Zero Day_ A Novel - Mark Russinovich [17]
Vladimir tapped the keys and returned to the Web site he’d been browsing. He spent twenty minutes scrolling through the various forums, examining the code posted there. Little of it was fresh or unknown to him. On occasion he’d see something that caught his attention, code he thought he could use, something new and creative. But on examination it was usually rubbish, or pointless.
Code was the essence of any computer, and of the Internet, which was simply a connection of millions of computers. Code was the machination behind the curtain that made everything else work. Code turned keystrokes into words in word processing, code made images, code produced color, code created hyperlinks.
Everything on a computer screen came from code. Those who could write code at a sophisticated level were creators; a handful were, in their way, godlike, for what they wrote produced marvelous manifestations.
But there was code, and there was code. Like a child painting a tiger by the numbers, some hackers, as code writers were generally called, did little more than follow the lines created by others. These script kiddies copied and pasted this from here, added a little of that from there, and counted themselves lucky when it actually produced something that worked.
Code generated in such a way looked as childish to the skilled hacker as that child’s colored picture of a tiger. Other bits were repeatedly written, to the point of being counterproductive. One section might create an action, another would stop it; then it would be created again, then stopped again, sometimes in long, pointless strings. An amazing amount of code could be written to produce almost nothing. Useless code lay everywhere, occupying a cyber universe with its clutter.
Then there were the hackers such as Vladimir. These were artists of the most rare and talented sort. Their code was lean and strong, producing results with the sparest of keystrokes. What they wrote was elegant, masterful.
The Russian had made his cyber reputation by discovering a vulnerability in Windows XP. He’d posted the details in various chat rooms to claim the credit. Several weeks later, Microsoft confirmed the vulnerability when it released a patch to repair it. Vladimir had responded by posting the details of a second vulnerability. This time it took Microsoft three months to release a patch.
In standard computer protocol, Vladimir had no business publishing the vulnerabilities. He should have given the information directly to the company. By taking the approach he had, he’d gained an initial reputation for himself, but he’d also exposed many thousands of Windows XP owners to virus attacks. By posting, he had been able to claim full credit. Had he notified Microsoft, then posted the details only after the security patch was released, he would have been mocked.
Vladimir’s reputation had grown when he posted the first vulnerability in Windows Vista within hours of its being released. In fact, he’d discovered three vulnerabilities while examining the beta version—but by that time he was losing interest in what he considered the juvenile game of claiming credit for finding weaknesses in the software giant’s programs. It was impossible to produce a complex program to serve so many millions of users and not leave something vulnerable. He’d claimed the one, but had quietly informed Microsoft of the other two.
Still, Vladimir’s reputation had been made. He’d had no lasting desire to involve himself daily in the cyber-hacker world and had always been a private person, so with the posting of the first Windows Vista vulnerability, he’d withdrawn from regular active exposure in the hacker chat rooms and forums.
By this time Vladimir had realized he possessed an extraordinary aptitude.