Free Trojan Horse by Mark Russinovich

session.
     

9
     
    LONDON, UK
    WHITEHALL
    FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH OFFICE
    RESEARCH GROUP FOR FAR EAST AFFAIRS
    IT CENTRE
    1:54 A.M. GMT
     
    B lake led Jeff out of the building with relief, mentioning that he still had a forty-five-minute drive home ahead of him. Meanwhile, Yates had booked Jeff into a boutique hotel just down the street, the Royal Arms, a converted Victorian mansion, which specialized in discretion. As he walked to the hotel, Big Ben pealed just down the river from Whitehall. A light fog drifted through the quiet streets, reminding Jeff of a Sherlock Holmes story.
    The events of this last decade had only served to impress upon Jeff the increasing danger of the cyber world. Computers were under relentless and ever more effective attack, if not from some juvenile hacker looking to claim bragging rights, then from Russian mobsters phishing penetrations seeking financial information, Eastern European gangs out to blackmail companies through denial-of-service attacks, or the ongoing Chinese government campaign to gain security access and information in the West.
    It was a never-ending battle, one that demanded increasing sophistication and proactive measures to effectively counter. The usual antivirus security companies that provided firewalls and scans were constantly playing catch up as they responded to each new attack only
after
it was launched and discovered. Though doing a reasonably effective job, they were essentially counterpunching. All kinds of malware made it into countless computers before being discovered and before a protective patch was prepared, then distributed. His latest client was just such an example.
    Worse, the sophisticated tools needed to create malware were commonly available on the Internet. Any geek with basic malware knowledge could download components and cobble together a virus or Trojan, and many did. And now that criminal bands and certain rogue governments were in the malware business for real, the sophistication of each attack was increasing with each passing month.
    There were, in general, three varieties of malware: junk malware like “scareware,” malware aimed at stealing money or data to sell, and government espionage including cyber warfare. Such state-directed attacks were ongoing and surprisingly effective.
    Valuable data on the U.S. Joint Strike Fighter project, the costliest weapon system ever built, was stolen directly from the Pentagon’s computers. The Air Force’s air-traffic-control system had been penetrated and the intruders downloaded several terabytes of valuable data related to its electronics and design. The Department of Defense’s Secure Internet Protocol Router Network was infected for a time with specially designed software intended to disable the system in time of confrontation or conflict.
    In the private sector, the situation was so bad that a major American manufacturer of computers had actually shipped a new product that contained a virus. Infections in iPhones and other cell phones, in every device commonly used in the twenty-first century were increasingly common. Their use for cyber penetration was only a matter of time.
    The Royal Arms was nearly beside St. James Park. This part of London was rife with history. He’d like to come here with Daryl someday, when neither of them was on assignment. He wondered if they ever would.
    Once in his room Jeff showered then sat in a comfortable chair and despite his exhaustion called Daryl. She sounded glad to hear from him, but then she always did. After he told her what he’d discovered since his e-mail, she briefed him on her examination of the virus code.
    “It’s tight, as far as I’ve been able to see to this point. I still have more to do, though,” she said.
    The heart, the digital soul so to speak, of the Internet and of computers was software code. Code was the magic that made everything work. Code produced the images, the colors, the words, everything.
    Just as there were brilliant