Tim Washburn - Cyber Attack

Chicago

Peyton is frozen with fear as laughter and chatter drift down the corridor from Ranjeet’s store. She doesn’t know if Ranjeet escaped or if he’s now in a fight for his life. Either way, there’s not a hell of a lot Peyton can do about it. Still hidden behind the chair, her eyes dart around the lobby, searching for a better—safer—place to hide. The circular desk in the center of the lobby where the security guards usually sit is an option, but it also might be a magnet for the thugs if they venture down the hall. Still scanning, her eyes land on the door to the stairs—her old go-to. Would they have any reason to leave the main floor? Not much upstairs but offices, and the basement is just parking. What about those ritzy condos? The residences start on the twenty-second floor and Peyton can’t see them putting out all that effort when there’s easier pickings on the street. But if they get me in the stairwell they’ll run me down like a cheetah chasing after an antelope.

Peyton shifts her gaze to the lobby entrance, praying Eric will walk through the door. Why? Eric’s not going to be much help. Peyton hears the squeak of tennis shoes on the polished marble floors and her heart, already hammering, redlines. She cups a hand around her ear and tilts her head, straining to hear as her brain screams for her to leave. More squeaks, then a loud bark of laughter. They’re definitely heading her way. Fuck! Her eyes dart to the case of water, then to the stair door. There’s no time. Peyton grows more frantic as the voices grow louder. Lunging to her feet, she grabs her bag and runs for the exit. Pushing on the dead automatic doors, she glances over her shoulder to see the group of thugs rounding the corner, their bats splattered with blood.

“Hey,” one of them says. “Need some help?” Others in the group laugh as they move closer. “I bet you got a sweet li’l pussy on you, huh?” the man says, obviously the leader of this ragtag army.

Grunting, Peyton pushes on the doors with all her weight. She feels the left-side door give and she bears down, dropping the bag in the process.

“Hey, I’m talkin’ to you,” the leader says.

Sweat is dripping down her face and burning her eyes. She steals a quick glance back to see the group of thugs only a few feet away.

“I axed you a question,” the man says. “If you’re not goin’ to answer, I guess we’re gonna have to find out for ourselves. I call first dibs,” the man says, eliciting more laughter from the group.

Peyton’s body is trembling from the exertion and fear. With one final hard shove, the doors part just enough for her to squeeze through. She reaches back for the bag, but it’s too large and won’t fit through the opening. Tugging on the one handle she can reach, it rips off, sending her sprawling on the sidewalk. She glances up to see the leader pushing on the doors. Scrambling to her feet, she takes off down the sidewalk, running headlong into the crowd and screaming for help. The shattered glass rips through the soles of her bare feet, leaving a trail of bloody footprints in her wake. Her pleas for help go unanswered as the hordes of people trudge onward, ignoring her. She glances over her shoulder to see the group of thugs spilling out onto the sidewalk, carrying her bag and the water she’d worked so hard to get.

An older gentleman dressed in a suit stops and asks, “What’s wrong, young lady?”

Out of breath, all Peyton can do is point at the gangbangers now coming their way.

The blood drains from the man’s face. “I’m sorry. There’s little I can do to help,” he says before crossing the street.

Peyton watches in horror as the leader reaches for the pistol tucked into his waistband. Her feet bloody and raw, she turns and hobbles forward, waiting for the bullet to pierce her back.

A shot rings out.

When she doesn’t fall over dead, she feels momentary joy, thinking he had missed. Another shot echoes down the street and Peyton remains upright, still breathing. It’s only when she lifts her head and looks ahead that she knows the guy didn’t miss.

Advancing down the street are three members of the National Guard, rifles braced against their shoulders. “Everybody down!” one of the soldiers shouts as people dive for cover.

Peyton turns to see her tormentor dead on the street and her hope soars until one of the gang members fires off a shot that shatters the windshield of the car next to her. Move your ass, Peyton. She drops to her belly and crawls across the broken glass, taking cover behind the car. She peeks around the side to see the gangbangers scattering. A couple of bigger guys are slow to react and they pay for it with their lives.

The soldiers pass Peyton’s location and continue down the street, their rifles at the ready. Peyton turns and looks longingly at the looted shoe store. It’d be my luck to get shot for stealing a pair of shoes. But what if I sneak into Bloomingdale’s? It’s just right there. She turns to look at the looted department store. What are the odds the soldiers will come back this way? Still arguing with herself, she pushes to her feet. Glancing back toward her office building, all thoughts of shoes flee when she spots a woman tiptoeing around the pools of blood to snag the case of water she climbed seventeen floors to get. “Uh-uh, bitch,” Peyton, mutters, hobbling out from behind the car and up the street.

Manhattan

There’s bad news and then there’s really bad news. The bad news is that the stock exchange software is infested with the malware and Paige wonders if they’ll ever get rid of it entirely. Now, the really bad news—about half the database that records and documents stock trades is trashed. The final tally for the damage won’t be known for months, but it figures to be in the trillions of dollars. To pile on, the redundant system out in New Jersey is also infested. But the fears don’t end there. Paige is betting the broker-dealers who make trades on the exchange are also compromised. The malware turns out to be a worm, a nasty little piece of software and, like other worms, it propagates quickly, self-replicates, and requires no user intervention. As far as Paige can tell, the payload on this worm was designed for one purpose only—destruction. Paige turns to look at Hank. “What was the worm with multiple payloads that the Kaspersky Lab found?”

“A newer version of the Duqu worm. Newer even than Duqu 2.0. It was discovered on their system in early 2015, and the lab thought it was one of the most sophisticated pieces of malware to date. The hackers were clever enough to make slight variations to each attack, such as slight changes to file names or algorithms to avoid detection. The version they found had at least four compressed and encrypted payloads.”

Paige shakes her head. “Who needs Google when I have you? Anyway, I’ve seen some of the Duqu source code and this isn’t it. Not even close.”

“Could it be an updated version of the Stuxnet malware?”

“If it is, there are some radical differences from the original code I saw. I’ll send it to Natalie in a moment. I’m still having a hard time wrapping my head around the idea that all these attacks are linked to this one piece of malware.”

“That’s my hunch, Paige, but it doesn’t necessarily mean I’m right. Couldn’t they have multiple embedded and encrypted payloads? One for destruction and maybe another targetin’ somethin’ else?”

“It’s possible, but extremely difficult to do.”

“Whoever is behind the hack has spent years developin’ this malware, Paige. Maybe we should reach out to the folks at Kaspersky.”