Zero Day_ A Novel - Mark Russinovich [42]
These worms descended to the depths of the computer, burrowing down and existing like a living parasite, planting themselves within the operating system. They were designed to resist detection. To mask themselves further, they worked slowly at replicating clones, sending out new versions of themselves to seek new computers at an all but undetectable rate. They were a cancer on the Internet and on every computer they entered. They grew, spreading their electronic web into every space they could find. This was the future of all serious malware, one increasingly concealed from detection by a cloaking technology known as rootkits.
Yet years after the tragedy of 9/11, the FBI was claiming that Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups lacked the ability to attack America’s cyber infrastructure. They didn’t say the system was safe. No, they said that the terrorists didn’t have the ability to exploit it—yet.
Bringing his thoughts back to the present, Jeff stepped from the subway station onto the sidewalk and stopped.
He blinked his eyes at the sudden light, trying to take it all in. The sight of nothingness where the World Trade Center had once stood, dominating the landscape, stunned him.
To his right, still erect and fully functioning, was the World Financial Center. Except for broken windows and some concern about foundations in the weeks after the attack, it had emerged unscathed. Account Resources Management was up and running after a six-month hiatus in upper Manhattan.
The company lost three employees that day: Cynthia and another coworker attending a meeting near the top of the North Tower, plus one who was arriving late for work and was struck by debris from United Flight 175 when it hit the South Tower. There had been a memorial service, but Jeff had been too overwhelmed with grief, loss, and culpability to attend. For the same reason, he’d not gone to the service the family held in Cookeville, Tennessee. Now, though, his anger was all on himself, and his burden of guilt was almost more than he could bear. He simply could not face it.
He walked at a steady pace around the enclosed site. With each step he found the enormity of the devastation overwhelming. To see it on television and in pictures was one thing. To be here, to see it like this, was something else entirely.
From time to time he came upon memorials, some official, most impromptu, commemorating the loss of one group or another. At the poster of three Brooklyn firefighters raising the American flag over the rubble that terrible morning, Jeff stopped.
What was the point in walking? What did he think he was accomplishing?
Jeff gazed into the gaping chasm. Cynthia’s body was never recovered. Whatever there had been of her lay there, before him. He closed his eyes and wept.
16
ISTANBUL, TURKEY
SEFAKÖY DISTRICT
ISTANBUL TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY
TUESDAY, AUGUST 15
3:11 P.M.
Like most of the other students, Mesut Elaltuntas worked on his own laptop at the university computer-science center. The university had an excellent computer program, which was why he went there. They provided this room on campus where students could access the Internet with their own computers, since many of them didn’t have Internet access at home. The room might have been on any college campus anywhere in Europe or America, except here in Turkey the air was thick with the fog of cigarette smoke.
Elaltuntas scrolled down the list of Web sites produced by his Google search. He was already familiar with several of them and knew they were of no use to him. Others weren’t related to the code he was searching for. He’d already used one that suited his purpose; now he wanted another very like it. He pursed his lips and continued to scroll.
At first the idea of constructing new viruses had seemed simple enough. He’d designed a few himself and considered releasing them, but the arrest here in Istanbul