Chapter 3: Occupy Protest - With the summer comes the "Sysmic Tremors"

Ivan taps on the last computer key and waits to insure the money had been transferred into his account. He taps his cigarette out in the ashtray next to his monitor. He then punches in the encoded commands and for the next 24 hours he will allow the use of micro-botnets from 14 computers, he controls, around the world to be used by the unknown third party. The actual owners of the computers do not know their PC’s have been hacked and infected with the micro-botnets.  Under the unlikely circumstances they were detected, Ivan had hundreds of computers under his control around the globe. Even with the large sum of money just wired into his account, Ivan doesn’t think twice about what the anonymous third party was planning to use the micro-botnets.  It had been a long winter in Moscow and now Ivan was going to warmer latitudes.

Jack, now working part time at a retail electronic box-store, continued to work on his secret part of the Occupy Protest. He realized that his was crossing the line, but in all successful revolutions someone has to step up and cross the lines, like Lenin and Mao. He had received his instructions and worked on his part of the program for the past three months. He speculated on how his program fit into the total programming package. He had finished the program earlier than expected but had been instruction to wait and send it today. He had bought a cheep computer from a guy downtown and he was pretty sure it was stolen. He took the local commuter bus and checked for unsecured internet network signals as he rode through different stops. After 18 stops, he found an excellent signal, hit enter, and then send the file. He then took a screw driver opened up the computer and removed the hard drive. He then threw it in the river and walked away. His job done, he could return to the street protests.

Maggie and Don Simpson are simply a working class couple trying to survive living from paycheck to paycheck. Maggie is a receptionist at a local dentist’s office and Don is a plumber. They have worked hard but the economy has taken an unthinkably tough hit on their family. Neither has had a raise in the past two years, as prices continue to rise. Simply, watching the price of gas go up, while the major gas companies make record profits, helps fuel their anger toward the current economic system. Don tried to join the capitalistic system by attempting to start his own plumbing business, but the banks denied giving him a loan. These are the same banks that were bailed out by the federal government. They were too big to fail and he was too small to give a chance. Maggie and Don are not radicals who are followers of Lenin or Mao; they didn’t even know who Mao was or where he lived.  They are common Americans getting rolled by a now corrupt system. Their frustrations at seeing the capitalist system manipulated to favor the wealthy have grown to anger. They don’t want to be millionaires; they just want an equal shot at the “American Dream”. On a Saturday, last fall, Maggie went to an Occupy Protest and found the protesters were not kooks, but rather people like her frustrated with the upper class manipulating the system at her expense. After, Don’s last rejection letter from a major financial bank, he finally became angry enough that he too joined the Occupy Protest movement. He realized, democrat or republican, the political elite were in the pockets of the financial elite. Something had to change; at one time one person could make a difference. The protests are the start of that change, once begun it can’t stopped as long as people still believe.

The programs had been delivered and reassemble to create a super worm computer virus program designed to cripple the electronic infrastructure. Programs like Red Cell were destructive, but the impact of this super worm would be unthinkable. The worm virus was labeled “Sysmic Blast” the worm would infiltrate targeted computer banks and then spread undetected. The worm had a five day dormancy period so it could spread through out interconnected main frames. In five days while it would be passed via email or other programs to other companies. It is easy to understand that people in similar organizations email or send each other files every day. They unwittingly were spreading the worm that would infect and destroy the current economic system.

Instead of simply annoying companies by delivering spam or adware, or for denial-of-service attacks on Web sites, this worm bypassed firewalls and once inside the main frames would split into two subprograms. One program would crash the systems.  Given five day waiting period, before each new activation, the worm can spread exponentially.  The second component, a Trojan, would masquerade itself as regular operating program, actually it would mimic as a clone of another operating program. The designers of the worm knew program patches would be immediately sent out to block the first worm attack. The patches and anti-viral software would miss this clone program and after five additional days it would replicate itself again. This second replication would slightly evolve, adding new code, and begin a second wave of attacks. Once infected, there was no way to stop or remove the program. No one knew if back up files had been compromised. The only way to no for sure was to upload the files and that would then become infected. No computer would be safe. People would be afraid to send or receive emails in fear of infecting their own computers. Specific companies who did not support the needs of their communities, such as providing for the homeless and needy, were initially targeted.  

The micro-botnets had been activated. The program was initially routed through ghost servers in Chagqing and Wanxian China.  These ghost servers randomly turned on and blasted encrypted code throughout the internet. The servers would then turn off and the connections electronically severed; the source site could not be traced back further than the region of origin. The worm had been set loose and was now heading to PC’s to be further directed by the hidden micro-botnets towards their targets. Once at their target sites, they posed as emails to the servers, or replicated as emails toward employees listed through other internet search engines. Someone would click on the email; it only took one person. Even cell phones were not safe. The virus was sent via smart phone apps to individual phones. Once the phone app was click on it would automatically send the virus to the address data files. It would then infect the files and send text messages and emails from the cell phone to people in the cell phone directory. Once they clicked on the message their computers and cell phone would be infected.

Pan went to her office. She felt secure that the Occupy Protests were going to fade away as the summer went on. She knew the protestors still needed to work to survive, they would have to give up or starve. As she walked around her large oak desk she pushed the button to turn on her computer. She looked out over the river as she waited for the computer go through initialize through its operating sequence. When she turned around she dropped her coffee cup as she read, “Resistance is Futile” displayed on her monitor.      

Horrified and angry, Pam immediately grabbed her cell phone to call the IT department, but the phone was silent. As Pam yelled for Sarah, her secretary, to call IT Sarah said she could not get a dial tone. Pam yelled, “God Damn it, someone in IT will pay for this” as she walked toward the elevator.  As Pam pushed open the glass door, entered into IT,  and said “Who’s’ tentacles am I going to crush”, she saw the IT department in complete disarray. IT managers and technicians were screaming and yelling to try different commands. At that, Pam understood the seriousness of the situation, and her powerlessness. John, the senior IT manager, an MIT graduate, walked up to Pam and said, “Here is the situation in 30 seconds. The system has been hacked by an unknown virus. It slipped past our anti-virus software, firewalls, and or proprietary protections. Once in it crushed the mainframe, and worse it even redirected itself to our cell phones. If you used your phone in the past 30 minutes your phone is infected. We believe it’s possible, if you use your cell phone to connect to other computers it can possibly pass the virus on. We just don’t know enough about it right now”. Then the conversation was interrupted, the national news was reporting cyber- attacks on major companies around the country. In the background you could hear, Oh, Jesus, this can’t be happening”.

The IT guru’s had a secure direct link landline telephone in their office in the rare case they ever lost cell phone capability. The landlines were copper cables that were not susceptible to cyber attacks. They had a direct line to their software companies and now everyone was listening in on the conference call. The software company’s super computer was already trying to identify the code and develop a patch. They were reassured that a patch would be available within a day. Pam yelled over the phone that a day was unacceptable. The voice on the other end came back with, “It may not be acceptable, but you better learn to deal with reality”.

Pam, realizing at this point  she could do nothing, relented, and went back to her office where her board of directors were already gathering. They watched the news as other businesses struggled to deal with their own computer meltdowns. Late in the day, John, rushed in and said, “We got the patch”. The virus has been identified and the patch is being uploaded. We will start running diagnostics, but everything should be backed up and running in the next few hours”.  A sigh of relief came out of the boards mouths. John stated it would take a while for the programmers to determine where the virus came from and how it beat the systems defenses”. As the patch moved through the programs the code could not notice another anomaly piggy backing. The first day had been a Sysmic Tremor, the system patch was taking the worm throughout systems in every company; Sysmic Blast was now set to go off.