Zero Day_ A Novel - Mark Russinovich [94]
A report you never read, Jeff thought.
Carlton smiled and nodded. He struggled to focus on what he was hearing, but could not. In his head, all he could hear was a sound like the crashing of enormous waves. “Proceed, please,” he managed to say.
Daryl looked at him oddly. “Jeff knows Superphreak better than anyone and I’ll ask him to tell you about it in a moment, but for now my team has been able to identify four hundred and seventy-eight separate attacks by Superphreak, all occurring on August eleventh. We have reports of hundreds more that could be related, but we’re not including them unless they’re identical in operation or the word Superphreak has been found.”
“None since August eleventh? That’s encouraging,” Carlton said hopefully.
“I’m afraid not,” Jeff heard himself say. “It’s the opposite, in fact.” For an instant he wanted to strike the man.
“It sounds as if the danger has passed,” Carlton countered. “If I’m not correct, you’re describing a date-activated virus.”
Daryl said, “Yes, but in nearly every case we’ve determined that the date in some part of the affected computers was off by one month. They actually read September eleventh.”
For a moment Carlton felt no sensation at all in his body. It was as if he were being prepped for an operation, and the anesthesia had been released into his bloodstream. Only the day before he’d planted in Fort Dupont Park a copy of Daryl’s latest report, which he hadn’t bothered to read.
Daryl was still speaking. “… that all the infected computers are to be triggered on that date. We’ve drawn the obvious conclusion but have no proof. We’ve been focused on learning about it, deciding its scope, and persuading the vendors to act.”
Carlton cleared his throat. “If I recall correctly, you believe this is a Russian hacker, interested in financial gain.”
“Not quite,” Jeff corrected. “In fact, we’ve found no hint of a desire for financial gain. Financial and other records are targeted, but the effect is destruction, not theft. And Russians are well known to hire out to all comers.” He stared at Carlton to make certain he’d made his point. This was meaningless but he’d promised. “I learned from Daryl just this morning that Superphreak is programmed to avoid the IP addresses of security vendors and is only targeting U.S. and European computers. The viruses are also employing very sophisticated rootkits. I’ve been working nearly three weeks on Superphreak and I still don’t have a handle on it. In my case, the computers were infected with two viruses, one cloaked, both very destructive. One was meant to erase all data, the other to destroy the operating system. The second succeeded before the first was finished, but I haven’t been able to rid the system of the viruses.”
“We need signatures and patches,” Daryl said. “To get them we need the vendors to take this threat seriously.”
“They aren’t cooperating?” Carlton raised his eyebrow.
“Not particularly. Their honeypots haven’t turned it up because it’s ignoring them, and the rootkits are hiding them from detection on their customer systems.” Daryl paused and looked closely at Carlton to be sure he understood the significance of what she was saying. In a firm voice she said, “I need you to lean on them.”
“I don’t know how much influence I can have, if US-CERT is having no effect.”
“It can’t hurt, George, and we haven’t much time.”
“What about other agencies? The FBI?”
Daryl nodded. “The increase in computer-related incidents hasn’t gone unnoticed. I understand a report was placed on the president’s desk two days ago. He’s referred the matter to the FBI and asked for a detailed report next month.”
“That’s it then,” Carlton said.
“It’s not enough, George. This is all happening so fast there isn’t time for this kind of leisure in responding. Clearly they don’t understand the extent of this thing or the president would not have asked for a report; he’d have demanded action. You know how this works, we all do. They’ll