The Blockchain Revolution Read online

  When his list was lengthy enough, he turned to the next laborious step: contacting and further assessing each person on it. Then began a slow dance, much like the recruitment of a spy where the first step was to establish trust and plumb the true beliefs of the prospect. From the far smaller group that emerged from that process, he selected those with the most talent. Many, but not all, rose to the call. Necessarily, the invitations he extended were vague: simply to become part of a secret cabal dedicated to the goal of someday bringing their political convictions to fruition. And in truth, at that time, he could promise nothing more. Only as the years and the blockchain movement matured did he come to believe his master plan could indeed succeed.

  Now he had thousands of loyal followers although, of course, he had no idea who any of them really was. For that matter, he didn’t know the true identities of his own general staff; he could scarcely demand their names while withholding his own. That was as it should be. Like any spy apparatus or insurgency network, his troops were rigorously segregated into groups arranged in a pyramidal structure. Each cell of a half a dozen conspirators was separate and anonymous from all other cells. If any individual was caught, he could, at most, expose only the other members of his own cell. And therefore, the cause would live on.

  For the same reason, information was rigidly restricted on a hierarchical basis. Not even his general staff knew the details of his master plan or even what his intended targets would be. But they understood the need for secrecy and had faith in him. Each staff member had his or her own role. Some were generals while others held directorships with responsibilities such as communications, recruiting, or reconstruction. Their subordinates, in turn, were privy only to the data they needed to perform the specific function of their division of responsibility. By the time you got down to the foot soldier level, all anyone understood was that a day was coming when they would receive their orders, and a new world order would arise from the ashes of the old.

  To be sure, there was a danger that his plan would fail from lack of coordination as a result of such rigid compartmentalization. But the alternative risk was to fail if discovery preceded action. And so, he had no choice but to rely on the assurances of his general staff that the same anarchic convictions that drove them were shared by the thousands of true believers they commanded across the world.

  Until now, Crypto had rarely called on a member of his team to take a direct and confirmable action. But if the Bees were right, he had no choice. And he could not risk that they were wrong.

  * * *

  Frank’s phone rang; the frosty voice of Audrey Addams was waiting for him. Neither knew they were not the only ones on the line.

  “Do you know what time it is?” Addams asked.

  Frank was briefly bewildered; he stabbed at the keys on his laptop and pulled up his calendar.

  Darn it. He should be upstairs in a meeting. “Sorry! I’ll be right up!”

  By the time he was leaving the elevator on the sixty-fifth floor, someone was slipping unseen into his office and closing the door.

  As the intruder expected, Frank’s tablet computer, with its thumbprint sign-in sensor, was in his backpack, sitting as usual on the floor next to his desk. Good. But his desktop was a mess. Not so good. The intruder stood on the desk chair and took a picture to record the exact placement of everything. Then she climbed down and donned a pair of latex gloves before clearing a space in front of the chair. That was better.

  She removed a plastic tablecloth from her bag and spread it on the desktop before easing Frank’s tablet out of his pack and placing it in the middle of the cloth.

  Working quickly but carefully, she removed several more items from her bag: two sheets of plastic, one with an adhesive backing, a container of fine pink powder, an old-fashioned shaving brush, a magnifying glass, and scissors. After sprinkling the powder on the glass screen, she used the shaving brush to lightly whisk most of it off again on to the tablecloth. Peeling the backing off the adhesive-coated sheet, she placed the sticky side lightly on the glass surface of the tablet. Then she removed it and placed the same side down on the second sheet of plastic.

  Now came the tricky part. She hoped Frank Adversego didn’t have unusually dry fingers. A few seconds with the magnifying glass confirmed he did not. There were two satisfactory thumbprints to choose from trapped between the sheets of plastic, each with its unique whorls faithfully reflected in powder. She cut the best print out.

  Only one more step to go. For that, she removed a laptop from her bag. Then she powered Adversego’s tablet up and pressed his borrowed fingerprint on its sensor. Yes! The icons of Frank’s apps popped into view.

  By the time Frank returned from his meeting, his desk was as he had left it and his tablet was once again nestled in his computer bag, exactly the same as before. Or almost so. Now it had some interesting new software installed. That malware would use the tablet’s microphone and on-screen keyboard to record everything Frank said and typed, and then transmit that data to its secret recipient. She also had a copy on her laptop of everything archived on Frank’s tablet.

  * * *

  Crypto was pleased. The chance he had taken had paid off well. Within a few days of the intruder’s visit, the malware now hiding on Adversego’s tablet had captured and transmitted much of value to him. Of particular importance was the login information he needed to access all the software the intruder had copied from Frank’s tablet.

  From there, it was an easy step to compromise Frank’s laptop, to transfer the same malware to that device, and then to examine everything he found there. Since Adversego used his laptop rather than a desktop computer to log on to the First Manhattan computer system – and BankCoin – nothing that Frank would do in his office, at home, or on the road would escape Crypto’s attention from now on.

  Chapter 19

  We’ve Got to Quit Meeting Like This

  Aleksandr Isayevich Shukov was following familiar corridors on his way to the monthly meeting of the Joint Cyber Strike Council (JCSC). He was also following the director of the Federal Security Service, walking a step behind his boss, as was appropriate to his own inferior status. That was a gap his pride yearned to close. Although Shukov was Superintendent of Cyber Activities within the FSS, his position was based merely on ability, not political connections. If all went well, perhaps the director would nudge the public perception of Shukov’s standing a bit higher by engaging him in conversation as they left the meeting.

  That would be helpful. Like the Soviet administration before it, the Russian government was filled with secure bureaucrats who contributed little and were paid much. That was a fine system for those with political patrons, but alas, Shukov had no well-connected mentor. He could only advance on real achievement.

  Like most such inter-agency gatherings, the JCSC meetings were largely meaningless bureaucratic exercises, valued mostly by their participants as opportunities to assess each other’s influence and weaknesses. But beneath the surface was a real purpose. Last year, the president of the Russian Federation had elevated the status of the JSCS’s mission to highest priority. Among other knock-on results, the minutes of each meeting were now sent at once to his office, depriving directors of their accustomed opportunity to request the removal of anything that might make them look bad.

  All of which put great pressure on those like Shukov, who sat at the right hands of their directors and would be responsible for answering any question their bosses wished to dodge, which was to say all the difficult ones. Woe to Shukov if he was underprepared, allowed his agency to appear to be behind plan, or, worst of all, if he should say anything that didn’t cast his director in the best of all possible lights.

  Shukov’s job was high stress, to be sure. But it was also meaningful. Whether his role was meaningfully good or bad was an interesting question that seemed to have a different answer every day.

  In principle, t
he concept of cyber conflict could be seen as a positive advancement in the age-old art of war. With a few keystrokes, a well-prepared attack could darken a city or even an entire nation, degrading its ability to respond to a physical assault. Through such means, a small country might be overrun in a matter of hours with almost no casualties. That was a more humane way to gain territory or punish an enemy than softening up targets with thousands of tons of bombs before putting your own troops at risk.

  And much more economical. To overcome the opponent in cyber war, a nation mostly needed brains, not cash. Russia might not have the riches the Americans enjoyed, but it had always excelled in math and sciences. Not to mention chess.

  But cyber weapons could also be as lethal as traditional arms. In the first and second World Wars, the carnage was horrifying, yet the enemy had killed or wounded only a fraction of any combatant’s population. Even in the Soviet Union, with its twenty million casualties, the great majority of the people survived. Often hungry, yes, and miserable, always. But alive.

  Consider, then, the consequences of taking down an enemy’s power grid and keeping it off-line for several weeks in the middle of winter. Most of the population would die of exposure, thirst, or hunger. Everything ran on or was managed by devices reliant on electricity – the pumps that moved petrol into the trucks and trains that transported food, the computers that controlled the delivery of water and the removal of sewage, even the heating system of every home. Take away a nation’s electricity and you would transport it back into the Stone Age.

  A cyberattack could therefore deliver the same punch as the neutron bombs developed during the Cold War – nuclear weapons that released enormous bursts of sub-atomic particles able to kill everyone within range while leaving buildings and infrastructure intact and radiation free, ready for the attacker to take over. Even during those tense and dangerous times, both sides decided not to deploy devices so obviously suited for naked aggression alone. If something as horrible as nuclear weaponry could be justified at all, it must be for defensive purposes only.

  But there was no consensus, or even dialogue, on whether and how cyber weapons should be restricted. That was in part because the field was still evolving, and in secret at that. No one knew how far the potential to wreak havoc with cyber weapons could be extended. To the extent the military of any nation was having success in pushing that envelope, it was hardly likely to share that knowledge with its enemies. It helped that the pundits of the press were preoccupied with other computer-related hobgoblins – whether people might be run over by self-driving cars, for example, and if governments could use “big data” techniques to invade privacy.

  Like every meeting of the JCSC, today’s would therefore be held in the paranoid shadow of an insecurity that recalled the Cold War: the fear that the other side might be ahead, tempting it to use that advantage to launch a preemptive attack. For all intents and purposes, the nuclear arms race had been replaced by a cyber one, and the last arms race hadn’t ended well for Russia. Shukov and his compatriots were determined that this one would.

  He was now in the meeting room, which was dominated by an endless table that turned a corner four times to form a long rectangle surmounted by microphones and surrounded by chairs. At the far end were two Russian flags, and between them, the high-backed chair that would be filled by the Chairman of the JCSC. Shukov watched idly as the chairs around the table were occupied. The heads of the military forces were already in their seats, sweating in their heavy uniforms, each one flanked by his own deputy. Shukov knew most of the other number twos. Some were technical experts, like himself. Others were political favorites who could only parrot what their more knowledgeable subordinates had briefed them on before the gathering. Shukov naturally preferred the former as they could be engaged in useful discussions. The others could only repeat what they had been told, over and over if necessary, never giving an inch or agreeing to anything.

  On most occasions, Shukov had little reason to be concerned before a monthly meeting. But today was different. True, the JCSC agencies were jointly charged with designing and deploying credible cyber strategies and weapons. But the authority to establish priorities and designate targets lay elsewhere. Those decisions were made by bureaucrats giving as much weight to economic and political concerns as military considerations. This resulted in uncertainty, and sometimes, his agency was taken by surprise. Just two months ago, that had happened, when BankCoin was added to the high-priority target list, and the FSS – meaning, for all intents and purposes, Shukov – was assigned primary responsibility for devising a way to take it down. As yet, he had no progress to report. And there was the Chairman now, a small, grim man sporting a Lenin-esque beard, flanked by two aides carrying his briefcases. Shukov wondered whether either actually included any papers at all. The chairman immediately banged the gavel placed in front of his throne-like chair and called the meeting to order.

  It did not help that everyone understood these monthly meetings were largely theater. If agencies needed to cooperate on a target strategy, that would occur elsewhere through discussions among staffers who actually knew what they were talking about. The real objective for each meeting was to reach the motion to adjourn without looking like a donkey. Shukov could almost feel the subliminal message beaming from his boss today. That message was, “Don’t screw up!”

  Thankfully, there were a few tools at his disposal to avoid doing so. Most notably, the shared goal of surviving a meeting unscathed had inspired the development of a collection of evasive code phrases. Each was designed to sound convincing while saying and committing to as little as possible. They were particularly useful for an agency behind in fulfilling its assignments. Naturally, everyone in attendance wanted to report only good news. And if not, to blame somebody else.

  No one was fooled by any of those phrases. But at the same time, everyone knew the day would come when they would need to employ the same verbal gimmickry, so it was in no one’s interest to point out the missing clothes of whichever emperor might be speaking. Shukov had been boning up on those phrases all morning.

  He stole a look at his watch. Soon it would be the FSS director’s turn to make his presentation. He would certainly dip into the non-answer phrase book regarding BankCoin before moving on as quickly as possible.

  And now it was time. The chair asked Shukov’s boss to begin his report, and he began ticking through the items on his list. In the middle of the most sleep-inducing part of his presentation, he slipped in the following:

  “I will next mention the western blockchain-based financial network known as BankCoin. I am pleased to report that my agency is advancing aggressively in devising a strategy to detect vulnerabilities in the BankCoin system that can be exploited on command to disable, or destroy, that network. Turning now to –”

  “One moment,” the chair interrupted. “BankCoin has been assigned a ‘highest urgency’ priority. It has been months now since –”

  “Two months,” the FSS head interjected quickly.

  “Very well, two months,” the chair repeated testily, “since you were given this task. Please be more explicit about what you have accomplished so far.”

  Naturally, the director turned to Shukov.

  “Of course, Mr. Chairman,” Shukov said. “First, I must note that this is a very new area of technology, so new that there are few experts in it. Indeed, it is evolving so rapidly that someone who is an expert today may be behind the times tomorrow. That said, FSS is proceeding on multiple fronts to uncover any vulnerabilities that may exist. Those efforts include assigning our best cyber staff to analyze the BankCoin software for weaknesses and enlisting the best talent in the extensive network of private sector contractors we support. We have often used these resources in the past to develop and launch attacks that have been both successful and deniable.”

  Shukov and his boss sat very still, hoping the dodgy answer would suffice.

&nb
sp; The other attendees watched with mild interest as the chairman stared down the room at Shukov and his boss for what felt to them, at least, like a very long time. Would the chairman publicly humiliate them or let them off with a warning? “Very well,” he said at last. “But I place you on notice that next time you will present a detailed report describing exactly what is being done, what you have achieved, and the projected delivery date – a delivery date in the near future, I must emphasize – for a credible attack that can be launched immediately if the president wishes to do so.”

  The message was loud and clear. Sufficiently so that Shukov’s director, who knew nothing at all about cyber warfare but did know a month could pass very quickly, walked an extra step ahead of Shukov as they left the meeting.

  * * *

  Frank was returning to Washington from another long day in New York. But his fatigue disappeared when he entered the foyer of his building. There, on the floor below the mailboxes, was the package he’d been waiting for. He grabbed it and almost ran up the stairs.

  When he lifted the contraption from the box, he felt a deep surge of satisfaction. It hadn’t been cheap, but he’d found the ultimate anti-squirrel device: a clear plastic, cylindrical feeder surrounded by a round cage hanging from springs. A bird could stand on one of the small perches attached to the cage and reach the seeds through holes in the cylinder. But not a squirrel – its weight would stretch the springs and drag the cage down until it blocked the access ports.

  Frank filled the feeder with seed and hung it from his upstairs neighbor’s balcony. He couldn’t wait to see the frustration on Fang’s face as he tried and failed, and tried and failed again, to reach his reward, just like the squirrels in the video at the vendor’s website. Revenge would be Frank’s. And it would be sweet.