You know, after the hurricane…”
He waved his hands in frustration, as if the conclusion should be obvious to anyone. Mostly, however, James was frustrated with himself, for yammering on so incoherently. He’d have been embarrassed to stand in front a room full of investors with such a poorly expressed argument. It seemed to be getting through to Panozzo, though. His brow was furrowed, and he worked his jaw like he was chewing on gristle.
“Mishy,” he said at last. “Make sure them little weasels at the Fort know your last query got the highest priority. Right?”
Her computer pinged as she was about to reply.
“They got it,” she said, reading whatever had just come up on screen. “And… yes, the fifteen largest grocery chains all reported minor IT issues yesterday, but no major disruption to ops. I can ask Fort Meade to do a forensic sweep of their systems if you…”
“Do it,” Panozzo said.
When the NSA confirmed five minutes later that they had detected evidence of intrusion into the inventory control system of each of the businesses, Panozzo agreed to get them a ride over to the White House where Admiral Holloway was briefing a meeting of the NSC.
DC’s road net was still glitching, with traffic lights out across most of the inner beltway districts. Cops in white gloves worked the intersections with whistles and bright orange batons that reminded James of the toy lightsabres he’d played with as a kid. Michelle agreed they’d be better off walking, even in the brutal heat and humidity. He carried his jacket over his arm, and they hastened along 17th Street without breaking into a run. It would’ve been intolerable in the hundred-plus weather, and as likely to get them shot by security as hospitalised with heatstroke. Even so, he was sweating like a wheel of bright yellow cheese when they reached the first barrier and presented their credentials.
“Ms Nguyen, Mister O’Donnell, we were told to expect you in a cab,” the uniformed guard said, as though not arriving in a taxi was some terrible breach of protocol. Maybe, given James’s sweating pits of doom, it was. “If you’ll come with me, ma’am, sir,” the guard said, before leading them to a small golf cart and indicating that they should climb on to the rear seat. James almost rolled off the back when they took off way faster than he was expecting, causing Michelle to snort at the panicked expression on his face.
He wasn’t sure how the hell he was supposed to convince anybody that he was worth listening to, or what he seriously expected them to do if they did listen. He was red faced. He smelled bad, and the breeze from their passage up the driveway to the rear of the West Wing made a mess of his hair. This was not how it worked in all those Tom Clancy books his dad liked so much.
They passed through two more checkpoints; the first at a sort of service entrance, where a truck driver delivering fresh flowers was given priority, and an inner entrance hall where James had to take off his shoes and belt after he tripped an alarm on the metal detectors.
“Sit here,” a page instructed them, “Somebody will be out to get you soon.”
Half an hour later they were still waiting when more alarms went off all around them. These were not the annoying ping of the metal detector. They were full blown sirens. Marines and Secret Service agents ran past in tight phalanxes – or at least James assumed the men and women wearing earpieces and suits to be Secret Service agents. In the shouting tumult and sudden disorder, it was hard to be sure of anything.
“What’s going on?” he asked Michelle, who was no better informed than him. But what the hell? Maybe she did this all the time.
Turns out, no, she didn’t.
“No fucking idea,” she said, raising her voice to be heard over the uproar.
She got to her feet. James stood up, sat down and got up again, unsure of what to do or where to go. Surely this was not the standard White House reaction to crisis? A recorded message boomed out over the public address system, a soothing female voice that was weirdly at odds with the mayhem breaking loose all around them.
“All visitors are advised that due to unforeseen circumstances, tours of the White House have been cancelled for the day. Visitors must stay in their groups and follow the instructions of their guides as they evacuate the building.”
“Evacuate?” James said.
“All visitors are advised that…” the woman’s voice started again.
“Come on,” Michelle said. “We have to get out of here.”
“But nobody’s seen us.”
“And they’re not going to. Come on, right now.”
She took James by the wrist, like a misbehaving schoolboy, and dragged him into the throng of people heading for the entrance they’d negotiated half an hour earlier. He wasn’t sure whether there was a separate channel for exiting the building, and a crowd was quickly building at the chokepoint of the metal detectors. James was about to ask if there was a bomb or something, but his common sense kicked in before he opened his mouth and made everything much worse. Less than a minute later, somebody did yell out that there was an attack. Some other panicky idiot shouted something about terrorists as James was trying to squeeze through the metal detector with the heaving the crowd. His head hit the heavy frame and stars filled his eyes as he was suddenly pushed from behind. He did his best to create a safe space for Michelle, who was much smaller than him and in danger of being crushed or knocked down and trampled.
There was a half a minute or so of genuine fear when he thought they might be trapped by the surging numbers of people jammed up behind them. It was every bit as bad as the time he’d come off his horse in the middle of a cattle herd back home on the ranch, but somebody smashed open a double door somewhere up ahead and it was like pulling a plug. The crowd surged forward and carried them along a short hallway and through the service entrance out into fresh air. James kept an arm around Michelle and at one point had to elbow a guy he later recalled as the flower delivery man from before. He was trying to scramble over her. Outside, under a cupola, it was still hot, but the rank and sickly fug of body odour and fear sweat dissipated as they cleared the press of bodies.
