Lock In (Lock In, #1)(71)

Tony pointed to Vann. “You asked me if I thought it would be possible to lock in an Integrator with a commercially available network.”

“You said no,” Vann said.

“I said I didn’t think so,” Tony said. “I didn’t think so because the code that allowed it to happen in Sani’s brain was optimized for a network that was itself optimized for locking in Integrators while giving the client control. Purpose-built software for purpose-built hardware.”

“But you were wrong,” I said.

“I was wrong,” Tony said.

“Why were you wrong?”

“Because I was thinking about Johnny Sani’s network incorrectly,” Tony said. “I told you that it wasn’t a prototype. That it was a release-level brain. Well, it is. But it’s also a proof of concept, the concept being that if you knew the hardware and the software really well, you could have the client take total control of the Integrator’s body. It’s not something anyone tried to do—well, that we know about. There’s probably some * NSA initiative to do just that.”

“Focus,” Vann said.

“Sorry,” Tony said. “Sani showed that it could be done. Now all anyone needed to do was translate that proof of concept into existing, general networks. And to do that you would have to do a couple of things. One, you’d have a deep understanding of the networks you were using. You’d have to know the hardware really well. Two, you’d have to be a complete f*cking wizard at programming.”

“Hubbard,” I said.

Tony touched his finger to his nose. “Lucturn is the second-largest manufacturer of Haden neural networks, after Santa Ana, and Hubbard is famously involved in the design process. The programming forums are full of horror stories about him coming in and tearing up his engineers’ early designs for being inelegant.”

“And how is he as a programmer?” Vann asked.

“It’s how he got into the field,” Tony said. “He founded Hubbard Systems to manage corporate legacy computer systems, and then after he got Haden’s he started focusing on programming for threeps and networks that were orphaned when their manufacturers got out of the field. He did a lot of that programming himself back in the day. The programming system networks use is called Chomsky. Hubbard didn’t invent it, but he did write most of the 2.0 version, and he’s on the board of the Haden Consortium, which approves new versions of the code.”

“The Haden Consortium,” I said.

“What about it,” Tony said.

“Hold on,” I said. I fished through my e-mail and pulled up one for Tony and Vann to look at. “L.A. finally got back to me about the ninja threep,” I said.

“Ninja threep?” Tony looked puzzled.

“I’ll explain later,” I said. “The point is the threep’s design wasn’t a commercial design—it was a low-fee license version that the Haden Consortium offers potential manufacturers in developing countries for use in their countries. You can’t buy them or sell them in North America, Europe, or developed Asia.”

“So you were attacked by an imported threep,” Vann said.

“It could be made here as a one-off,” I said. “All you’d need was an industrial 3-D printer and an assembly robot.”

“Who has a setup that could handle that?” Vann asked.

“Pretty much any design shop or manufacturer who does full-scale modeling,” I said. “L.A. said they would look into it but it would take some time. My point here is that Hubbard’s involved with both Chomsky and the threep design that went ninja on me.”

“Which could be coincidental,” Vann said.

I opened my mouth to respond but Tony butted in. “Hold that thought,” he said. “I’m going to tell you why Hubbard’s your guy, but I have a couple more things to walk you through.”

“All right,” Vann said. “Take us to the next thing.”

Tony turned to me. “You remember me telling you that early on the network manufacturers had problems with people hacking into the networks.” I nodded. “So they made it harder to do. One, they made the network architecture more complex so it was more difficult to program for and to casually hack. But that’s a very low-level measure. Ambitious hackers tend to be top-flight programmers. So another way it’s done is that all software updates and patches have to be from approved vendors, who are identified by a hash they put in the header of the patch. A patch is downloaded and the hash is checked. If the patch is verified, then it downloads and installs. If it’s not, then it’s purged and a report is made.”

“And that’s impossible to get around,” Vann said.

“Not impossible,” Tony said. “But it’s difficult. In order to work they have to be stolen and they have to still be active. When I do white-hat hacking of these systems, half my job is getting a verifiable code. That’s a lot of psychological spoofing. Making people think I’m their boss and need their hash, finding ways to look over their shoulder while they’re writing code, shit like that.”

“How would you do that?” I asked.

“Lots of different ways,” Tony said. “One of my favorites was the time I put a basket on a remote-controlled toy quadcopter, filled the basket with candy, and then flew the candy into the programmer wing of Santa Ana’s headquarters. The quadcopter went from pod to pod, and while the programmers were grabbing at candy, I was grabbing shots of their work screens. I got eight programmer hashes that day.”