Free Apocalypse Drift by Joe Nobody

of other countries were computer servers in all sorts of configurations and clusters. Server farms, as they were called in the West, had sprung up throughout the East as well. Like the rest of the world, the populations of Asia demonstrated an unquenchable thirst for access to the internet. To feed the growing demand, thousands of gateways, hosting centers, and access points were installed throughout the region. MOSS controlled a significant number of these technology centers on the mainland. Not only did China monitor and control her people’s activities on the World Wide Web, the clandestine organization fully understood the power of the internet as a weapon.
    For years, the game of one-upmanship had escalated. The Chinese would hack into some sensitive network or computer system, quickly answered by a new encryption routine or firewall that eliminated the threat. The hackers would overcome the new technology and penetrate again. This cycle repeated itself on an almost daily basis. Americans read press releases and watched newscasts covering the subject, but the reports always blamed nameless, unknown attackers, and indisputable links to the Red Nation were difficult to prove.
    Most Western experts believed the Chinese were engaging in what amounted to digital war games. If an actual military confrontation between China and the US were to ever occur, military strategists expected an attack aimed at disrupting the Pentagon’s computers.
    It was also well known that hacking was used for industrial espionage. The computers storing schematics for the latest fighter jet, or material data sheets for a new type of stealth coating were always being probed and tested. Often, ultra-valuable information was stolen and delivered to engineers and sci entists working for the Red government.
    In the US, exorbitant amounts of money were invested to protect both government and private computer systems. After it became public that someone had stolen this, or infiltrated that, many copycat hackers decided they too might profit from stealing other people’s information. It wasn’t unheard of for one US company to hack another in order to obtain a competitive advantage.
    There was also a huge wave of cyber-crime associated with identity theft. Millions of Americans woke up to find themselves the victims of such activities, often having their lives ruined by criminals who were thousands of miles away. Once a person’s confidential information was known, the thieves applied for loans that they never intended to repay.
    Most of the money allocated to protect critical systems was focused on the industrial and military supply chains. Diplomats had been the targets of spying for years and had developed hardened, more secure systems. To the defense industry, digital skullduggery was something relatively new.
    There were really two different types of hacking. The category most widespread was the theft of information. The other was destructive intrusions, often called viruses. In 2012, it became public knowledge that the United States had infected Iranian computers with a virus that slowed the Islamic nation’s nuclear weapons program. There were other organized attacks that remained secret.
    The beauty of MOSS’ Operation Golden Mountain was that it broached new territory in the realm of using computers as offensive weapons. The software developed by the hundreds of expert programmers working for the ministry wasn’t stealing or destroying anything. The target systems had been intentionally built and designed to be used exactly as MOSS intended.
    The US Internal Revenue Service had caught up with the modern world some ten years before when it began allowing American taxpayers to file their tax returns digitally over the internet. Millions upon millions of people embraced the option in order to receive a timely refund. The digital returns could be processed faster and cheaper than their paper ancestors, and the system was popular both within the