Vanishing Point - Marc Cerasini [42]
As soon as he reached his cramped cubicle in a dim corner of Hangar Six, Tony kicked up the window air conditioner, then fired up his desktop PC. Then he downloaded a copy of the data from Steve's cell into his desktop. Now the real task began.
Groom Lake AFB, and especially Area 51, was the most closely watched patch of ground in America. The activities of the staff were monitored closely, both inside and outside the base. Telephones, cell phones, and Internet connections were also screened.
Tony knew that Steve had tinkered with his own cell phone, perhaps placed some sort of scrambler inside of it. Despite this precautions, Tony realized that the watchers of Area 51 still knew someone was using an unauthorized cell phone. They just couldn't pinpoint the phone's location or trace down the individual — yet. It was a dangerous game Steve Sable was playing. Sooner or later, he was bound to get caught.
Now Tony was about to test a theory of his own. He had to send a large package of data over the Internet to Jamey back at CTU, without that data being noticed or intercepted by the security screening software. It was much easier to monitor Internet connections than it was cell phone signals, so any misstep by Tony would result in immediate arrest by Air Force security personnel and a rough interrogation by Intelligence officers.
Before he went undercover, Tony, Milo Pressman and Jamey Farrell discussed this problem in CTU's conference room. They came up with several creative solutions. As usual, Jamey's first impulse was to try a high tech fix.
"It's simple," she'd said with a confident smirk. "We use encrypted bundles broken down and dispatched through the base's entire computer network. Air Force security protocols might detect the transmission — and I'm not saying they will — but there's no way their security software could locate which computer was the source of the transmission. Nor could the information be easily decrypted if it was intercepted, because the fragments are too small to provide enough source material to crack the digital coding."
"But wouldn't the data arrive here a mess?" Milo asked.
Jamey shrugged. "I could put it together in no time because I know the code."
"Too risky," Tony replied, shaking his head. "I might be forced to send a data package every other day, or even every day. And I want a 24/7 CTU remote camera link on any classified activity, too. With all that information streaming out of Area 51 in tiny little bundles, the Air Force would make it a point of sniffing me out."
Milo shrugged. "How about we go low-tech. Something like carrier pigeons."
Milo was taking a shot, but it got Tony to thinking. "I think I have a low tech solution," he announced.
Instead of launching into his plan, Tony talked about how the Internet was born out of research begun in the 1960s by the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the U.S. Defense Department. It was they who created the ARPANET, the first networking system consisting of just four computers, at the end of 1967. Soon after that, software and protocol research began. One development was the Network Control Program, or NCP, which provided a standard method to establish communications links between different hosts. This allowed the ARPANET to expand exponentially.
"He's right," Milo said. "According to CIA files, Area 51 had an ARPANET by 1977, if not earlier."
"Yes," Tony continued. "But in 1983, the current TCP/IP protocols replaced NCP as the principal protocol of the ARPANET. After that, the ARPANET became a small component of the then fledgling Internet, and things only got bigger from there."
Milo nodded. "Meanwhile the outmoded NCP protocols were forgotten. Your point?"
"Air Force intelligence used standard TCP/IP protocols to monitor Area 51's Internet connections, right? So I can avoid detection by sending the data