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I looked at Knuckles, and saw him nod. I said, “I’ll explore. You cover me. If it shows promise, we’ll push it. If not, we’ll back off.”

Then I turned to Knuckles, saying with a little bit of force, “And wewillback off if it’s nothing.”

Chapter16

Dylan Hobbes sat in front of his desktop computer and went through his email exchanges on multiple different addresses, using a virtual machine that wasn’t tied to his computer and going down to the IP addresses in the messages themselves, trying to determine if there was any indication of his contact with a group of criminals. He was sure he had no proof in his systems, because he did this for a living, but he completed this check at the end of every day, just to be positive, scrubbing the computer with a program that would literally bleach the system when he found anything that could be construed as incriminating.

He finished the task, seeing nothing, and the speaker on his computer came alive, saying, “Hey, boss. You need to come down here. See what I’ve got. It’s not good.”

Surprised, he pressed a button on his keyboard and said, “What is it?”

“I don’t want to say over the net.”

Meaning, it could be saved for posterity. He’d instilled in his staff never, ever to say anything sensitive on the network, be it verbal, text, or chat, because he knew that once it touched the internet, it was there forever, no matter what anyone said. The only way to prevent that was good ol’ fashioned paper notes or face-to-face conversations. But in this case, there should be no reason to use such security.

He said again, “What is it?”

“You need to see it.”

Exasperated, he said, “Come up here and talk to me. I’m doing other work.”

“Roger that. Will do.”

The man Hobbes had chosen for the security assessment of the strange government organization called Blaisdell Consulting was a prior member of both the NSA and Cyber Command. Someone who would understand the firewalls, nondisclosure statements, and intricacies of what they were dealing with. Someone who wouldn’t talk. The researcher had no idea of the scope of the problem set he had been presented, but would know that no matter what it was, he wasn’t allowed to talk. He was a good man.

Seven minutes later, Hobbes heard the footsteps in the utilitarian hallway. While their business earned millions a year, his company worked out of a two-story warehouse in a nondescript area of Tysons Corner, Virginia. Close enough to do the work with the government cyber agencies as required, but far enough away from the players in DC to protect him. Just like the greater intelligence community. A stone’s throw from Liberty Crossing, the home of the National Counterterrorism Center and the headquarters of the Director of National Intelligence, it was a convenient location. But it still looked like a warehouse from the outside. Like an old storage unit facility that one wouldn’t rent without some references.

His door opened and he saw Kirk in the hallway. He said, “What’s the fire? I have my own issues here.”

Kirk entered and said, “Yeah, you think you have a flame, but it’s nothing like I’m bringing to you.”

Hobbes leaned back in his chair and said, “What’s that mean?”

“I’ve poked around the code used for the penetration of that computer at Blaisdell Consulting, and it looks like ours.”

Hobbes heard the words, but they didn’t assimilate immediately. He thought,What? That can’t be right.

Kirk said, “Did you hear me?”

Hobbes said, “Yeah, yeah, I heard you, but that can’t be accurate. What do you mean, it’s similar to what we were doing with Project Speargun?”

“I mean the code is our own. ItisProject Speargun. The one we developed for the zero click. It’s in this ransomware. They have our code. That’s how they did the attack, and now I’m worried that it’s somehow escaped our lab, but I don’t know how.”

Feeling the sweat form on his brow, knowingexactlyhow, he said, “Surely you’re mistaken. That can’t be right. There’s no way our code got out into the wild. No way. It’s been air-gapped since we started.”

Kirk said, “Come downstairs. I’ll show you. It’s our code. We have a leak somehow. We should have never done the work to develop it.”

Last year, Hobbes had created a “Tiger Team” to develop the ability to inject malware with a zero click into Windows computer systems, ostensibly to learn how to deconstruct such penetrations for their business of solving ransomware attacks, much like gain-of-function research into viruses in order to develop effective treatments before they became a threat. But Hobbes had a separate reason for such work. One that was now about to be discovered.

He couldn’t believe the zero click in this attack had come from him. How stupid could the people he’d contacted be? Attacking a secret US government organization? One that could wipe them out?

A smart man, he quickly realized that they had no idea whatthey’d attacked. All they thought was they’d get a ransom from some bloated consulting firm. After all,hehad no idea until he’d been read on to the Blaisdell Consulting program.

Kirk said, “Hey, boss, you okay?”

Hobbes snapped out of his thoughts and said, “Yeah, yeah, of course. It’s just a little bit of a shock hearing this. Are you sure?”

“Oh, I’m sure. I wrote that code. It’s mine. How on earth did it get out in the wild? We had that shit locked up tight.”