The Blockchain Revolution Page 3

  Hmm. Adversego first showed up on the Bureau’s radar screen by pulling off a cybersecurity coup, thwarting a North Korean nuclear attack plot. All well and good. But then he co-wrote a best seller about it, and a lot of people at the FBI thought he could have made the Bureau look better.

  Hmm again. Then he headed off efforts to hack the last presidential election. When the news leaked out, his co-author wrote another book, and this time definitely made the FBI appear inept. He titled the new book The Lafayette Campaign and in it he chronicled how Adversego saved the day in spite of the clumsy efforts of government agents. According to the author, Frank refused to be interviewed. But how could you believe that?

  The file also said Adversego had a well-known independent streak. And there were unresolved questions concerning his son-in-law. Those related to a barely thwarted attack launched by an extremist group a few years back where once again Adversego played a key role. Clancy kept reading, shaking his head. This guy was like a Teflon-coated bad luck charm. Just a month ago, he was part of a CIA project that blew up. Once again, no one laid any blame at his door. But still.

  Clancy walked to the window of his office. Across Pennsylvania Avenue was the anonymous, neoclassical facade of the FBI’s old home in the RFK Building. He wished he’d had a chance to work there. It looked like every other federal triangle building of the same era, and in his business, it was better to blend in.

  So, no, he decided, asking Adversego in wasn’t an option. Even if he wasn’t responsible for the botched-up CIA operation, it wouldn’t do for his visit to be memorialized in Clancy’s calendar. But on the other hand, the BankCoin platform was as big a target as a terrorist or foreign government could hope for. If someone hacked it, everyone would blame the Bureau for letting it happen, and he’d be the guy in the spotlight. If Adversego discovered anything, Clancy would want to know about it before it turned into something serious.

  He made up his mind. Adversego worked for the bank with primary responsibility for BankCoin’s security. The bank’s management should be happy to assign someone on Adversego’s team to communicate with Clancy. If he or she was like most people, they’d be a bit awed by the chance to work with the FBI. That usually made it easy to get them to agree to keep things quiet.

  He told his administrative assistant to find out who to contact at the bank, and she connected him with Audrey Addams.

  * * *

  Ryan Clancy wasn’t the only one who noticed the press release. So, the other side has recruited the great Frank Adversego, Crypto thought. The same guy who had played a key role in defeating some of the most potentially spectacular cybersecurity attacks of all time. So much the better. Without worthy opponents, victory couldn’t be as sweet.

  Still, having a skilled adversary increased the chance of failure. He’d need to give this new development some thought.

  Yes, a voice said. Yes, indeed you must.

  Chapter 3

  You Want Some Fries with Those Pies?

  There was a knock at Frank’s new office door on the IT floor. It was Hank Taylor, the BankCoin project manager.

  “So – you ready to see the fusion room?”

  “You bet!” Frank said. He’d been looking forward to this. “Fusion room” was a name borrowed from the military. It referred to a highly sophisticated command center set up to monitor and defend against attacks launched from anywhere against a global network. Every major bank and payment card system had one now.

  Frank followed Taylor down the hall to a steel door with a two-slot card reader and a keypad.

  “Okay,” Taylor said. “So, there’s no elevator stop for the fusion room, which is one floor down. It’s completely sealed off except for this single door and a couple of one-way fire exits to the floor below it. Your card is already coded for entry, but you’ll need to come up with a unique password for fusion room entry only. That takes two cards to set.”

  Taylor slid his security card into the top slot, entered his code, poked the hash key, added several more numbers, and pushed the hash key one more time. “Okay. Your turn.”

  Frank put his own card in the second slot, thought for a minute, and typed in a password. “All set,” he said.

  “Great.” Taylor pressed the hash key one last time and removed his card. “You’re all set. But we can only go through one at a time; an alarm will go off otherwise. You go first.”

  Frank did as instructed. The door clicked, and he stepped through into a cement-walled stairwell that only went down. When Taylor joined him, they clattered down a flight of steel steps and turned into a windowless room. Frank guessed it took up most of the floor. The entire space was filled with computer engineers sitting at terminals. Here and there, knots of them talked and pointed at wall-mounted whiteboards.

  “Welcome to BankCoin Security Central, aka the fusion room,” Taylor said. “From here, we have access to every system hosting a copy of BankCoin anywhere in the world. It’s our job to know it if one of those systems is successfully hacked. Needless to say, there’ll be hell to pay if we screw up.”

  “Focuses the mind, doesn’t it?” Frank said.

  “Indeed, it does. That’s why we hired most of our senior personnel away from fusion rooms run by Homeland Security and CYBERCOM, the US military’s central cybersecurity force. You’ll find that most of what goes on here has a kind of military flavor to it. That’s deliberate. We want people to feel like we’re the last line of defense against terrible threats, because that’s what we are. Based on past experience with financial networks, we expect we’ll be fielding over a quarter million attacks a day – that’s about one every three seconds.”

  Frank gave a low whistle. “That’s quite a pounding,” he said.

  “Not when you consider the value of the target,” Taylor said, “or the number of criminals in the business. Last year, cybercrooks made off with almost a half a billion dollars. And that’s before you count cryptocurrency thefts.”

  “There’s an awful lot of people here,” Frank said, scanning the room. “Are you fully staffed?”

  “Yup. Everything is in place for network-wide monitoring when we go live next week. We’re tracking over three hundred major banks, so everybody you see here is scurrying around doing final testing.”

  “What’s behind that door at the end?” Frank asked.

  “Our next stop. That’s where we have our simulated battle space.”

  “Cool!” Frank said.

  Taylor used his card to unlock the door and flipped on the lights inside. Large digital displays surrounded the room, mounted high up on the walls. Taylor sat down at a terminal, and soon the screens began flickering into life. Many displayed maps, each showing a separate continent or region. Others showed various types of data, all graphically presented.

  “Wow!” Frank said. “You’d think we were in the War Room in Washington.”

  “Yeah,” Taylor said. “That’s deliberate, too. Those big pew-pew maps are there to add realism when we run simulated attacks.”

  “‘Pew-pew?’” Frank asked, frowning.

  “Yeah. Like the sound laser guns used to make in old video games. You know: ‘Pew! Pew!’”

  Frank laughed. “That’s great. So, what do they show?”

  It was Taylor’s turn to laugh. “Most of them, nothing. Just a bunch of meaningless lights shooting around the world as if something important was happening.”

  “Because?”

  “Because it impresses the hell out of the suits. We run tests and imagined attacks all the time in the big room with our guys and the techies from the other banks. But the bank execs sit in here when we run a massive attack scenario. Those exercises can go on for hours – sometimes, we simulate systems going down in dozens of countries. You see those phones over there? Professional actors playing journalists, regulators, and other bank managers ring those off the hook to build p
ressure.

  “In the middle of all that commotion, the execs have to make really tough decisions. Someone might walk in from the other room, for example, and ask whether they can pitch a compromised member bank over the rail in order to protect the rest. Some execs make pretty good calls, and some make really lousy ones. Afterwards, we evaluate and critique their performance so, hopefully, they’ll make better decisions when the real thing happens.”

  “I’d like to be a fly on the wall for one of those exercises,” Frank said.

  “I expect you will,” Taylor said. “But not just a fly.”

  * * *

  Frank assumed – correctly – that his arrival on the security floor of the bank was not particularly welcome. The Chief Technical Officer – or CTO – had already assembled a very capable group of experts to manage BankCoin cybersecurity. Frank could imagine them wondering why Benson Cronin suddenly decided to appoint someone from the outside to look over their shoulders. Frank found himself wondering the same thing.

  The CTO told Frank he’d instructed Taylor to do whatever it took to make the arrangement work. Happily, it seemed Taylor had taken that directive in stride. Toward the end of Frank’s first day of work, Taylor had invited him out for a beer. Over their third one, he delivered his own message: don’t make me look bad, and I won’t make you look bad. If that works for you, we’ll get along just fine. Frank assured him it did, and so far, they had.

  Over the days that followed, Frank tried to learn as much as he could without getting in the way or passing judgment on anything. He was impressed with what he saw and found little to criticize.

  * * *

  Crypto decided that today he would learn more about First Manhattan’s new hire, Frank Adversego. It was a name Crypto had been aware of for years. Who in the world of cybersecurity wasn’t?

  He soon discovered his subject did not fit the profile of a self-promotional technology rock star. No provocative, widely read blog; no highly paid speaking engagements; no nothing, really. The only exception was a co-authored, best-selling, true-life thriller relating how he’d thwarted a North Korean plot to set off a nuclear war between the US and Russia. Beyond that, all Crypto could find were random facts in articles about other attacks Adversego had helped prevent. The cybersecurity investigator must be something of a recluse, Crypto decided. Hard to fault someone for that.

  Intriguingly, Crypto couldn’t find any evidence Adversego had worked full time for anyone in years. Why then had he taken the offer from First Manhattan? Crypto shrugged and bought Adversego’s book, as well as another called The Lafayette Campaign, written by Adversego’s earlier co-author, describing a failed attempt to steal the last US presidential election.

  * * *

  It made no difference now where Frank was – at home, on the train, or in his much less lavish office on the fifteenth floor. If he was awake – and sometimes even when he was asleep – he was completely immersed in the blockchain. Day by day, he studied its origins, its evolution, and, most importantly, the many ways in which blockchains had already been successfully attacked.

  But digging deeper didn’t make it clear to him why the blockchain had such an extraordinary appeal to some people. Or why its fans had such a love affair with quirky jargon: in the alternative world inhabited by blockchain aficionados, you encountered whales and bagholders, used dapps instead of apps, solved problems by sharding, and made money when your crypto investments mooned. And you didn’t hold cryptocurrency, you hodl it – that one was the result of a drunk-texted typo that caught on. Moreover, if you were a true believer, you would hodl on to your cryptocurrency no matter what. Even when its value was spiraling down the toilet.

  Frank already knew an almost religious fervor drove many blockchain proponents. As he spent more time on the Reddit pages where the most zealous advocates hung out, he decided some of them were just plain possessed.

  Indeed, the story arc of the blockchain recalled the rise of many religions. In 2008, an unknown developer calling himself Satoshi Nakamoto emerged on the web as the global financial system lurched perilously close to collapse. There, he posted a nine-page white paper describing a computer network capable of supporting the transfer of economic value without involving a bank or the use of an existing currency. Nakamoto never revealed any details about his personal life in any of his many electronic communications. A few years later, after “bitcoin” – the cryptocurrency he created – became a reality, he sank beneath the surface of the web as suddenly and mysteriously as he had appeared.

  To this day, no one knew who the enigmatic cryptocurrency prophet was or where he might be now. Was Nakamoto in fact Japanese as his name suggested? Perhaps he was really a woman? Or even a secret cabal of anarchists obsessed with replacing the crumbling financial system? There were plenty of theories, but no answers. And though bitcoin enthusiasts yearned for the return of their crypto-messiah, he, she, or they never appeared again.

  Frank became dimly aware of a loud rapping sound. He looked up and realized someone was outside his office. He wondered how long they’d been there.

  When he opened the door, he instinctively stepped back, confronted as he was by a pair of eyes so wide-open that the great, dark pupils in their centers suggested hazelnuts stuck in marshmallows. Two sandy eyebrows embellished them like monochromatic rainbows. And below, as if reluctant to interfere, a set of rimless spectacles rode far down a long, thin nose.

  “This is still a good time?” the owner of the eyes asked.

  Frank wondered what time it was and then realized it didn’t matter. He had no idea who the guy was or what he was there for.

  “You wanted a briefing on the BankCoin project, yes?” his wide-eyed visitor added.

  “Right!” Frank said, remembering now. “Yes! Come on in and have a seat.” He took in the rest of the guy’s appearance as he sat down: tall, lean, maybe forty-five years old. Instead of normal office attire, he wore a European soccer team jersey, thin-leg jeans, and long, black pointy shoes. But that was to be expected. This guy was a serious coder and an open source software hotshot to boot. He could wear whatever he wanted.

  “So, I’m Dirk Magnus,” Frank’s visitor said, easing himself into a chair. He had a slight accent Frank couldn’t place. “I’m the bank’s lead developer on the BankCoin project. And you are the new blockchain security guy and also Vijay Patel’s replacement on the BankCoin Foundation board of directors.” It was a statement rather than a question, delivered in a curt voice.

  “That’s right,” Frank said. “I just found out this morning I was replacing Vijay, so anything you can tell me would be a big help.”

  “I can do that,” Magnus replied, his eyes locked on Frank’s. “Please tell me what you already know about the BankCoin Foundation.”

  Frank shifted uneasily in his chair. The guy’s gaze was extraordinary. Frank felt like he was pinned down by two searchlights in the no man’s land between hostile forces.

  “I know it’s a nonprofit foundation formed to support BankCoin development. Also, that First Manhattan organized it about a year ago and that it’s funded by members that include all the major banks plus many of the biggest technology vendors. But that’s about it.”

  “That is not much, but it is all as you say, yes,” Magnus said. “Where should I start?”

  “How about briefing me on where the software came from to begin with?”

  “Okay,” Magnus said, “So, the answer is from the same person who runs the project, Günter Schwert. About a year and a half ago, he posted on GitHub the first copy of what is now BankCoin. Very impressive for one person to create such a large and complex piece of code. He named that version Venice, and we technical folks liked it a lot.”

  Frank had already checked out the BankCoin code on the web. Like most collaboratively developed software, it was hosted at a site called GitHub. Anyone could post code there and see if other
s took an interest in it. To date, more than sixty million programs had been uploaded to the platform and tens of millions of developers visited the site regularly.

  “How come Venice?” Frank asked.

  “When he posted the code, Schwert recalled that Venice is one of the Italian cities where banking as we know it first evolved. Anyway, Venice picked up support quite quickly in the developer community.”

  “What was the appeal?” Frank asked. “There were other financial blockchains by then.”

  “Venice solves many problems bitcoin and most other blockchains have, like poor capacity and speed. The bitcoin software allows a new block to be added every ten minutes, and a block can only contain so many transactions – usually about seventeen hundred. This is pathetic. A major payment card system like Visa can process sixty thousand transactions in the same amount of time. So, the banking system could never use the bitcoin platform to replace existing systems. Also, Schwert’s architecture is most elegant. That attracted a lot of the best talent.”

  “Who does he work for?” Frank asked.

  “No idea.”

  “But you work with him, right?”

  “Yes, of course.” Magnus sniffed. “But this does not mean I’ve met him. Everything is done online. And who cares? Schwert is brilliant.”

  Frank cared, but that could wait. “Okay,” he said, “how about the rest of the top programmers? Do they all work for banks?”

  “No. As I said, word spread that Venice was much better than any of the other blockchains. Once the banks became interested, even more programmers started contributing code. For sure, developers from most of the big banks are involved. But like every other really successful open source project, this one operates as a meritocracy. Anybody can offer to contribute code, and the best developers rise to the top. It does not matter who they work for. Some of the great ones are independent programmers.”