Aftermath
“Rainbow Table, huh.” Someone muttered in a hollow voice. The Advanced Technology Analysis Team was the gathering place for the government’s top computer experts. Naturally, they had considered the Rainbow Table approach. The theoretical foundations of the technology had existed since the 1980s, after all. What had stopped them from attempting it was the sheer computing power and programming expertise required to build one—an idea they had ultimately discarded. Even with the government’s supercomputers, the task would have taken months. Yet here was Yoo Jae-won, creating a Rainbow Table on an ordinary iWorks. It was nothing short of astonishing.
Of course, Skinner and the rest of the team knew Jae-won was remotely accessing ID Group’s data centers from his personal PC, leveraging their immense computing resources. Even that realization was staggering.
“Let’s see.” As the program launched, a text-only status window appeared in Jae-won’s ID web browser. It displayed only basic progress and processing speed, yet those numbers alone were enough to make the Advanced Technology Analysis Team members gasp.
“Hmm, we’re currently at about 23 MB per second.”
That figure represented the performance of hash-value processing. Apple’s hash function produced a 128-bit result per operation—16 bytes. Processing 23 MB per second therefore meant handling roughly 1.28 million hashes every second.
“Right now only a portion of the nodes are active, so the speed is a bit low. Once the New York data center and all idle resources across ID Group’s global facilities come online, we should reach gigabyte-scale throughput.”
Skinner and the team stared in disbelief. The current speed was already impressive; gigabyte-scale performance would mean at least a hundredfold increase.
Jae-won spoke calmly, but his mind was racing. The iPhone S’s password system allowed up to eight characters using uppercase and lowercase letters plus numbers. Each additional character exponentially increased the number of possible combinations, and therefore the size of the Rainbow Table.
“At the current settings, the final Rainbow Table should be around 8.52 terabytes.”
At the present 23 MB-per-second rate, that would take roughly five days—an exhausting prospect. If they truly reached gigabyte-scale performance, however, the time could shrink to four or five hours.
“Eight… eight terabytes?”
Gigabytes had only just begun to enter the mainstream. The latest games were shipping on single 4 GB DVDs, and even titles that didn’t need the space were padded with dummy data to fill the disc. Hearing the word “terabyte” in such an era left everyone stunned.
The key, then, was maximizing distributed-processing efficiency—something that happened to be one of Jae-won’s specialties. True to his word, the processing speed displayed on the monitor rose steadily, if gradually. While he spoke with Skinner, it climbed another 2 MB to 25 MB per second.
“Hah. Impressive.” Skinner couldn’t help but admire the feat. His decision to approach Jae-won directly instead of Apple had been the right call.
Jae-won, however, remained unsatisfied. If the GPUs supported DirectCompute for general-purpose calculations, performance would be several times higher. Current GPUs were built solely for gaming. Complaining about nonexistent hardware wouldn’t change anything, so he kept the thought to himself.
“The only problem is that pulling this much performance could destabilize ID Group’s web services and the customer services hosted in our data centers. I’ll need to issue a notice. Since I’m volunteering my help, there won’t be any separate billing for this.”
“We appreciate the consideration. Still, we should keep public and private matters separate. I’ll include it in the report.”
Skinner nodded. Apple’s passive response had already worn thin on him, while Jae-won felt like a breath of fresh air. After all, Apple had been reluctant to cooperate with the FBI even before 9/11. Jae-won, despite not being American, was willing to risk his company’s losses to assist during a national crisis. It was hard not to feel favorably toward him.
“Come to think of it, you haven’t had dinner yet, have you? There’s an excellent chef at the hotel nearby.”
Skinner’s suggestion was so unexpected that his colleagues double-checked whether they had heard correctly.
“Thank you, but delivery food will be fine. I need to keep monitoring the Rainbow Table generation program. Looks like I’ll be pulling an all-nighter, so I’ll cover the cost.”
Jae-won called over Kim Dae-seok, who had been on the phone arranging logistics from a corner of the office.
“Could you order a buffet delivery for us?”
“Yes, Mr. Chairman. How many servings should I request?”
Jae-won glanced at Skinner. “How many people are working in the Joint Investigation Headquarters?”
Skinner’s jaw dropped. He had assumed Jae-won meant treating the Advanced Technology Analysis Team on the third floor, not the entire headquarters.
“Around two hundred, I’d say. I’ll need to check with my superiors first.”
Until now, meals at the Joint Investigation Headquarters had been entirely self-managed. Staff ordered pizza, hot dogs, or Chinese fried rice, or stepped out to eat. No meal allowance was provided. A hotel buffet delivery wouldn’t cause any procedural issues, but Skinner’s instinct was to clear it with higher-ups anyway.
All eyes turned to Skinner as he made the call. The room fell into an unusually focused silence. The headquarters had only been established three days earlier, yet everyone was already tired of delivery food—especially the overpriced, mediocre fare available in Manhattan.
The call ended quickly.
“Permission granted.”
Cheers erupted. Jae-won signaled to Kim Dae-seok, who immediately got to work. Shortly afterward, vans bearing the hotel’s logo entered the South Tower of the World Trade Center, where the headquarters was located. Buffet tables were set up on each floor. With more than two hundred people and three separate serving areas, dinner proceeded smoothly without chaos.
The media, however, went into a frenzy. Reporters had been camped outside the lobby, and the arrival of hotel catering vehicles was impossible to miss. A luxury buffet at the 9/11 Joint Investigation Headquarters was an odd combination. When pressed for an explanation, the headquarters remained tight-lipped, fearing that news of Jae-won’s involvement in cracking a suspect’s iPhone S would spark even greater controversy. While many enraged by the 9/11 attacks would support him, others prioritized the constitutional principle that even suspects deserved privacy protections. That was precisely why Skinner, despite his frustration with Apple’s reluctance, had no choice but to proceed carefully.
Not everyone was equally discreet, however.
— ID Group Chairman Yoo Jae-won Joins 9/11 Joint Investigation Headquarters!
The internet-only newspaper New York Digital Times broke the story. With hundreds of people from different agencies suddenly gathered in one place, leaks were inevitable. Fortunately, the exact nature of Jae-won’s work inside the headquarters remained undisclosed, so the revelation did not cause major upheaval.
“Hmm?”
After a satisfying dinner, the office atmosphere had softened slightly. Yet Jae-won never lost focus. Staring at the monitor, he noticed something odd: the processing speed. As more cloud servers in ID Group’s data centers came online, the Rainbow Table generation rate had been climbing steadily. It now stood at 1,348 MB per second—finally entering the gigabyte range Jae-won had promised. In the mid-21st century, such performance would be ordinary for a single personal computer, but in the present day it was extraordinary. There was still room for further improvement; theoretically, speeds up to 2.4 GB per second were possible. The displayed number should have kept rising, yet it was now dropping.
“What’s going on?”
Jae-won immediately opened the data-center management page that visualized server status. Most indicators were green or yellow, but one spot had turned red.
“Coyote City?”
The problem was at ID Group’s first data center, located in the small satellite city of Coyote City south of Silicon Valley. Jae-won pulled out his Android Phone and called Yeong-sik. It was late, but he knew Yeong-sik would still be at the data center.
The call connected instantly.
“Hey! What’s happening with the servers?”
— Chinese DDoS attack is back.
“What? DDoS? I thought we blocked that!”
— A variant appeared. The attack resumed, and defending against it is wasting the computing power that should be dedicated to building the Rainbow Table.
“So we’re just supposed to sit here and take it?”
— Who do you think I am? I already made a patch for the vulnerability. I just need to deploy it. Should I send it out now?
Yeong-sik’s confident reply was reassuring, but Jae-won didn’t immediately order deployment. He paused to think.
“Go ahead. But make sure it forces an update on any device connected to the internet.”
— Really? Forcing it will cause a temporary traffic spike.
“That’s why you preload it on the cache servers first. We’re running an extremely important task right now. Nothing can be allowed to interfere.”
A DDoS attack required an internet connection. Forcing Yeong-sik’s vulnerability patch would instantly wipe out the zombie PCs. It would take the hackers leading the attack considerable time to analyze the situation and create a new variant, buying enough time to finish the Rainbow Table.
“Ah, limit the patch to the Gaming Edition only.”
— Got it!
Forcing the patch would trigger a reboot. Extending it to the Enterprise Edition of Android OS would cause chaos, so Jae-won restricted the scope.
“Is something wrong?”
Skinner, sensing trouble from the urgent exchange, asked the moment the call ended.
“A Chinese DDoS attack has resurfaced.”
Jae-won opened a new ID web browser and checked Nextcom. Even while the Rainbow Table was being generated, Nextcom’s homepage loading speed had slowed noticeably.
“China? DDoS?”
“The government was informed when it first happened, but I guess the information didn’t reach you. Several hours before the 9/11 attacks, our major internet sites came under DDoS assault. We blocked it by cutting the Asia-Pacific lines.”
Jae-won explained the earlier DDoS incident to Skinner. The Skidrow hacking group had distributed a crack that, once users disabled Android OS security features and ran it, turned their machines into DDoS zombies. Someone had purchased Skidrow’s DDoS tool and was actively using it.
“If the internet went down during the 9/11 attacks, the chaos would be maximized. I suspect al-Qaeda may have bought and deployed it with that in mind.”
“So you’re saying China has a significant connection to the 9/11 attacks. And I’m only hearing about this now.”
Skinner’s voice, which had softened after the good dinner, turned cold again. As head of the Advanced Technology Analysis Team at the Joint Investigation Headquarters, he should have been aware of any DDoS-related matters. His expression made it clear this was news to him. Anger soon filled his previously icy face.
“More importantly, you’re saying the DDoS attack is still ongoing?”
Jae-won simply nodded.
“I need to report to my superiors. I’ll be right back.”
Skinner left without another word.
About thirty minutes after he departed, urgent headlines began appearing:
— 9/11 Joint Investigation Headquarters Issues Emergency Statement!
— 9/11 Attacks Continue in Cyberspace!
— Nextcom and Other Major Sites Inaccessible.
— Chinese Hacker Group Launches Massive DDoS Attack on ID Group Data Centers!
— U.S. Government Demands Formal Explanation from China Regarding Cyber Terrorism!
The repercussions of 9/11 had now reached China as well.
— Deployment started! Beginning with China!
While China reeled from the sudden U.S. government announcement, Jae-won and ID Group carried out their part. Shortly after Yeong-sik’s message via ID Talk, the data-center monitoring tool registered a change. Android Gaming Edition devices connected to the internet began rebooting in rapid succession. The red indicators that had marked the Coyote City data center gradually faded as the DDoS attack traffic vanished. The Rainbow Table generation speed recovered quickly.
Thanks to that, when Skinner returned to the office several hours later with a weary face, Jae-won greeted him with a calm, confident statement.
“I found it.”
For the first time, a smile appeared on Skinner’s face—though, true to his nature, it was a chilling smile that never reached his eyes.