Trojan Horse Read online

  Her father had died the previous year. Two sisters and a brother still lived at home with her increasingly aging mother. Though her other siblings gave what they could, it fell to Saliha to be the family’s primary support. After all, she lived in the rich West and earned far more than the rest of the family combined.

  She’d arrived from Prague in the afternoon, taken a taxi to the apartment where’d she’d grown up, and surprised her family, as she always did. Ahmed had made it clear that she was never to announce her trips to anyone. The girls and her brother were as delighted to see their big sister as she was to see them. She had gifts they excitedly opened and it warmed her to see the happiness she could bring them.

  The apartment was on the ground floor and there was a small garden in back. As a child she’d worked it with her grandmother, providing fresh vegetables for the family during the summer and fall. Now that she was gone and her grandmother dead, the garden had turned fallow. With the death of her father, her mother had no time at all to garden. She’d been at the market when Saliha had arrived so she was playing with the children when her mother returned. She smiled warmly and embraced her daughter.

  “You are so thin. Don’t you get enough to eat?” she’d said.

  Saliha had laughed. “It is the fashion in the West. And I am not so thin as that.” She slipped folded bills into her mother’s hand.

  Her mother bowed her head, then said, “Thank you, my daughter. Without you . . .” The rest she left unspoken.

  Yes, without me, Saliha thought. What would the family do? Suffer, go hungry, struggle. Her two sisters would likely be forced into prostitution, her brother be turned into a pimp or thief or both. She knew. She’d seen it enough. She’d escape that fate but would they?

  Her older sister was married to a truck driver, the oldest brother worked in Istanbul on the docks. He’d not married so he could give his mother as much of his earnings as possible. To do so he lived in squalor. But the time was approaching when he must look to his own future and begin to save.

  That night, Saliha treated the family to foods they normally didn’t enjoy, then helped her mother prepare dinner. Her two sisters had crawled into bed with her, whispering, dreaming until they’d all drifted off. As always it had been a wonderful visit, but too short. These were the best moments of her life.

  In Prague, Saliha worked with young women who’d forgotten their families. Money that should have gone home was spent on expensive clothes, a nice apartment, trips. They dressed and behaved like whores and in the process Saliha watched them become hard and bitter. How could anyone turn her back on home? On her family? She didn’t understand it.

  Early the next morning Saliha set off to rent a car, telling her mother she’d be back in a few days with more gifts. Her mother stood in the doorway, watching her retreating figure, waving a final time as Saliha turned the corner.

  The drive from Ankara to the border with Iran took all of a long, hard day. She drove north and east of Ankara until she joined E80, the Trans-European Motorway or TEM, a divided highway that began somewhere far away in Western Europe and ended just short of the Turkey-Iran border. It crossed the broad Anatolian plain, then wound through long narrow mountain valleys over ancient passes. As she ate up the miles driving at a brisk pace, the true life of so-called modern Turkey unfolded before her. Aged men on donkeys, children herding sheep, exhausted fields struggling to produce one more crop so a family wouldn’t starve. She’d seen it all before and the more time she spent in the West, the more desperate and impoverished her native country looked.

  In this region of Turkey, a woman traveling alone was a curiosity. Twice she pulled off the highway to take a short break. When she entered the adjoining small villages she ignored the disapproving looks she received from old men and women, the aggressive stares from young men.

  Ahmed had cautioned her to mix up her routine, to take different routes. She’d done that the first three trips and disliked it as any other route took a full, grueling two days. Now she traveled the best and fastest route. The trip was demanding enough without adding his silly rules.

  That afternoon as she traveled east, the mountains grew higher, the road become less well maintained and the region more primitive. When she neared the border, she turned down a narrow dirt road. After a short distance she stopped beside a lovely stream lined with poplar trees, shielded from the highway by heavy vegetation. There she opened the car doors and snacked on food prepared by her mother as she listened to the bubbling water. Spring was later here and the air was cool though rich with the fragrance of the mountains. In late summer, the nearby pomegranate trees would be heavy with fruit. Their scent was one of the few pleasures in these trips.

  With a glance at her wristwatch, she sighed, went to the car, opened the trunk, then her luggage. She removed a bundle of clothes. She replaced her denims with an ankle-length dark skirt, slipping on a matching long-sleeved parkalike garment. She placed her denims back into the luggage, removed a head scarf, and closed the lid.

  She’d scrubbed herself clean before leaving Ankara and wore no makeup, bore no fragrance of any kind. Now she looked like a proper Muslim woman. She’d better.

  At sunset, Saliha reached the border with Iran, placing on her head the scarf as she pulled to a stop. She’d traveled often enough to be recognized by the guards. If a single woman driving a car in eastern Turkey was eyecatching, it was even more so in Iran. She’d explained that she was from Prague and that her Iranian boyfriend’s family lived nearby. Whenever she traveled to Turkey he asked her to visit them to give gifts. Then she’d buy some of the things he could only get in Iran and carry them back.

  The guards searched the car thoroughly as they always did, even examining the two gifts she’d brought with her from Prague to maintain the charade. After a short delay she was on her way for the final half-hour drive to Maku. It was an ancient capital of the region, today of modest size. Resting in a river valley, it was dominated by a castle.

  Here, her instructions never varied. She was to stay only at the Hotel Seyhan Adana and wait. Once that wait had been a short hour, another time she’d sat in her room or the lobby for three days, but always a starkly plain young woman would meet her. This time, early that evening the woman spotted her waiting in the lobby. After brief words of greeting she thanked her for the gifts, gave her items for Ahmed, then took the key-chain drive. That was it.

  Back in her room, Saliha carefully opened the packages and meticulously examined the contents. They consisted of regional canned foods unavailable outside Iran. She was not going to be arrested for smuggling. Satisfied they were in order she rewrapped everything, ate a light dinner of rice with a lamb kabob, then found herself pacing in her room unable to sleep. She had another full day of driving ahead of her but sleep just wouldn’t come.

  She looked again at the quiet street below. It was full night and almost no one was about. When night descended in Iran an oppressive darkness came with it. She felt like a prisoner in her hotel room.

  It was the risk keeping her awake, she realized. She wasn’t stupid. While she had no interest in politics she knew that the Iranian mullahs were at war with the West. She’d considered her boyfriend from every angle and found herself finally reaching the conclusion that he was somehow involved in jihad. It was the one answer that satisfied all her questions. It alone explained his caution, his discreet devotion to Islam, his secret time on his computer, his different cell phones, his private conversations, his mysterious trips, and the thumb drive he gave her for each trip to Iran.

  She was smuggling information, something the mullahs didn’t want to have sent to Iran by the Internet or mail, hence a courier.

  But what kind of information? What could be so important as to go to all this trouble and expense? She’d spent hours driving here and back trying to solve the enigma. Still she had no idea but she now understood that was the way it was intended to be.

  As Saliha prepared for bed, her thoughts wouldn’t t
urn off. She was in no danger here in Iran, if she was correct, and the Turkish officials, with the nation’s increasingly Muslim orientation, certainly wouldn’t care about what she was doing. If the Czech government really minded, Ahmed wouldn’t have legal status and they’d either expel him or at least be asking questions. She made these trips regularly and had never once been asked about them.

  So, she thought as she slipped between the sheets, who was she afraid of?

  The CIA for one, but most of all the Mossad, she thought with a shudder. If she was right, either or both of those organizations cared very much indeed about what she was doing and the slightest mistake by someone could point the finger at her.

  Saliha feared them both. She didn’t believe for one minute the stories she saw on television or read about a dysfunctional CIA. That was all misinformation. She’d heard about the CIA all her life, how it was behind every coup in the Middle East, every assassination. She had not the slightest doubt. There’d be no Guantanamo for her if the CIA got her. They’d cart her off to some hellhole where torture and rape rooms were stock-in-trade. She had no idea what the Mossad did with people like her but she was certain the CIA alternative was better.

  No, she finally decided, this is too much. She knew she must stop this. One more trip and that would be it. And Ahmed must pay well for it.

  DAY FOUR

  SUNDAY, APRIL 12

  CONFESSIONS OF A CHINESE HACKER, PT. 1

  A 20-SOMETHING COMPUTER GEEK

  IN SHANGHAI SHARES HIS SHADOWY

  WORLD OF HACKING FOR PROFIT.

  By Johnson Lam

  Internet News Service

  April 12

  Like many Chinese, when dealing with a Westerner he uses a Western name, Victor. In his case, however, it’s also meant to conceal his real identity. Though accented his English is excellent. He is slender, well mannered, neat. And he is very proud of what he does.

  In fact, the need to brag is constantly at odds with a hacker’s desire for obscurity. Though China recently passed tougher cyber security laws they are either lightly enforced or not enforced at all. But Victor fears that could change. “If you put a face to your story, I’ll be in trouble,” he tells me at a coffee shop not far from his small apartment. “If I stay anonymous, I’ll get rich.”

  Victor had thought to be an engineer but before university graduation he became intrigued with the digital world of hackers. They are a close-knit group, swapping code, selling viruses, gathering information on computer exploits they can use. “All the big companies have many zero day vulnerabilities,” he says. “I’m going to find one and use it to make a killing.”

  Victor tells me that three weeks ago he unleashed his own personally crafted Trojan in a phishing attack and now has a botnet of more than 5,000 computers. The virus harvests banking information and when he is ready he intends to loot the owners’ accounts for all he can take. He’s already set up a complex digital route for the money before it lands into an account he controls. “They’ll never know what happened,” he says with a laugh, as he lights a cigarette.

  I ask if he’s proud of being a thief. “It’s not stealing. If you leave your wallet on that table and walk off, I’m a fool not to help myself? It’s the same thing. They let me in. Why shouldn’t I take it?”

  Victor is consumed with hacking. He reads hacker forums and magazines, chats with other hackers, swapping information and ideas, and writes malware code. “That’s the hardest part. But also the most rewarding,” he tells me with a satisfied smile.

  Unlike Victor, most hackers don’t bother creating their own viruses. They just take them from Web sites and adapt them to their own use. Some of the most successful viruses are rented. That’s right, rented.

  Next: The Entrepreneurial World of Hacking

  Internet News Service, Inc. All rights reserved.

  13

  GENEVA, SWITZERLAND

  RUE DE LAUSANNE

  HÔTEL MON-REPOS

  7:19 A.M. CET

  Jeff was awakened by pounding on his hotel door. Disoriented, he sat up in bed and slid his feet onto the carpet. He rubbed his eyes as the pounding continued.

  He’d been exhausted by the time he reached his hotel room in Geneva. Just after the final meeting at Whitehall, he’d texted Daryl to confirm he was flying to Geneva. Then just before takeoff and after landing, he’d called but had gone to voice mail both times. He decided she was earning some well-deserved rest. Once in his room, he’d ordered a room service sandwich, taken a quick shower, then gone immediately to sleep.

  Drowsy, stumbling like a drunk, he went to the door and checked the peephole. There she was, grinning at him. He threw open the door. “What are you doing here?” he said as Daryl walked into his arms. She felt good and smelled sweet.

  “Hi, big guy,” she murmured. “Couldn’t let you have all the fun, now, could I?”

  When he finally let her go, he carried her luggage into the room and set it down. “Really,” he said, “how did you know where to find me?”

  Daryl gave him a smile. “I’m a supersecret cyber agent, remember? I have friends in the CIA.” She laughed. “I just contacted Frank, then he made a call. I was on a direct flight while you were still in the air. I was so beat I took a pill and slept the whole way.” She glanced around the room. “No bimbos. That’s good.”

  She pulled open the curtains. “Just look!” she exclaimed. Through the window was a lovely view of a well-tended park and beyond it the azure Lake Geneva backed by the Alps.

  “Let’s order breakfast,” she said, turning back to him. “I skipped the one on the flight so I could eat with you.”

  “Sounds good. Go ahead while I take a quick shower.”

  Inside the bathroom, satisfied he’d grasped the idiosyncrasies of the shower handle, he turned the water on, waited a moment, then stepped in, pulling the curtain tight. The hot water bathed his body as he turned slowly. It was wonderful. It felt like a week since he’d washed. It was good having her here. Very good. Just then the curtain drew back and through the steam a naked Daryl stepped in.

  “Want me to scrub your back?” she asked. “We’ve got time before food arrives.”

  As it was, they kept the waiter waiting as Jeff threw on a hotel robe and let him in while Daryl hid out in the bathroom. He signed, gave the young man a lavish tip consistent with his mood, closed the door, then rapped on the bathroom door. “Food’s here. You can come out now.”

  Daryl had brushed her teeth and run a comb through her hair. Without makeup in the strong morning light she was gorgeous. They both dug into the American-style breakfast she’d ordered.

  “This is a very nice surprise,” Jeff said between bites.

  “I’m just sorry it’s taken so long. I really have been trying to get free. We can take a trip. With me here to help, you’ll get it done in half the time, probably sooner since I’m faster at this than you are.”

  “Says who?”

  “My mom.” Daryl took another bite. “I can’t help thinking the Iranians aren’t sophisticated enough for this. I’m not saying some Iranian, somewhere, might not have the knowledge and be able to do this though it seems like a team creation and it’s pretty clearly a government operation. I just don’t see the mullahs managing it, do you?” Daryl no longer sounded tired. She was back on the chase. “In fact, I can’t recall a single incident of cyber code coming out of Iran. How about you?”

  Jeff thought a moment. “Nothing. And one of us would have heard if there existed an ongoing Iranian government department tasked for computer interdiction. From all reports their computers are under near-constant cyber-assault. I don’t see them having the energy for this. Just think about Stuxnet and all the harm it’s caused. They’re awfully busy countering that.”

  Stuxnet was to date the most sophisticated Trojan ever invented. Commonly accepted to be a digital weapon devised and launched by an opposing nation, it had all but brought the Iranian nuclear weapons program to its knees. No o
ne claimed authorship but nearly everyone in the cyber industry believed it was a product of Mossad and CIA working together.

  In fact, Jeff and Daryl were all but convinced they’d worked on a Stuxnet-like project for three months the previous year. They’d been asked to submit a bid to Frontline Integrated Systems, or FIS, a specialized software company that worked almost exclusively as a vendor for various U.S. intelligence agencies. Their task was to locate zero day vulnerabilities in Android’s wireless services, WiFi and Bluetooth. Android was the mobile operating system used by a large number of cell phones. Once the vulnerabilities were identified they were to develop reliable exploits. The self-evident though unstated goal was to create a hole through which malware could jump from other systems to Android phones, and vice versa.

  Jeff and Daryl were committed to the practice of responsible disclosure, which meant that whenever they encountered a zero day software vulnerability, they felt morally obligated to advise the vendors privately so the holes could be patched before they became generally known. But in the world of cyber warfare, such vulnerabilities were extremely valuable. A government agency would not disclose them because the vendors would then patch them, destroying their value. The couple had resolved this seeming conflict after they accepted the nature of cyber warfare and because their contacts at the CIA and NSA adopted a policy of disclosing such vulnerabilities one year after discovery or when they were exploited by someone else, whichever came first.

  It was a compromise, one that in an ideal world they’d not have made, but theirs was not an ideal world. Cyber warfare was the new battleground between the great powers and it was a war the United States and the West had to win.