Chapter

4

CONTAGION? Baines clients turn on Peekskill employer

This-is-Peekskill.com

VICECK BATTEN DOWN THE HATCHES: Leak suggests cyber team suspect attack via third-party

pharmamatters.com

Silent Simmons: Ex-SilasFoods CFO still refuses to comment on alleged cyber attack

Food Industry Post

“I never trusted the Internet; not when I was a cop, not when I was an attorney, and now I do corporate security, I trust it even less. The government developed it to survive a nuclear attack. The ARPANET right? Think about it: you can’t destroy it. And if you can’t destroy it, you can’t stop criminals using it. You get me? OK, so, you might say, criminals don’t use the legit Internet – the one your grandma uses to order her groceries and check out beach shots of George Clooney; sure they do – no, you might say, they use TOR – The Onion Router – gateway to the deep, Dark Web full of dangerous monsters. Guess who invented that baby? The US Navy! You get me? This stuff was designed to survive and fight wars! And we use it to watch cute kitty vids!”

Domenic Rizzo was as large as he was voluble. He was six foot four and he packed a gorilla sized belly inside a straining maroon velvet jacket. He towered over Taryn, and made Crawford look as if he’d been whittled from a reed.

Jim had prepared himself for a laconic, severe man in an FBI-issue plain, black suit. Instead Domenic Rizzo turned up in a spotless sunset-orange 1970s muscle car. When it roared its way into Baines Packaging’s carpark, a crowd appeared swiftly, and Rizzo let the engine throb for a while to entertain them.

But now, in the Baines boardroom, Rizzo was carefully arranging a set of files in a crescent around his laptop on the modest board table Jim had ordered from the local store. Jim examined the security expert’s face; it was puffy, pock-marked, but strangely handsome in a Dean Martin kind of way. Dean Martin with extra beef, and way too many glasses of chianti.

“We know where the breach came from…” Jim began, but Rizzo ignored him. He was tapping on the keyboard of his laptop. His fingers were too big for the keys and he had to concentrate so he didn’t press two keys at once. That made his hand movements seem almost dainty. Rizzo was a mass of visual contradictions.

Taryn spoke up and Rizzo looked over at her. “We believe it was a single whaling attack on Jim, and the target was SilasFoods and not anyone else,” she said.

Rizzo smiled. His teeth had been whitened and straightened and they gleamed in the fluorescent light. “I admire your optimism. And you are?”

“Taryn Lowell…” she began, but Crawford cut in.

“She’s our network manager, and a very fine one too,” Crawford said. He sounded defensive. Taryn frowned at him. She didn’t need him to either justify her presence at the meeting, or explain why she occupied her position at such a tender age.

Rizzo nodded and clapped his hands together as if clearing the room of doubt. “I have heard about Ms Lowell. She’s been mentioned in quite a few despatches in IT security circles. And not just because of your band, Taryn, which is very fine I hear, but because of your work on your new hybrid network. It’s cutting edge.”

Taryn was shocked for a moment, and then she smiled and blushed.

Jim looked at her with surprise. Then he said, “Of course, we have complete faith in Taryn and…”

Rizzo cut him off again; “Jim, can I call you Jim?”

“Sure.”

“Jim, and Crawford, Taryn, I’m not here to worry about your network or even your business, I’m here to worry about Viceck’s security. That’s what they want to hear. I want to prove to them that that’s what we’re doing. And it is what we will be doing. It’s what you’re paying me to do. So, Viceck have, of course, already quarantined every point of contact between the two companies, and they’ve suspended all digital connections.”

“That’s a bit drastic isn’t it?” Jim said, his heart pounding. The Viceck business was worth millions every year. He couldn’t afford to lose it.

“Ah, your British understatement, I love it. It’s like that Lord guy in Downton Abbey, boy, he’s a calm one… First World War… ‘a little difficulty overseas’” – Rizzo attempted a British accent and only managed Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins – “Daughter’s lover dies in her bed… ‘bad show old chap!’” Rizzo barked a laugh and clapped his chubby hands again. He took a breath and then became serious again. Very serious.

“Sir, your relationship with Viceck is in the balance…for now. Do you realize how much danger any breach places them in? They are a pharmaceutical multinational that spans the world. They make some of the most successful medicines on earth; someone gets in and tries to screw with their formulas on the production line – people die. Viceck’s drugs in development get hacked… they stand to lose billions. Their machine-to-machine wearable health monitoring technology gets hacked… that’s a threat to patient records… and privacy. Their database of scientists gets compromised… and that’s blackmail opportunities or even death threats for anyone who’s worked on animal experiments… You get the picture?”

Jim, Crawford and Taryn sat silently. They got the picture.

Then Taryn put her hand up. She wanted to say something. Rizzo laughed and opened his arms as if to hug her, “Come on, talk, I’m not here to punish you good people. This isn’t your fault… this is what happens in modern business, it goes with the territory. You do business using any kind of digital technology and the hackers are going to come buzzing around you looking for nectar. Come on, speak, speak!”

“I was doing some research…” she looked at Jim, then turned back to Rizzo. “Jim… Mr Baines… got a friend request from a very old… acquaintance just before the infected email from the guy in Germany came in. Both he and Hannah Simmons got the same request…”

“Hannah Simmons as in the ex-CFO of SilasFoods, right?” Rizzo said.

“Yeah…”

Jim cut in; “Taryn, maybe you and I need to talk about this first…”

“No, no, we’re a team here, Jim, I’m on your team now, OK? You gotta trust me. Totally trust me.” Rizzo said, “Let’s get to the heart of the matter, it’ll be better for all of us.”

“Sorry Jim but… Look, Brandon Miles isn’t the mastermind in all this, I think that’s clear because we’re talking about him right now. I think he’s got involved in something he really doesn’t understand,” Taryn said.

“You mean this guy isn’t after the money?” Rizzo asked.

“Exactly. He’s after Viceck,” Taryn said, “The last thing you said – the scientists who worked on animal experiments. Brandon has lots of links with radical political movements, most are mainstream, including the animal rights campaigns he’s been writing blogs for and doing investigative work on. But some are not so mainstream.”

“I get the picture. OK, so that’s a good theory. Still, if it’s true, then that means Viceck really will have to cut you off. In fact, that would seal the deal, people.” Rizzo tapped a few keys on his laptop as if to isolate Baines Packaging in cyberspace.

Taryn looked shocked. “No, I mean, we can sort this because… because we know who might be behind it, surely you don’t have to be so… like, drastic?”

“The word ‘might’ undermines the word ‘know’, Taryn. It’s a good theory but it’s conjecture. Bottom-line is, your company was breached, which led to another maybe losing a valuable piece of IP…”

“That’s not been proved,” Jim said.

“Yet. Not been proved, yet. I’m here to go through your network and all your systems to make sure nothing else is snoozing deep in some software, ready to wake when you go back to normal. You have to realize that the worst thing I could find is that Viceck was the target all along. And I have to tell the truth, despite the fact that you good people are paying my bill. When Viceck’s board even gets a hint that they might have to go public and admit that there’s been a breach of records or data you can imagine the panic. And you can imagine what it would do to their share price? To their reputation? To the people who rely on their drugs? It would be a disaster. Viceck would have to write to every single doctor, every single employee, existing and retired and even the ones they’ve fired! They’re going to do everything in our power to avoid that day. To avoid those headlines. To cut off the oxygen from all those reporters who are circling over Viceck waiting for a good story.

Jim froze. Lisa Terry was already circling. The image of vultures seemed very apt. His heart pounded. He dared not admit that he’d already been questioned by a reporter, and one who seemed to know more than even he did.

This was bad. This was very bad. And if Brandon was the source, even one that was out of his depth as Taryn believed, then he wished he could grab him by the throat and shake him until…

“Shall we get to work, people?” Rizzo said as if he were a kind uncle. To Jim, he sounded like an undertaker.

***

Brandon Miles was nervous. The Hannah Simmons attack had proved his worth to G, and so he’d got funding to go further. To get to where he wanted to be when he started this thing. Carla had told him to stick to just campaigning, but that was frustrating him. Nothing ever changed. It just got worse. The big companies just got more powerful. They just did what they wanted no matter how outraged ordinary people got. And when ordinary people see that nothing changes, they retreat into apathy. That’s what the capitalist behemoths wanted. It’s how they extended their hegemony. It made Brandon feel helpless. Small. Insignificant. He was not insignificant and he’d prove it.

Finding the hacker was his first coup. The guy – if it was a guy, Carla got indignant when he assumed it was one – turned out to be very good. He… she… might be in Rio, they might be in Mumbai or New York or even back home in some hick town in Connecticut. Carla warned him against the clichés; “He or she is probably not on a personality disorder spectrum. These people are professionals now.” Carla worked with troubled teens in Hackney. She was sensitive about labelling them or assuming they’d fall into a life of crime. Brandon respected that, he was just tired of the fact that she judged him all the time. The relationship wasn’t working out. Brandon felt it was time to move again. But he’d moved so many times. Never been able to set down proper roots. He couldn’t outrun the restlessness that had plagued him all his life.

So, the hacker – Brandon defiantly decided to think of him as a guy, Carla would have to put up with his innate sexism – the hacker, wherever he was, did what he was asked to do. What G wanted. And quickly. G was using Brandon’s political motives as a cover. That was fine. Let him. It was classic realpolitik – my enemy’s enemy is my friend. That kind of vibe.

But G was an impatient man. His colleagues were impatient too. They had a plan and that plan was to get into Viceck and hold it to ransom. Big corporates paid big bucks to stay out of the news. They seemed more afraid of the bad PR than they did of losing their data. Brandon could understand that. Lose the trust of the people you exploit and the exploitation gets less profitable.

But maybe G understood that there was something else that motivated Brandon. There’d been that short meeting they’d had in Germany. The only time they’d actually met. G had thought for a moment after outlining his plan – and his plan was the plan he’d made that plain – and he’d asked Brandon, “But why, if these people are your friends are you using them in this way?”

The question had surprised Brandon. G was, after all, a criminal. His concept of friendship was surely qualified by an overriding drive for money and power. Brandon didn’t answer. He just shrugged his shoulders and mumbled something about more important, historical trends and objectives. G waved them away with his stubby, hairy hands, and downed a third schnapps.

Why was he doing it? Brandon didn’t quite know. Both Hannah and Jim had gone mainstream far too quickly after leaving the LSE and London. Jim could have had Hannah all to himself, but he let her slip away. Brandon didn’t want to be tied down too young – Hannah had pleaded with him to give their relationship a chance, but he’d walked away. She didn’t rebound into Jim’s arms – she was stronger than that, even then. So, she put her energy into becoming a big noise in business – a ‘whale’ – and she’d succeeded. And with one of the world’s most exploitative multinationals. Brandon hated that. She’d sold out way too quickly and easily. This future wasn’t the future they’d imagined back in the mid-1980s. He hadn’t betrayed it. Both Jim and Hannah had decided to play the corporate rules, and now they’d have to suffer the consequences.

Brandon knew he was on the edge of leaving – and Carla could sense it. They spent too much time together in the small flat. She said it was too expensive. But he liked it. He loved Brick Lane. The most vibrant street in London. He loved the smells that rose from the Indian restaurant below. He liked to watch the owner’s son stand outside accosting passers-by with ‘Table for two? Table for Three? Come right inside. Best Balti this side of the Baltic.”

It was vibrant. It was thriving. It was a river of humanity: Bengalis, Syrians, Turks and, latterly, hipsters. Lots of executive types came here looking for a good Indian lunch to do business over. And there were more now that the old Truman Brewery building had been turned into offices for high-tech start-ups. It felt like the centre of the world, and he was determined to be at the centre, whatever it took. And start the fight back – not in a tent outside some skyscraper on Wall Street or near St Pauls… but where it mattered most now: in cyberspace.

***

Taryn closed the door to Jim’s office, something she never did. Jim looked up from his PC and he instantly knew the situation had got worse.

“She has to have an inside source,” Taryn said.

“Who? Inside where? What?” Jim’s tired brain had stopped being able to process cryptic statements long ago. He craved black-and-white sentences and certainties. Both in short supply lately.

“Lisa Terry. You spoke to her right?”

“I was completely evasive.”

“She has a source inside SilasFoods and maybe even Viceck. Look.” Taryn put that morning’s edition of The New York Daily over Jim’s PC keyboard. Jim scanned the page but couldn’t read anything. His heart was racing too fast. His mind hadn’t been able to change gear.

“What? What I am supposed to be reading?”

Taryn leant over and put her finger on a bold headline, halfway down the front page. “There.”

Jim focused, read the headline and then the by-line; read them again, skipped down the body of the article, saw his name, Hannah’s, SilasFoods, Viceck, Baines Packaging, words and phrases leaped out as his eyes scanned up and down the newsprint: blunder, cyber-breach, probable data theft, law, consequences, angry shareholders, possible prosecution, loss of trust, dipping share price…

“This is bad,” Jim said.

“More of that British understatement?” Taryn asked.

“This is very bad. This is out of control,” Jim said, softly. He didn’t have the energy to be angry. He just accepted the inevitable.

Taryn slumped into the chair in front of Jim’s desk. “Oh, and don’t even turn on the TV.”

Jim remained silent as he came to realize, with chilling certainty, that now he really had to fight back. Fight back hard. And that the fight would be taking place in the full glare of the media spotlight.

*BREAKING NEWS*

CEO’s blunder leads to Corporate ‘Cyber Firestorm’

Lisa Terry Exclusive: How one small supplier opened up the giants to cyber danger

The New York Daily

Closing price

To be continued…