Ransomware (6)
Blackwood International’s CISO, Terry Griffin.
A CISO—the chief information security officer—was the person in charge of a company’s entire information security apparatus.
By law, any company above a certain size was required to have one. The point was that, for the sake of its users, a company had to take every possible measure to protect its information systems.
And yet…
Their servers had been infected with malware and encrypted wholesale!
At first, he’d thought they could somehow recover everything, but the situation only grew worse by the minute.
Once the servers went down, every system went down with them, and everyone around him seemed to be waiting for him to fix it as quickly as possible.
What am I supposed to do?
If he were being honest, he wanted to hand in his resignation and run for the hills right then and there. But this wasn’t the sort of problem that went away just because he quit.
If he failed to resolve the ransomware attack properly, he wouldn’t just be driven out of Blackwood; he’d have a hard time finding work anywhere else.
For all practical purposes, his career would be over.
Every day felt like he was bleeding out.
He couldn’t even remember when he’d last eaten, and yet he didn’t feel hungry. If it meant unlocking those servers, he would have shaken hands with the devil himself.
Then someone appeared before him.
Sid Lucas, the CEO of Snow Crash.
He’d heard plenty about him before now.
They say he’s the greatest genius in Silicon Valley, right?
But he didn’t expect much.
Rumors were always exaggerated.
Besides, modern computer systems were so complex that no single person could possibly do much about them.
A team of ten might be one thing, but there were obvious limits to what one person could accomplish alone.
Sid Lucas was different.
He handled programs as if they were extensions of his own hands and feet. Just by skimming the code, he pinpointed the problem in an instant.
Before long, everyone had stopped what they were doing and was staring only at Sid.
What on earth is this guy?
He’d thought he’d met enough geniuses on his way to becoming the CISO of a global hotel company. But this was on an entirely different level.
And yet, that was as far as it went.
Sid spent about half a day working on the server recovery, then eventually shook his head and said he didn’t have enough time.
Figures.
He’d assumed Sid had simply given up, but then he said something completely unexpected.
He was going to hack Mona App.
What kind of nonsense is that?
As a security officer, Terry knew better than anyone how airtight Mona App’s security was.
It would probably be far easier to restore the encrypted servers than to hack Mona App.
But then…
Sid Lucas hacked Mona App right in front of them, as if to prove the point!
Terry couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
A genius! No, a god!
What happened next went smoothly from there.
Once the decryption key was sent over, Sid got to work immediately.
While he sat there working, he didn’t take his eyes off the monitor for a single moment, nor did his fingers leave the keyboard.
It got to the point where people had to crowd around him with drinks and meals because it looked as though he might collapse if left alone.
“Oh! There’s malware hidden in here after all. Looks like they were planning to exfiltrate the data with this.”
Everyone was stunned when they saw the code Sid uncovered. If he hadn’t pointed it out, no one would ever have found it.
“How is something like that even possible?”
At his subordinate’s question, Terry Griffin shook his head.
“That isn’t something you achieve through effort.”
“Then what is it?”
“He was just born that way.”
Sid finished removing the malware cleanly and muttered, almost jokingly, as he pressed a key.
“Let there be light.”
And there was light.
When they saw the servers come back online, Mikel Duden, Terry Griffin, and the programmers all threw up their hands and shouted at once.
“Waaaaah!”
“Yes!”
Everyone hugged one another and jumped around, and some of the employees even burst into tears of relief.
Watching them, Sid let out a yawn as if he were sleepy.
* * *
True to his promise, Sid restored the servers in a single day.
Chairman Taylor immediately announced the recovery to the company. The cheers that erupted from headquarters were loud enough to shake the building to its core.
People were stamping their feet so hard it almost felt like the whole place was trembling.
I patted Sid on the shoulder.
“You worked hard.”
“Not at all. I actually had fun.”
Sid had spent more than twenty hours straight on the server recovery without sleeping a wink. His already pale face looked even paler now.
“Ah, right. I spoke with the FBI and the NSA too.”
We hadn’t signed formal contracts yet, but both sides had already expressed a desire to work with us immediately.
The fact that they’d made up their minds in less than a day probably meant they couldn’t stand the idea of another company taking the monopoly.
Well, once they used us, they’d gradually come over to our side. That was how I planned to chip away at ZWS’s market share, little by little.
“So the FBI and NSA are customers now.”
“All thanks to the Mona App hacking tool.”
Sid looked at me and asked, “You still want to know how I hacked it?”
“You said it was a secret. I’m fine not knowing.”
“Still, I’ll tell you something special, just for you, hyung.”
“……”
Was that necessary?
Even if he explained it in painstaking detail, I probably still wouldn’t understand what he was talking about.
But what Sid said next was completely unexpected.
“The truth is, I made it.”
“……Huh?”
I couldn’t quite process what he meant.
“I know. You made the hacking tool.”
“Not that.”
“Then what?”
“Mona App.”
“……!”
For a split second, I almost shouted. I barely managed to swallow the sound back down.
No, what in the world was he saying?
I steadied my breathing and asked in a low voice, “Hold on. You made Mona App?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
Sid scratched his head and said, “When I was working at Talkit, I was learning all sorts of things. Then I got a little interested in hacking, so I’d sometimes visit sites on the dark web where hackers hung out. I kind of got a reputation there too, and then someone came to me with a request. They wanted me to build an app that only ran on special chips. It didn’t seem like a strange app or anything—it was just a messenger app—so I made it for some pocket money. I even built a backdoor, just in case.”
“Y-you mean you didn’t know it was Mona App?”
Sid shook his head.
“No. I’d forgotten about it by then. I’d heard the name later, but I never used it myself, so I never thought it was something I’d made.”
The client had taken the design Sid provided, customized it, and then installed it on phones fitted with special chips before selling them on the black market.
“But when I was tracing the intrusion path this time, I looked at it and realized it was exactly the same as what I’d made back then. They’d changed a lot of little things, but the basic architecture was unchanged. So I just went in through the backdoor and stripped everything bare.”
“……”
Even in the first timeline, this had never been revealed.
No wonder he’d done so easily what everyone else had called impossible. Who would have guessed such a secret was hidden behind it?
Watching me stand there speechless, Sid scratched his head with a troubled look.
“I never thought it’d be used for crime.”
Strictly speaking, Mona App itself wasn’t a problematic app.
The problem was that criminals used it.
Still, knowing that something he’d made had been used in crime must have made him feel responsible somehow. Was that why he’d just handed the hacking tool over to the FBI and NSA?
I laughed, dumbfounded.
“Hah!”
If I hadn’t become close to Sid, I’d have gone to my grave never knowing this.
“It’s a secret, so don’t tell anyone.”
“Of course. I promise.”
Sid seemed to remember something and said, “Ah! But while I was tracing the malware’s route of entry, I found something interesting.”
“What is it?”
Sid told me what he’d discovered.
I already knew it from the first timeline, but I made a suitably astonished face, as if I’d never imagined it.
“Is that really true?”
“Yes.”
I laughed inwardly.
“Got it. I’ll take care of that myself. You should get some sleep first.”
Sid yawned so wide his jaw looked ready to crack and nodded.
“I’m so sleepy I could die.”
* * *
While Sid slept, I met with Chairman Taylor.
“We can finally breathe.”
He was trying hard to keep his expression under control, but the corners of his mouth were practically lifting into his ears.
Just yesterday, he’d been taking abuse from shareholders left and right, and now he was the admirable CEO who had protected the company without yielding to terror.
Chairman Taylor said in a heartfelt voice, “Thank you.”
“What did I really do? The thanks should go to CEO Lucas.”
“I was already planning to express my gratitude to him separately.”
He probably felt like bowing to Sid if he could. I felt the same way.
Continue Capital had benefited most from this incident.
Beyond the money, we’d firmly stamped Snow Crash’s name—and Sid Lucas’s genius—into people’s minds.
And we’d secured the FBI and NSA as clients, too.
But I didn’t intend to stop here.
“I’d been too ashamed to face the shareholders, but this really is a relief. Once we announce the server recovery, the stock price should recover too.”
“I think, in the current mood, we can push it even higher.”
Momentum mattered in the stock market too.
If you fed the fire when the rally had already begun, it only blazed hotter.
At my question, Chairman Taylor asked, “What do you mean by that?”
“How about cooperating with Snow Crash in the cloud sector?”
Chairman Taylor made a troubled face.
“We’re already working with ZWS.”
“I know.”
As this latest breach proved, Blackwood ran its own servers, but during its digital transformation it had partnered with ZWS.
Blackwood was a global hotel company operating 5,300 hotels worldwide.
Running one hotel and running thousands were entirely different problems. Rooms, employees, supplies, services—there were endless things to keep track of.
After adopting ZWS’s cloud services, integrated management became much easier, and no matter where in the world a Blackwood hotel happened to be, it could provide guests with the highest standard of service.
“I can guarantee we’d provide a far better service. Didn’t you just see enough of our capabilities this time?”
“I’d never be able to thank you enough for what you did here, but even so, we can’t just change services overnight.”
“Why not?”
“We can’t simply tear up our contract with ZWS for no reason. The board and the shareholders would oppose it as well.”
Someone from ZWS was even sent to Blackwood’s board of directors.
That was how deeply entwined the two companies were. And I was trying to pry such a client away from them.
“Who do you think Blackwood’s real competitors are?”
“Other hotel companies, like Dalton Hotels, naturally.”
I shook my head.
“No. Blackwood’s real competitors are hospitality-sharing platforms. Take a look at these materials.”
I handed him a report Continue Capital had prepared.
It laid out the current state of the hospitality-sharing platforms and, in graph form, the damage the hotel industry would suffer if they entered the hotel business.
Chairman Taylor took it and studied it closely.
“AirBnC is still private, and it’s already surpassed Blackwood’s market capitalization. If it goes public, it’ll probably double from there.”
“They’re them and we’re us. Hospitality-sharing platforms can’t replace hotels, can they?”
When hospitality-sharing first emerged, people thought hotels would be dealt a fatal blow. But hotels had continued to grow on their own afterward.
That meant the market had been divided to some extent.
But…
“Within a few years, AirBnC will move into the hotel business too. When that happens, the hospitality-sharing companies will be in direct competition with hotels.”
“Surely that wouldn’t happen.”
“Yes. Sure enough, it will.”
“……”
If I’d brought this up when we first met, he might have brushed me off. But I’d just solved the ransomware attack in three days, exactly as I’d promised. My words carried a different weight now than they had then.
After thinking it over for a while, Chairman Taylor finally spoke.
“Then what do you suggest we do?”
“Blackwood can’t remain in the hotel business alone anymore. Before that side eats away your slice of the pie, you need to move first and enter hospitality-sharing and travel.”
“And for that, you want us to abandon ZWS and switch to Snow Crash?”
I said it without hesitation.
“Yes. If you join forces with Snow Crash, I’ll turn Blackwood into more than just a hotel company. I’ll make it into a comprehensive travel-tech company.”