Zero Day_ A Novel - Mark Russinovich [81]
“Bonjour,” Dufour said, as Labib entered the office from the rear. So separated were the two functions of the office that Labib was certain the other employees had never seen him. As an increased security measure, his strict rule was that he and Dufour speak only French. Besides, the man’s Arabic was so heavily accented Labib could hardly understand him.
“How many today?” Labib asked, as he sat at his workstation.
“You have two new noirs.” They never used hacker language in the office, even though Labib was certain they could not be overheard. Noir, or “black,” meant a rootkit. Rouge, or “red,” was the trigger, while blanc, “white,” stood for the portion that wreaked the destruction. A boîtier, or “package,” referred to the entire device, as Labib had come to consider the malware he had had Dufour unleash.
“Excellent.” The Russian did superior work. Not like a lot of the crap the others often tried to pawn off on them.
“And there are fifteen new rouges that look okay. You should see the ones I refused.”
When his brother Fajer had expressed displeasure with the Russian, Labib had been both defensive and guilty. He knew that Dufour had made it clear to the man that they only wanted clean code, and he’d not delivered it. But Labib had been careless as well and not checked the product as carefully as he should have, Dufour only stumbling across Superphreak in a code the previous week. Until then he’d thought the code was free of such clues.
At the time it had seemed a crushing reversal, but Dufour had persuaded him it likely meant nothing. “It will probably not be detected, and if it is, how will it get to anyone? Certainly not in time to stop le déluge,” as he called the looming attack.
Labib had agreed, and as they’d employed an ever growing number of crackers from whom they acquired bits of malware, other security problems had come up, which lessened the impact of this first one. Still, he’d instructed that the Russian not provide any code other than his noirs. In fact, Labib regretted that they had ever released any virus without the cloaking rootkits, but he’d not known they existed until Vladimir had asked if they were interested.
The problem only emphasized their dependence and vulnerability. For their long-term goals they must find a way to do all of this alone. Only then would they be truly secure.
For the next three hours Labib cobbled together a dozen boîtiers using the two new noirs while mixing in the fresh triggers and destruction codes they’d received. He’d long since given up making certain every virus they released did what it was intended to do. Dufour had persuaded him that certain wreckage would come from the sheer numbers of the viruses.
Labib also cursed the amount of time this had all taken. He and his brother had intended to unleash the cyber-attack in conjunction with a physical attack by Al Qaeda. On three separate occasions Fajer had sought to make contact with bin Laden, but to no avail. When he’d finally succeeded in meeting with him in his own personal hajj, he’d come away with the names and means of contact for a wide range of operatives. But as they’d sought to coordinate with those in the highest levels of Al Qaeda’s operations, one by one the men had been killed by the Americans. Finally, with great reluctance, Fajer had instructed Labib to go ahead.
“If we wait any longer, the Americans will have taken over both Iran and Syria. We cannot delay. Allah is with us,” he’d said with passion.
And so Labib had placed into motion his carefully laid plans. As he and Dufour had begun to implement them, he’d been forced to reconsider his objectives. But he remained satisfied that he could wreak havoc on America in his own way. He would cost them billions, destroy systems it would take years to reconstruct, shake faith in the nation, cause disarray in its military, and force a reexamination of its