Ransomware (9)
Because I’d already set up the meeting in advance, an employee led me straight to the CEO’s office.
It was a brand-new building, completed just a year earlier, so the place was spacious and comfortable. I’d barely sat down to wait when Representative Yohanbel walked in.
After exchanging greetings, he got straight to the point. “In the meantime, you’ve done something remarkable.”
“It was all CEO Lucas’s doing.”
“It was Chairman Han’s judgment to trust him with a huge investment and believe the problem would be solved, wasn’t it?”
I replied modestly. “That was Chairman Rockhart’s decision. I merely helped from the side.”
Yohanbel smiled. “At any rate, Great Net’s arrest was a very good thing. I hope this slows cyberterrorism down a little. But how, exactly, did you manage to track them down?”
“I don’t really know myself. If you meet CEO Lucas later, why don’t you ask him directly?”
Hacking was a thorn in the side of every IT company. If there was some sort of tracking technique, they’d probably pay anything to learn it.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t such a thing—and even if there were, I wouldn’t tell them.
Leaning back in his chair, Yohanbel said, “Be that as it may… Snow Crash seems to have stolen our client.”
“Our client?”
“You announced that you’d signed a business partnership with the FBI and the NSA.”
“Ah! That. They kept begging us to do it, so there was nothing we could do. They pressured us hard, saying there could be disadvantages if we didn’t cooperate on an issue of national security.”
He gave a bitter smile. “That’s a little different from what I heard.”
“Working-level employees always describe things in whatever way favors them.”
“Then what about Blackwood? Don’t tell me you didn’t know they were a ZWS client.”
Since Blackwood operated the world’s largest hotel chain, it was an extremely important client from ZWS’s point of view.
We had taken that client right out from under them. And not even because of price competition, but because they’d lost in service.
From ZWS’s perspective, it must have been a serious shock.
Chairman Taylor had held his tongue out of consideration for his relationship with ZWS, but word was already spreading everywhere about why Blackwood had chosen Snow Crash over ZWS.
The media was flooding the market with related articles, and companies were reacting sensitively.
Rather than apologizing, I said bluntly, “Wasn’t that because ZWS broke Blackwood’s trust first?”
Yohanbel’s brow furrowed slightly. “What do you mean by that?”
“When the ransomware incident first broke out, Blackwood asked ZWS for help, didn’t they? But you refused. Snow Crash, on the other hand, rushed over, stayed up all night helping them, and normalized the servers. And even after all that, you’re saying we forcibly stole your client? Is ZWS really in a position to say something like that?”
“……”
Strictly speaking, ZWS had no obligation to step in and help.
But the fact remained that while ZWS did nothing, Snow Crash rolled up its sleeves and saved them.
There was nothing he could say to that.
“That’s a rather unpleasant thing to hear. Are you saying you want to go up against us?”
I waved a hand. “Of course not. Snow Crash intends to continue cooperating with ZWS in the future.”
Yohanbel wore a subtle smile that was impossible to tell was a sneer or not.
“If you truly mean that, then I’d appreciate it if you showed it through actions rather than words.”
“How so?”
“As I mentioned before, we’d like to acquire Snow Crash’s shares.”
“Are the terms the same as before?”
“Why don’t you tell me what price you want?”
Until now, Snow Crash had just been one competitor among many.
But after this incident, he must have realized that Syd’s abilities went far beyond what he’d imagined.
So now he wanted to acquire us no matter what it took?
But…
“Before we talk about that, there’s something I need to tell you.”
“What is it?”
I was finally getting to the main point. “Blackwood operated its own servers and used ZWS’s cloud services. But while tracking the malware infection path this time, I learned something important.”
“Something important?”
“Yes. I think you probably already know what I’m talking about.”
While speaking, I watched his expression.
He was still wearing a confident smile, but I could see his eyes waver ever so slightly.
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
Strange. I thought he would’ve understood by now.
So I told him directly. “ZWS’s cloud security had been breached.”
Yohanbel looked flustered. “What are you talking about?”
Planning to deny it?
“Why are you acting like you don’t know? ZWS already knew about it and updated its security program right after the Blackwood incident, didn’t it?”
“W-who exactly are you making this claim based on?”
He answered as if nothing was wrong, but his voice had already begun to tremble.
“Are you denying that a security patch was applied?”
“……”
He was probably wondering how I’d learned about it. After all, they must have updated it in secret, with no public notice whatsoever.
A so-called stealth patch.
I kept going. “Well, I suppose you were too busy identifying the vulnerability and patching it over the last few days to do anything else, so I can understand why you refused Blackwood’s request. You would have had to hide the breach from your clients. Either way, it’s a relief. At least you caught it early because of this incident; if you’d been a moment later, you might have suffered the worst security disaster in history.”
Strictly speaking, it hadn’t been completely breached. If it had, the whole place would already be in chaos.
To use a dam as an analogy, it was only a crack. If they had left it alone, the dam would have collapsed and the water would have come crashing through.
Right now, they were frantically patching the hole to keep it from widening.
If they wanted to prevent a similar problem from happening again later, they’d have to overhaul the entire security system.
The reason I knew this was simple: in my first life, it had all been exposed later anyway. Rolf Buchi had pretended not to notice because he was wary of ZWS, but I was different.
Yohanbel asked me, “Do you have clear evidence that ZWS’s security was breached?”
I placed a USB drive on the table. “The evidence is in here.”
He glanced at it and frowned faintly. “If this is about to be based on some absurd evidence, I won’t just sit here and take it.”
“If you truly think the evidence is absurd, then I’m sure you won’t mind if I hand this over to the press. If it turns out to be false, I’ll gladly accept the punishment.”
“……”
Yohanbel couldn’t say a word.
By now, all sorts of thoughts must have been racing through his head.
The tables had turned completely from the last time we met.
As the CEO of the world’s largest cloud company, he’d likely negotiated with everyone from a position of power. He probably had never experienced being cornered like this.
That seemed to be why he couldn’t hide his unease.
I pressed on. “Not long ago, the U.S. Department of Defense announced the JEDI project for the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure.”
And no, I didn’t mean the Republic’s knights who used the Force from Star Wars… it was the acronym for Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure.
Still, the fact that they’d forced the initials to match like that made them sound like a bunch of Star Wars geeks…
At any rate, the JEDI project was the Department of Defense’s effort to move its vast IT infrastructure to the cloud and modernize it.
The plan was to integrate data systems scattered everywhere and enable real-time access to information according to security level, for use in enemy surveillance and the development of new weapons.
The project was worth a staggering $10 billion over ten years.
With a project that enormous, every cloud company with a name had thrown its hat into the ring.
AMZ, NS, Guble, IMB, Orion, and more.
“Honestly, for a smaller company, it’s hard to judge which cloud service is better. But if you win a public-sector project for a government agency, that alone becomes a powerful reference.”
Beyond the revenue, winning a U.S. Department of Defense project was proof that you had the world’s best security and the latest technology.
Simply winning the contract allowed you to announce to the entire world that you were ahead of other companies in both security and service.
As the pioneer in the cloud market, AMZ had monopolized public-sector contracts for years. But other cloud companies were also charging aggressively into the market, and its market share had been gradually slipping.
This bid was practically a battle to seize the initiative in future cloud business.
Given the scale of the project, most experts expected it to come down to AMZ versus NS, and that was indeed how things were unfolding.
AMZ had poured an enormous amount of effort into this project.
It had mounted massive lobbying campaigns targeting Defense Department officials and politicians, while also recruiting former Defense Department staffers into the company.
“ZWS has long prided itself on its strong security, and through that it won all kinds of government contracts. But what happens if people find out its security has been breached?”
There was no greater humiliation.
Why would the U.S. Department of Defense entrust a cloud migration project to a company whose security had already been compromised?
The other companies would also tear into them on that point, and not only would they lose this project, but the contracts they had already signed would likely suffer all kinds of fallout as well.
“……Are you threatening me?”
“Of course not. How could I possibly threaten ZWS?”
“Then what exactly are you trying to say?”
“I didn’t come here to threaten you. I came to help your company and strengthen cooperation between our two firms.”
“Help?”
“First, Snow Crash can resolve the security vulnerability for you. Completely, so that nothing like this ever happens again.”
Of course, I intended to charge for that. And that would naturally include the price of silence.
“Anything else?”
“Snow Crash wants to continue cooperating with ZWS. What do you think, Representative?”
Up until now, he’d had no burden at all when it came to pressuring Snow Crash, but the situation had changed.
If he did that now, ZWS would take a serious hit too.
It was fine if he rejected my proposal. If ZWS turned its back on us, I could always take this to NS and ask them to cooperate instead.
Becoming an enemy of ZWS was still a burden, but all I had to do was avoid the worst-case scenario where all three major companies turned their backs on me at once.
After a long silence, he finally spoke. “Would it be all right if I reviewed this and gave you an answer later?”
Putting off a decision was a bad habit.
Fortunately, I knew a good way to cure bad habits.
“Then I’ll go back to the office and review whether I should hand this over to WST.”
The moment I reached toward the USB drive, he hurriedly seized my wrist.
“I’ll do as you say.”
I smiled to myself.
He should have said that from the start.
I left ZWS.
The weather was cold, but maybe because everything had gone so well, my mood felt light.
If ZWS continued working with Snow Crash, the other companies’ attempts to interfere would become meaningless. NS and Guble would also find it difficult to impose any sanctions recklessly.
Fortunately, everything had ended well.
So where should I go now?
Should I head to Silicon Valley, or go back to Manhattan?
For now, I called David. Then I explained the negotiation with ZWS.
“We decided to keep getting along from now on.”
“I’ll need to review whether I should hand this over to WST when I get back to the office.”
He let out a sigh of relief. They really solved this so easily. CEO Lucas did something incredible.
“Right.”
In the first place, everything had been possible only because Syd was there.
Come to think of it, Blue Wagon just contacted me.
“What kind of company is Blue Wagon again?”
David sounded baffled. Don’t you remember? It’s the startup Sean O’Connor founded.
“Ah! Right.”
I’d met him at the pub and invested $100,000.
Was the company called Blue Wagon? It had changed into O’Connor Burger later, so I’d forgotten.
“How did it turn out?”
They just called. They said it failed.
“I see.”
Aren’t you surprised?
“It’s only natural for startups to fail.”
The strange one was me, since everything I invested in kept going well.
Anyway, that was good. My worries about where to go next were gone now.
I told David, “Then I’ll head to Silicon Valley and meet them once.”