Chapter 15
Sunday, December 6
Washington, D.C.
Miles Foster was busy at one of the several computers in his Washington, D.C. condo. It was necessary, on a daily basis, to stay in contact with a vast group of people who were executing portions of his master plan. He thought it was going quite well, exceedingly so in fact. Spread over 3 continents he remote controlled engineers and programmers who designed methods to compromise computers. With his guidance, though. He broke them into several groups, and none of them knew they were part of a much larger organization, nor did they have any idea of their ultimate objective.
Each of his computer criminals was recruited by Alex; that's the only name that Miles knew. Alex. Miles had drawn up a list of minimum qualifications for his 'staff'. He forwarded them to Homosoto, who, Miles guessed, passed them on to the ubiquitous yet invisible Alex. That obviously wasn't his real name, but suitable for conversation.
Miles had developed a profile of the various talents he required. One group needed to have excellent programming skills, with a broad range of expertise in operating systems. An operating system is much like English or any other language. It is the O/S that allows the computer to execute its commands. Unless the computer understands the O/S, the computer is deaf dumb and blind. As a child learns to communicate, a computer is imbued with the basic knowledge to permit it to function. It is still essentially stupid, that is, it can't do anything on its own without instructions, but it can understand them when they are given.
In order to violate a computer, a thorough understanding of the O/S, or language of the computer is a must. Good programmers learn the most efficient way to get a computer to perform the desired task. There are, as in any field, tricks of the trade. Through experience, a programmer will learn how to fool the computer into doing things it might not be designed to do. By taking advantage of the features of the Operating System, many of them unknown and therefore undocumented by the original designers of the O/S, a computer programmer is able to extract additional performance from the equipment.
Similarly, though, such knowledge allows the motivated programmer to bypass critical portions of the Operating System to perform specific jobs and to circumvent any security measures that may be present. For example, in most of the 85,000,000 or so DOS com- puters in the world, it is common knowledge that when you ERASE a file, you really don't erase it. You merely erase the NAME of the file. If a secretary was told to dispose of document from a file cabinet, and she only removed the name of each file, but left the contents remaining in the file drawers, she would cer- tainly have reason to worry for her job. Such is an example of one of the countless security holes that permeate computer land.
To take advantage of such glaring omissions, several software companies were formed that allowed users to retrieve 'erased' files.
These were among the skills that Miles wanted his people to have. He needed them to be fluent in not only DOS, but Unix, Xenix, VMS, Mac and a host of other Operating Systems. He needed a group that knew the strengths and weaknesses of every major O/S to fulfill his mission. They needed to be able to identify and exploit the trap doors and holes in all operating and security systems. From an engineering standpoint, Miles found it terrifi- cally exciting. Over the three years he had been working for Homosoto, Miles and his crew designed software techniques and hardware tools that he didn't believe were even contemplated by his former employer, the NSA.
The qualifications he sent to Homosoto were extensive, detailed and demanding. Miles wasn't convinced that anyone but he could find the proper people. The interview process alone was crucial to determining an applicant's true abilities, and a mediocre programmer could easily fool a non-technical person. While Miles and Homosoto agreed that all programmers should be isolated from each other, Miles felt he should know them more than by a coded name over modem lines. Miles lost that battle with one swift word from Homosoto. No.