Terminal Compromise Part 148

"I'm giving you six hours lead. Quit b.i.t.c.hing."

"O.K., O.K., what is it?"

"Don't sound so grateful."

"Where the h.e.l.l are you?" Scott asked sounding slightly more awake.

"At the office."

"At four?"

"You're pus.h.i.+ng your luck . . ."

"I'm ready."

"It looks like your NEMO friends were right. There are bunches of viruses. You can use this. ECCO received reports of a quar- ter million computers going haywire yesterday. There's gotta be ten times that number that haven't been reported."

"Whose?"

"Everybody for Christ's sake. American Gen, Compton Industries, First Life, Banks, and, this is almost funny, the entire town of Fallsworth, Idaho."

"Excuse me?"

Thursday, February 25

TOWN DISAPPEARS By Scott Mason

The town of Fallsworth, Idaho is facing a unique problem. It is out of business.

Fallsworth, Idaho, population 433, has a computer population of 611.

But no one in the entire incorporation of Fallsworth has ever bought or paid for a single piece of software or hardware.

Three years ago, the town counsel approved a plan to make this small potato farming community the most computerized towns.h.i.+p in the United States, and it seems that they succeeded. Apparently the city hall of Fallsworth was contacted by representatives of Apple Computer. Would they like to be part of an experiment?

Apple Computer provided every home and business in the Fallsworth area with a computer and the necessary equipment to tie all of the computers together into one town-wide network. The city was a pilot program for the Electronic City of the future. The residents of Fallsworth were trained to use the computers and Apple and a.s.sociated companies provided the towns.h.i.+p beta copies of software to try out, play with and comment on.

Fallsworth, Idaho was truly the networked city.

Lily Williams and members of the other 172 households in Falls- worth typed out their grocery lists on their computer, matching them to known inventories and pricing from Malcolm Druckers'

General Store. When the orders arrived at the Drucker computer, the goods just had to be loaded in the pick up truck. Druckers'

business increased 124% after the network was installed.

Doctors Stephenson, Viola and Freemont, the three town doctors modem'ed prescriptions to Baker Pharmacy so the pills were ready by the time their patients arrived.

Mack's Messengers had cellular modems and portable computers installed in their delivery trucks. They were so efficient, they expanded their business into nearby Darbywell, Idaho, population, 5,010.

Today, Fallsworth, Idaho doesn't use its computers. They lie dormant. A town without life. They forgot how to live and work and play and function without their computers. Who are the slaves?

The viruses of Lotus, of dGraph. The viruses of Freedom struck, and no one in the entire town had registration cards. The soft- ware crisis has left Fallsworth and a hundred other small test sites for big software firms out in the digital void.

Apple Computer promised to look into the matter but said that customers who have paid for their products come first . . .

Friday, March 5 FBI Building, Federal Square

Tyrone Duncan was as busy as he had ever been, attempting to coordinate the FBI's efforts in tracking down any of the increas- ing number of computer criminals. And there were a lot of them at the moment. The first Copy-Cat computer a.s.saults were coming to light, making it all that much more difficult to isolate the Foster Plan activities from those other non-coordinated inci- dents.

Tyrone, as did his counterparts in regional FBI offices nation- wide, created teams of agents who concentrated on specific areas of h.o.m.osoto's a.s.sault as described by the Spook. Some special- ized in tracing missing electronic funds, some in working with the phone company through the NSA. More than any other goal, the FBI wanted desperately to locate as many of the invisible agents that the Spook, Miles Foster, had told h.o.m.osoto to use. Tyrone doubted they would catch anywhere near the 3000 or more he was told that were out there, but at this point any success was welcome.

FBI agents toiled and interviewed and researched sixteen and eighteen hours a day, seven days a week. There hadn't been such a blanket approval of overtime since the Kennedy a.s.sa.s.sination.

The FBI followed up the leads generated by the computers at the NSA. Who and where were the likely a.s.sociates of h.o.m.osoto and Foster?

His phone rang - the private line that bypa.s.ses his secretary- startling Tyrone from the deep thought in which he was immersed.

On a Sat.u.r.day. As the voice on the other end of the phone ut- tered its first sound, Tyrone knew that it was Bob Burnson.

Apparently he was in his office today as well.

"Afternoon, Bob," Tyrone said vacantly.

"Gotcha at a bad time?" Burnson asked.

"No, no. Just going over something that may prove interesting."

"Go ahead, make my day," joked Burnson.

"I know you don't want to know . . ."

"Then don't tell me . . ."

"But Mason's hackers are coming through for us."

"Jeez, Ty," whined Bob. "Do you have to . . ."

"Do you know anybody else that is capable of moving freely in those circles? It's not exactly our specialty," reprimanded Tyrone.

"In theory it's great," Bob reluctantly agreed, "but there are so d.a.m.n many exposures. They can mislead us, they're not profes- sionals, and worst of all, we don't even know who they are, to perform a background check."

"Bob, you go over to the other side . . . playing desk man on me?"

"Ty, I told you a while ago, I could only hang so far out before the branches started shaking."

"Then you don't know anything." Tyrone said in negotiation.

Keep Bob officially uninformed and unofficially informed. "You don't know that NEMO has helped to identify four of the black- mailers and a handful of the Freedom Freaks. You don't know that we have gotten more reliable information from Mason's kids than from ECCO, CERT, NIST and NSA combined. They're up in the clouds with theory and conjecture and what-iffing themselves silly.

NEMO is in the streets. A remote control informer if you like."

"What else don't I know?"