Blackwood International (3)
I started by going through the ransomware cases.
It was well known that hacking could be profitable. Hacker groups would encrypt a server’s data, or simply steal it outright and then demand money in exchange for its return.
That sort of thing had always existed. Even in the past, there were ways to catch the criminals or recover the money by tracing bank accounts.
But cryptocurrency changed the game. Hackers now demanded payment in crypto instead of dollars, and once the money moved, tracking it became almost impossible.
The upside was enormous, while the odds of getting caught were low. Under those conditions, ransomware only spread faster, and some hacker groups were making more money than drug cartels.
It had gotten bad enough that even United States Cyber Command and the National Security Agency had launched crackdowns against them.
And yet ransomware attacks still happened almost every other day. If you considered how many of them were handled in secret, the real number was probably hundreds of times higher than what the public ever heard about.
I thought back to the first timeline.
Blackwood International had kept its own servers, but it also partnered with ZWS and used a range of outside services. When the problem hit, they turned to ZWS for help, and ZWS in turn asked Cooloud, which was then partnering with it, for assistance. In the end, Cooloud stepped in and solved the issue.
At the time, people believed Rolf Buchi had been the one who fixed it. Later, however, it was revealed that Syd had actually been the one behind the solution.
In other words, Syd could solve this too.
But the situation now was different.
For one thing, Rolf Buchi had already been exposed as a fraud rather than a genius, and ZWS and Cooloud (Snow Crash) had once been partners, but now they were on guard against each other.
If I just sat back, there was no chance they’d come asking us for help.
So I’d have to find the customer and move first.
I bought coffee and juice, then headed over to Snow Crash.
Syd was working as usual with headphones on, a zombie drama playing on the monitor beside him, his fingers flying over the keyboard without pause.
I watched him from behind, but I still couldn’t tell what he was doing.
I caught a passing employee and asked, “What’s he working on?”
He stopped and took a closer look before answering, “Coding.”
“Is he good at it?”
The man gave me a look that said the question was almost insulting. “I’ve never seen code this perfect in my life.”
“It just comes out that smoothly?”
“Most people could spend months on it and still not manage this.”
It wasn’t just raw intelligence. He had production power to back it up too.
Only someone like that could really change the world.
I’d never be able to do that, even if I died and came back.
……
Come to think of it, I actually had died and come back, and I still couldn’t do it.
I waited for a moment when he might finally take a break so I could talk to him, but even after thirty minutes he never once stopped moving.
Back when I was in college, I think I got distracted every five minutes while writing reports. I’d go play a round of a game to clear my head, and suddenly it would be morning.
Was that why my grades were such a mess?
In the end, I had no choice but to tap Syd on the shoulder.
He took off his headphones and turned to look at me. “Oh, hyung! When did you get here?”
“A while ago. I wasn’t interrupting work, was I?”
“It’s fine.”
We moved to the break room.
I handed him the juice. “Fresh juice. I added syrup.”
I wasn’t sure whether he liked sweets because he still had a kid’s palate or because he used his brain so much, but either way, he loved sugar.
“What did you have for lunch?”
“A hamburger.”
He apparently didn’t go outside the company much, so he usually ate whatever the staff brought him.
As he drank the juice through a straw, Syd suddenly remembered something. “Ah! By the way, when is that burger place you mentioned going to open? I want to try it.”
“Soon.”
That was about the time Sean O’Connor probably went under.
I’d known from the start, as soon as I heard his business idea, that it was going to fail, but I hadn’t stopped him. He had to fail before he could start something new.
“When it opens, let’s go together.”
He grinned. “Heh, sure. I’m looking forward to seeing how good it is.”
I got to the point. “About Blackwood International, the one I mentioned yesterday.”
“They admitted it really was ransomware, right?”
“Yeah.”
Syd nodded as if that had been obvious all along.
“Then the entire dataset must have been encrypted. Is there any way to unlock it?”
“There won’t be. That’s why I’m asking you this...”
I looked at Syd and said casually, “Do you think you could solve it?”
“Me?”
Syd seemed to think about it for a moment.
I knew he could handle this. He had, in the first timeline.
If he said he couldn’t, I was prepared to tell him, You can do it! and encourage him—but Syd looked at me and asked, “Why does this have to be solved?”
……
Fair question.
He was probably wondering why he should care about some other company’s problem all of a sudden.
The reason was simple: I’d thrown my entire fortune into this. If there wasn’t money in it, why would I be doing this at all?
I put a hand on Syd’s shoulder. “Because it’s necessary.”
Syd gave a light nod. “All right. I’ll take a look.”
Huh. Why was he agreeing so easily?
“You’re not going to ask why?”
“If you say it’s necessary, then there has to be a reason. Right?”
……
Had he always been this obedient? In the first timeline, I was sure he’d been famous for ignoring other people and doing things his own way.
Was he only good at listening to me?
“We’re leaving right away. Do you need to prepare anything?”
“No. We can go like this. I’ll just grab my laptop.”
I looked him over: a short-sleeved T-shirt, training pants, and Crocs.
It might get cold, so I’d have to buy him some clothes on the way.
I took Syd with me and headed straight for Texas.
At Blackwood International headquarters in Austin, Texas, an emergency meeting was underway.
Chairman Taylor had gathered the executives and was chewing them out. “What in the world happened here!?”
None of them could say a word.
One day the servers had been fine, and the next they were locked down. Every piece of data had been encrypted, and the entire system had gone dark.
They had kept backup servers for emergencies. But before anyone could even react, those backup servers were encrypted too.
Not only could they no longer take reservations, they couldn’t even check the information for customers who had already booked.
The confusion spread through every part of the business: lodging, conventions, casinos, restaurants, all of it.
They had no choice but to handle everything by phone, and to record things by hand.
It was as if the whole system had been thrown back thirty years.
Blackwood hotels were the kind of luxury properties everyone aspired to stay in.
At the top end of the line, the JR Blackwood Hotel even had rooms that cost a hundred thousand dollars a night.
People paid that kind of money because they expected a level of service that matched it.
And now the place was worse than a neighborhood inn.
Angry customers demanded refunds, and one reporter put it bluntly: “The moment the servers stopped, so did the service.”
“Customer complaints are pouring in.”
“Every hotel is also asking when the system will be restored.”
They couldn’t keep this hidden forever.
As everyone struggled to decide when and how to break the news, they soon realized there was no need to worry about that anymore.
Some bastard had already announced it for them.
Chairman Taylor exploded. “Who the hell are those people!?”
“Continue Capital. The private equity firm that caused the Thomas Motors scandal.”
“I’m not asking because I don’t know that! I’m asking how the hell they found out!”
“It looks like they only read the signs and leaked it to the press.”
Worse, they hadn’t just made a statement—they’d openly declared that they had already gone short. It was the classic move of a vulture fund trying to profit by driving the stock down.
And sure enough, after Continue Capital’s announcement, the stock price dropped more than ten percent.
If the statement had been false, they could have demanded a correction on the spot and sued for business interference and the spread of false information. The problem was that it was true.
“So what’s the solution to this mess?”
No one in the conference room answered.
They had reported the breach to the authorities immediately after the attack.
The FBI, the NSA, and the company’s own security experts were doing everything they could to unlock the servers, but even they couldn’t promise success.
One executive said carefully, “Some customers are very sensitive about data leaks. If their reservation records were exposed, they say they’ll bring in law firms and sue.”
Blackwood had spent years obsessing over customer data management.
For VIP clients especially, they had recorded every preference and request in detail. Thanks to that, whenever a customer returned, they were able to provide flawless service without being asked.
But what if information leaked about when and where they had stayed, or who they had shared a room with?
That would be a massive scandal.
If enough damaged customers banded together in a class-action lawsuit, the company might have no choice but to shut its doors.
“We’ve already said there was no data leak, but nobody believes us,” someone muttered.
Even as they spoke, the media kept running with the possibility of exposed data, and the stock price continued to fall in real time.
The meeting went on, but no answer came.
As time passed, everyone’s face grew darker. No one said it out loud, but the same thought was rising in all of their minds.
If they handled this wrong, one hundred years of Blackwood’s history might end right here.
Great Net.
The hacker group had been active for about two years, and they were famous for holding corporate data hostage in exchange for cryptocurrency.
What made them especially dangerous among all the other hacker organizations was that they had no hesitation about targeting not just companies, but even national infrastructure.
Three months earlier, they had infected the servers of an American telecommunications company with malware and brought them down.
Communication networks were the backbone of industry.
When communications stopped, everything in the region stopped with them. Phones and internet went dead, card terminals froze so cashless payments failed, and ATMs stopped working, making deposits and withdrawals impossible.
Ticketing for subways and railroads came to a halt too.
Shocked citizens thought a terrorist attack was underway and began hoarding gasoline and food.
With no other choice, the telecom company sent $35 million worth of cryptocurrency and barely managed to restore the ransomware-encrypted systems.
But during that process, they confirmed that data had been stolen.
Among the leaked files was even a map of the cable tunnels buried beneath the city.
If that information fell into the hands of a terrorist group, a few planted bombs could cripple the region’s communications entirely.
Deciding that enough was enough, the FBI and the NSA classified Great Net as a terrorist organization and launched a joint investigation.
Now that Blackwood International had come under attack, they were deploying top-tier security experts to decrypt the systems while also tracing the intrusion route.
The investigators gathered in one place to discuss countermeasures.
FBI investigator Eleanor Reed asked, “Is it possible to track them?”
NSA investigator Victor Wilton replied, “Probably not. In the end, we’ll likely have to pay again.”
As expected, Great Net demanded cryptocurrency in exchange for the decryption key.
“How much did they ask for?”
“Three hundred million dollars.”
Reed clicked her tongue in disbelief. “That’s an outrageous figure.”
“They always start absurdly high and then haggle it down.”
The deadline was only one week.
When that time came, all the data would be automatically deleted and recovery would become impossible. Could they really catch the hacker group or decrypt the files before then?
And yet if they simply sent the money, it would amount to funding a terrorist organization.
“Is there really no way to solve this?”
Wilton gave a bitter smile. “Even during the last incident, more than a hundred security experts were brought in, and they still failed. No matter who shows up, it’ll be impossible.”