Terminal Compromise - Winn Schwartau (fiction book recommendations TXT) 📗

we

can begin to mobilize and organize the research . . .”

“That’s the kind of talk I do not want to hear, gentlemen,” the

President said. Coletree turned red.

“Mr. President,” said Chambers. “If we were going to war . . .”

“Sir,” the President said standing straight, “we are already at

war. You’re just not acting like it. According to you, the

vital interests of this country have been attacked. It is our

job to defend the country. I call that war. If we are going to

sell a Computer War to America, we better start acting like we

take it seriously. Tomorrow, gentlemen. Pull out the stops.”

* 1:15 P.M., New York City

Upon returning from lunch, Scott checked his E-Mail at the Times.

Most of the messages he received were from co-workers or news

associates in other cities. He also heard from Kirk on the

paper’s supposedly secure network. Neither he nor the technical

network gurus ever figured out how he got in the system.

The network administrators installed extra safeguards after Scott

tipped them that he had been receiving messages from outside the

paper. They added what they called ‘audit trails’. Audit trails

are supposed to record and remember every activity on the net-

work. The hope was that they could observe Kirk remotely enter-

ing the computer and then identify the security breach. Despite

their attempts, Kirk continued to enter the Times’ computers at

will, but without any apparent disruption of the system.

It took Scott some time to convince the network managers that

Kirk posed no threat, but they felt that any breach was poten-

tially a serious threat to journalistic privilege.

Reporters kept their notes on the computer. Sources, addresses,

phone numbers, high level anonymous contacts and identities, all

stored within a computer that is presumably protected and secure.

In reality, the New York City Times computer, like most comput-

ers. is as open as a sieve.

Scott could live with it. He merely didn’t keep any notes on the

computer. He stuck with the old tried and true method of hand

written notes.

His E-Mail this time contained a surprise.

IF YOU WANT TO FIND OUT HOW I DID IT, CALL ME TONIGHT. 9PM. 416-555-3165. THE SPOOK.

A pit suddenly developed in Scott’s stomach. The last time he

remembered having that feeling was when he watched Bernard Shaw

broadcast the bombing of Baghdad. The sense of sudden helpless-

ness, the foreboding of the unknown. Or perhaps the shock of

metamorphosis when one’s thoughts enter the realm of the unreal.

Then came the doubt.

“Ty,” Scott asked after calling him at his office. “What hap-

pened to Foster?” He spoke seriously.

“True to his word,” Tyrone laughed with frustration, “he was out

in an hour. He said he was coming back to your party . . .”

“Never showed up.” Scott paused to think. “How did he get out

so fast?”

“He called the right guy. Charges have been reduced to a couple

of misdemeanors; local stuff.”

“So, isn’t he your guy?”

“We’re off, right?” Tyrone though to double check.

“Completely. I just need to know for myself.”

“Bullshit,” Tyrone retorted. “But for argument’s sake, I know he

had something to do with it, and so do a lot of other people.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“A technicality called proof,” sighed Tyrone. “We have enough on

him for a circumstantial case. We know his every move since he

left the NSA. How much he spent and on whom. We know he was

with Homosoto, but that’s all we know. And yes, he is a comput-

er genius.”

“And he goes free?”

“For now. We’ll get him.”

“Who pulled the strings?”

“The Prosecutor’s office put up a brick wall. Told us we had to

get better evidence. I though we were all on the same side.”

Tyrone’s discouragement was evident, even across the phone wires.

“Still planning on making a move?”

“I’ll talk to you later.” The phone went dead on Scott’s ears.

He had clearly said a no-no on the phone.

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Lotus Development Corporation headquarters has been the stage for

demonstrations by free-software advocates. Lotus’ lawsuits

against Mosaic Software, Paperback Software and Borland created a

sub-culture backlash against the giant software company. Lotus

sued its competitors on the basis of a look-and-feel copyright of

the hit program 1-2-3. That is, Lotus sued to keep similar

products from emulating their screens and key sequences.

Like Hewlett Packard, Apple and Microsoft who were also in the

midst of legal battles regarding intellectual-property copy-

rights, Lotus received a great deal of media attention. By and

large their position was highly unpopular, and the dense univer-

sity culture which represented free exchange of programs and

information provided ample opportunity to demonstrate against the

policies of Lotus.

Eileen Isselbacher had worked at Lotus as a Spreadsheet Customer

Service Manager for almost two years. She was well respected and

ran a tight ship. Her first concern, one that her management

didn’t necessarily always share, was to the customer. If someone

shelled out $500 for a program, they were entitled to impeccable

service and assistance. Despite her best efforts, though, Lotus

had come to earn a reputation of arrogance and indifference to

customer complaints. It was a constant public relations battle;

for the salespeople, for customer service, and for the financial

people who attempted to insure a good Wall Street image.

The service lines are shut down at 6 P.M. EST and then Eileen

enters the Service Data Base. The SDB is a record of all service

calls. The service reps logged the call, the serial #, the type

of problem and the resolution. Eileen’s last task of the day was

to compile the data accumulated during the day and issue a daily

summation report.

She commanded the data base to “Merge All Records”. Her computer

terminal, on the Service Department’s Novell Pentium-server net-

work began crunching.

12,346 Calls between 7:31 AM and 5:26 PM.

That was a normal number of calls.

Serial Numbers Verified. The Data Base had to double check that the serial number was a real one, issued to a legitimate owner. 712 Bad Disks

Her department sent out replacement disks to verified owners who

had a damaged disk. A little higher than the average of 509, but

not significant enough unless the trend continues.

FLAG!! 4,576 Computational Errors

Eileen’s attention immediately focussed in on the FLAG!! message.

The Computational Error figures were normally ‘0′ or ‘1′ a week.

Now, 5,000 in one day?

She had the computer sort the 4,576 CE’s into the serial number

distribution. The Service Department was able to act as a quali-

ty control monitor for engineering and production. If something

was wrong – once a few hundred thousand copies hit the field –

the error would show up by the number of calls. But CE’s were

normally operator error. Not the computer’s.

There was no correlation to serial numbers. Old Version 1.0’s

through Version 3.0 and 3.1 were affected as were the current

versions. By all reports, Lotus 1-2-3 could no longer add,

subtract, divide, multiply or compute accurately. Mass computa-

tional errors. The bell curve across serial numbers was flat

enough to obviate the need for a statistical analysis. This was

clearly not an engineering design error. Nor was it a production

error, or a run of bad disks. Something had changed.

Scarsdale, New York

On the 6:12 to Scarsdale, Tyrone and Scott joined for a beer.

The conversation was not to be repeated.

“ECCO, CERT, the whole shooting match,” Tyrone whispered loud

enough to be heard over the rumble of the train, “are moving to

NSA control. NIST is out. They all work for the Fort now.

Department of Defense.”

“Are you shitting me?” Scott tried to maintain control.

“It’ll be official tomorrow,” Tyrone said. “Write your story

tonight. The NSA has won again.”

“What do you mean, again?”

“Ah,” Tyrone said trying to dismiss his frustrated insight into

agency rivalry. “It seems that whatever they want, they get.

Their budget is secret, their purpose is secret, and now they

have every computer security concern at their beck and call.

Orders of the President.”

“Aren’t they the best suited for the job, though . . .”

“Technically, maybe. Politically, no way!” Tyrone said adamant-

ly. “I think the Bureau could match their power, but they have

another unfair advantage.”

Scott looked curiously at Tyrone.

“They wrote the rules.”

Scarsdale, New York

Speedo’s Pizza was late, so Scott got the two $9 medium pepperoni

pizzas for free, tipping the embarrassed delivery boy $10 for his

efforts. Not his fault that his company makes absurd promises

and contributes to the accident rate.

As 9:00 P.M. approached, Scott’s stomach knotted up. He wasn’t

quite sure what he would find when he dialed the Canadian number.

It was a cellular phone exchange meaning that while he dialed the

Toronto 416 area code, the call was