Long Way Down by Michael Sears Page B

McKenna.”
    “Okay, Dr. McKenna. Now, will you tell me why all this secrecy?”
    “I have enemies.”
    “Obviously.”
    “Have you heard of a company called NEQUISS?”
    “Never.”
    “I created NEQUISS. North Eastern Quadrant Internet Security Systems. White hats. We helped keep the black hats out of your systems.”
    “What’s the product? Anti-malware? Antivirus?”
    “High-level security. IDS Plus.”
    “Is there an IDS Negative?”
    “Intrusion detection systems. Most packages are defensive-only. Passive, reactive, or preventive. They are all defensive. They let you know that someone is trying to hack in, or where they’ve been. Preventive systems actually work to keep them out.”
    “So how is NEQUISS different?”
    “Active. It’s like hiring armed mercenaries with big dogs to patrol your perimeter and take out anyone who tries to break in.”
    “Take out? Like terminate?”
    “We didn’t kill people, but we’d send them home limping—or infected.”
    “So you made some enemies.”
    “Last spring we were called in by a defense contractor in northern Virginia. You’d know the name. They had very good systems in place, but someone was getting in anyway. We identified the baddies as a team of Iranians—military. They’d managed to come in the front end and bypassed all the first-line systems, but they had set off an alarm. They hadn’t gotten through to any sensitive areas but they were getting close. Our team isolated them and guided them down a rabbit hole into a honeypot.”
    “You’re losing me.”
    “We let them see files that were worthless. Manufactured. They looked real, so the hackers kept going deeper.”
    “But really it was a dead end?”
    “They copied a full set of plans for a fictitious surface-to-air missile designed to target drones. What they didn’t realize was that they were also getting a worm we had embedded in the plans.”
    “What did it do? Crash their computers?” I said.
    “No. The worm was a sleeper. It did nothing but migrate until it found its target. This one was designed to attack the power grid. It took a week to travel to the right network and then there were rolling blackouts in Tehran for the next three days.”
    “Cyber warfare.”
    “That’s just one example. This goes on every day. All the time. Ten years ago, it was kids. Geeks like me. Getting kicks, which is what teenagers do, right? Woo-hoo, I hacked the
New York Times
! I rule! Only now it is serious shit. Al-Qaeda. The Russian mob. The Albanians stole one hundred twenty million credit card numbers—full identity, name, address, social, everything including where you go to church—and they made it look like the Russians did it. The Chinese? They’ve got an army regiment that does nothing but hack.”
    “My client thinks that’s who is causing him all of his problems.”
    “Could be. They’re good. But the U.S. is way out in front. They’ve got the edge.”
    “What’s the edge?” I said.
    “English. All computer languages parallel the language of the originators. Most were written by people whose first language is English. So, the code follows similar logic, sentence structure, and syntax. I’m not saying you can’t understand it if your first language is Mandarin or Farsi. But if you grew up speaking English, you’ve got an edge.”
    “And most of the educated classes around the globe now speak English.”
    “God help us if the Indians ever start hacking,” he said.
    “Sounds like a good business. It’s like being an oncologist in Florida. If you’re any good, clients find you. If you suck, you’re probably still making a fortune.”
    “We were very good. But fortune is the devil’s servant. It seemswe pissed off more than a few people. There were death threats, which we ignored for the most part until they started coming to our homes.”
    “You’d been hacked,” I said.
    “Maybe, but the more likely scenario is that we were sold out. We reported everything to the