Location: Network Operations Center (NOC), NSA, Fort Meade (USA) / Level 4, Volta SA Factory (Ivry-sur-Seine).
Date: May 1, 1994 (Time difference).
Viewpoint: Omniscient (Sliding focus on Richard Hayes and Marc).
It was 3:15 a.m. on the East Coast of the United States.
Deep within the ultra-secure bowels of Fort Meade, the National Security Agency's Network Operations Center (NOC) was bathed in the bluish twilight of cathode-ray tube screens. But the atmosphere there was neither one of nocturnal torpor nor of the routine of global monitoring.
It was one of utter humiliation.
Richard Hayes, the senior analyst whose servers had been gutted by the VoltaOS-M virus two years earlier, stood with his arms crossed so tightly his knuckles threatened to break, facing the immense wall of screens in the operations room. Beside him, Director Vance, his face like a statue, breathed with ragged, slow movements.
They had just witnessed, via an intercepted and broadcast live video stream, the closing of the Volta Lúmen conference in Paris.
They had seen Lazare Bonaparte, that French kid who had brought them to their knees, parading before the whole world. They had seen the arrogant demonstration of the infallible rollback of vosX, that machine that refused to die even when its power supply was ripped out.
They had heard the announcement of the devastating price of the Compaq AXIOM 2150 SX. Three hundred and eighty-one euros. A fragmentation bomb dropped directly on the Silicon Valley business model.
And finally, they had endured the coup de grâce: the news reports that millions of these machines were already on store shelves all over Europe.
« They're popping champagne in Paris, » Vance snarled, his voice trembling with rancid hatred. « They think the war's over because they sold plastic cans. »
Hayes did not respond immediately. The analyst was looking at another monitor, which was not displaying the conference, but the status of their own hardware infrastructure.
After the disaster of « Colossus Day » in 1992, the US administration, despite Clinton's budget cuts, released massive amounts of slush funds to rebuild the heart of the NSA. They replaced the melted IBM and Cray servers with brand-new computing clusters — monsters powered by cutting-edge processors that Silicon Valley was producing in complete secrecy.
What Intel had lost in architectural finesse compared to the VESLA-III processor, Andy Grove had compensated for with raw, gargantuan, and energy-intensive power. And the Pentagon had bought exclusive rights to it.
« Our new arrays are calibrated, » Hayes announced, his fingers gliding across his keyboard. « The security protocols are active. We have ten thousand of these new processors networked, ready to deliver computing power that would melt any civilian firewall from the previous decade. »
Director Vance turned to his analyst. The pride of the world's leading power, wounded on the international stage, demanded an immediate sacrifice. America could not allow the Ogre of Ivry to go to sleep tonight with a sense of invincibility.
« Bonaparte has devised an asymmetric defense system, » Vance murmured, his eyes gleaming with vengeful cruelty. « He believes Volta Secure is impenetrable because its mathematics are elegant. But he forgets that sheer weight of numbers can crack any fortress, if you throw enough tonnage at it. »
Vance pointed to the targeting screen. « Don't attempt a subtle infiltration, Hayes. I don't want to read their emails or spy on their factory plans. I want the digital equivalent of carpet bombing. Launch a saturating DDoS attack, coupled with sheer cryptographic firepower, directly against the central routing node of the Ivry-sur-Seine factory. I want their IMPERATOR servers to collapse under the weight of our requests at the very moment the world press is writing their praises. »
Hayes swallowed. It was a crude, noisy maneuver that would immediately betray the origin of the attack. But the analyst shared his director's rage. He typed in the launch sequence.
« Target acquisition confirmed. Volta SA primary gateway IP coordinates locked. Compute clusters boots. »
The analyst slammed his fist down on the execution key.
« Strike launched. The Eagle strikes the forge. »
⁂
Location: Level 4, Volta SA Factory, Ivry-sur-Seine. Time: 10:15 (Paris Time).
The excitement of the Salle Pleyel was a distant mirage for the men of Level 4. In the underground sanctuary of the Ivry factory, bathed in the constant glow of neon lights, the surveillance team had no right to relax.
Marc, the head of Volta Secure, the former hacker recruited from the depths of the Minitel era, was enjoying a black coffee in front of his monitoring console. Around him, the rows of terminals were no longer solely occupied by Volta engineers. In accordance with the secret pact sealed between Lazare Bonaparte and François Mitterrand, the elite of the Republic's intelligence services now met in the cellar of the Bâtisseur. Young officers from the DGSE in civilian clothes and cryptanalysts from the Directorate General of Armament scrutinized the screens, learning the rudiments of asymmetric cyberwarfare from those who had just reshaped the world's computing landscape.
One of these state « students, » a young air force lieutenant fresh out of Polytechnique, was mechanically listening to Marc's presentation on routing table optimization when his primary intrusion control screen froze.
« Sir... » began the lieutenant, his voice hesitant.
He didn't have time to finish his sentence.
In a fraction of a second, Level 4 descended into horror.
The harsh glare of the white fluorescent lights was abruptly cut off by the automated defense system, instantly replaced by flashing red tactical alert lights. The basement loudspeakers emitted a silent siren, a low-frequency hum that rattled the reinforced concrete walls.
On the immense wall of screens that overlooked the room, the normally stable incoming traffic counter literally exploded. The green curves transformed into vertical scarlet walls.
Marc spilled his coffee and jumped onto his keyboard. « Massive attack on the primary gateway! » yelled the head of security, his eyes wide with shock at the sheer volume of the traffic. « This is a state-level DDoS! Incoming requests are exceeding one terabit! »
The DGSE officers jumped to their feet, terror contorting their faces. They, who had thought the Volta Secure architecture an impenetrable wall, were now witnessing a full-scale bombardment.
« Their packets aren't empty! » shouted a Volta engineer, frantically typing to analyze the attack signature. « They're bombarding our ports with random encryption keys! This is a raw hardware onslaught, boosted by insane processing architecture! They're trying to saturate the computing units of our CENTURION module! »
The CENTURION module was the cryptographic heart of the IMPERATOR servers. The inviolable sanctuary. If it were to fall, the factory's internal network, as well as the secure communications of the French Ministry of Defense, would be exposed.
« Reject the traffic! Isolate the front-end routers! » ordered Marc, sweat beading on his forehead.
« Impossible! The flow is too massive! They're exploiting the TCP synchronization channels! If we cut everything off, we'll isolate ourselves from the world and the interbank network will collapse with us! »
The American show of force was of unprecedented kinetic savagery. What the NSA's Intel processors lacked in subtlety, they made up for with a deluge of calculations that threatened to physically melt the receiving components at Ivry.
Suddenly, a dull noise, a sinister clicking, echoed in the adjacent server rack room. A red icon flashed on the giant screen.
CRITICAL ERROR. PRIMARY NODE A-1 FAILURE.
The young DGSE lieutenant took a step back, defeated. « The firewall... » the officer stammered incredulously. « The firewall just failed. »
It was a historic first. Under the steamroller of a militarized Silicon Valley, the supposedly invincible shield of Volta Secure had just cracked.
The breach was open. The American Eagle had sunk its talons into French architecture, at the very moment when Lazare Bonaparte was receiving the ovation of the world press.
A cold and deadly panic spread through the ranks of French intelligence. If the heart of the factory fell, the state secrets they protected there, and the entire illusion of European sovereignty, would collapse with it.
« Marc! » shouted one of the officers. « We must cut the physical line! Cut the backbones! »
« If we cut it, we'll admit defeat! » Marc yelled, refusing to surrender. « We'll fight in the code! »
The head of security grabbed the red emergency phone and pressed the button for a direct connection to the control room at Salle Pleyel.
« Put Karim on the phone! Right away! »
Location: Level 4, Volta SA Factory, Ivry-sur-Seine. Time: 11:20 (Paris time).
The doors of the armored elevator opened with a metallic clang. Karim Belkacem, torn from the embraces and euphoria backstage at the Salle Pleyel, stepped into the basement bathed in red light. His tie was knotted crookedly, his suit jacket half-undone.
The technical director didn't need to ask any questions. The smell of overheated ozone and the livid faces of the DGSE officers spoke for themselves. He rushed towards the master console, almost pushing Marc aside.
« Intrusion status! » barked Karim, his fingers landing on the mechanical keyboard with the familiarity of a blacksmith grasping his hammer.
« They overwhelmed the primary node A-1 with requests, » Marc replied, his voice hoarse. « They're in the DMZ. Their packets are trying to force their way through internal routing to reach the storage servers. It's an assault of a density I've never seen. They're using processors that compute ten times faster than their older models. »
Karim gritted his teeth. Santa Clara had supplied its weapons to Fort Meade.
« It's trench warfare, » the software architect confided. « We're not going back. »
He turned to Volta's engineers and French intelligence officer cadets, who had been transformed into a motley army of defenders.
« Listen to me! » Karim yelled over the roar of the fans. « This is hand-to-hand combat! You're not going to try to block the flow, you're going to absorb it! »
He pointed at the young DGSE lieutenant.
« You! Take control of routers B and C! Rewrite the allocation tables on the fly! If they're searching for a port, change its IP address every two seconds! Make them run around in a maze! »
He turned to Julien, the mathematician.
« Julien! Activate the CELLA-64M memory on the test bank servers. We'll use its 528 MB/s bandwidth to swallow their malicious packets. Let them exhaust themselves trying to fill a bottomless pit! »
The order seemed suicidal: to use ultra-fast working memory like a sponge to absorb the DDoS attack. But the synchronous speed of CELLA was their only hardware advantage against Intel's overwhelming numbers.
For two hours, Level 4 was the scene of an invisible battle of absolute savagery. Keyboards clattered. The young officers of the Republic, mentored by the pirates of Ivry, sweated blood and tears to maintain the logical barricades. Karim rewrote firewall rules in pure assembly language, closing breaches the very second they were exploited.
It was a duel of attrition, an endurance battle between American computing power and French architectural agility.
At 1:10 p.m., the roar of the servers finally seemed to subside by half a tone. On the giant screen, the scarlet intrusion curves began to crumble, bumping up against the dynamic routing rules and the CELLA memory wall that refused to saturate.
« The flow is slowing down, » announced Marc, wiping his sweaty brow. « The rate of incoming requests is dropping by thirty percent. »
Karim leaned back in his chair, breathless. The IMPERATOR core had held firm. The breach in the primary firewall was isolated. They had survived the lightning strike. But honor alone wasn't enough to quell the technical director's rage. America had dared to desecrate their coronation day.
« We're not just going to close the door, » Karim growled, a fierce glint lighting up in his tired eyes. « We're going to throw their own shit back at them. »
He turned to Marc.
« Prepare the charge. Weapon VoltaOS-M. »
The head of security didn't hesitate for a second. He inserted the physical key that unlocked the code for the Apex Predator, the polymorphic weapon that had ravaged the NSA a year earlier.
« We're going to use the tunnel they opened on our firewall to trace their own attack line, » Karim explained to the fascinated DGSE officers. « We'll inject our malware directly into their network traffic. When their attack servers receive our packet, VoltaOS-M will mutate in their cache and erase the allocation tables of their new Intel machines. We'll shut them down. »
Marc initiated the boot sequence. The targeting screen locked onto the attack's originating IP addresses. Fort Meade.
« Armed charge, » announced Marc, his finger hovering over the execution key. « Ready to fire. »
But at the exact moment when Karim was about to give the order, an unbelievable anomaly occurred on the control monitors. The American targets blinked... then simply disappeared from the network map.
« What's this? » Julien asked, surprised. « They've lost the connection? »
Marc typed frantically, sending ping requests. Nothing. Total radio silence.
« Negative, » the hacker breathed, stunned. « It's not a failure. The NSA's IP addresses have just been physically disconnected from the transatlantic backbones. The attack servers no longer exist on the global network. »
Karim straightened up, understanding the implications of the maneuver. At Fort Meade, Vance's analysts had detected the preparations for the French counterattack. They had seen the shadow of VoltaOS-M awaken. And knowing full well that they still possessed no software remedy against this polymorphic parasite, the American high command had made the most humiliating decision imaginable.
To avoid the destruction of their newly acquired, expensive infrastructure, they had ordered the complete physical disconnection of their own machines. A shameful retreat. Tactical cowardice elevated to a survival doctrine.
In the Ivry bunker, silence fell again, sticky and thick with sweat. The waiters breathed, releasing the heat of the battle.
The young DGSE officers slumped in their seats, overcome by exhaustion, but their eyes shone with a newfound pride. They had just repelled the world's leading power in a hand-to-hand fight.
But Karim wasn't smiling. He was staring at the blank screen where the Eagle had just fled. He knew it was a defensive victory, but it tasted bitter. The NSA had proven that American computing dominance remained a deadly threat, capable of breaching their defenses. And the deliberate disconnection proved that Washington feared Lazarus's weapon more than anything in the world.
The Cold War was well and truly over. The Builder was right. The war of attrition, cruel, ruthless, and without rules, had finally taken hold.
The free world marveled at the Compaq AXIOM, unaware that at that very moment, the true price of silicon had just been paid in the darkness.