“This is Deepta from Analysis. Look, are you guys having any computer problems?” Her brow furrowed and she listened. “Yeah, me too. Look, I need to ask you a favor. I’m getting some ridiculous readings on an older sensor. It’s not networked with the others; it’s probably just failing. But all this has me nervous. Is there a way you can monitor your additive levels? Yeah? Sure, I’ll wait. I’ll put you on speaker while I recheck that damn unit.”
She pressed a button on the mobile phone as she walked to the far wall and crouched in front of the older equipment again.
A voice erupted with distortion from the small speaker of the phone. “Okay, Deepta. Give us a few minutes here. There is a panel of sensors directly on the additive pipes. They should be read by the main software — and all that looks good — but they also display the values on the sensor units themselves. We can read them off directly. Hang on.”
“I’ll be right here.”
She shook her head. The anomalous readings had not normalized. In fact, they were shooting up. It was like they were unloading their entire store of toxic chemicals into the New York City drinking water!
The door to the operations center burst open. A middle-aged man with a crop of silver hair dashed into the room. He was roughly dressed, clothes obviously thrown on in a hurry, hair uncombed. He rushed straight to the computer monitors as he put on his glasses.
“Mike, wait that’s no good. There—”
“Deepta! What the hell’s wrong with the interface?”
“It’s down! I’m trying to tell you. All the machines! And not only here, but on other floors.”
“But the software’s still running. I just can’t access anything. God, we’ll have to reboot everything!”
“Mike, come look at these readings.” Her superior shuffled over and bent down to examine the older unit. “Please tell me this is malfunctioning.”
His face paled. “I grew up on these things, Deepta. When they fail, they don’t give readings like this. The checks are too thorough in the logic. This is not failure behavior. We need to find out what’s going on with the treatment chemicals.”
“Right. I’m on the line with—”
The phone popped. “Deepta? Mike? This is Herman Richards upstairs. We have several people double-checking, but you aberrant sensor is not, I repeat not malfunctioning. Our pipe sensors are screaming. The valves are completely open. We’re dumping everything into the supply!”
“Can you shut things down from there?”
“So far no! All computer control is locked. We can’t get into the system. We’re force rebooting a few to see if that clears the problem. Meanwhile we’re poisoning the water supply for millions in the city! We’ve got to get a public health message out. Get this on the news. Something!”
“Calm down! We follow protocol. Deepta, get the manual open and let’s go by the book on this.”
“We went paperless three months ago, Mike. The hardcopies were recycled.”
“Jesus!” He shook his head. “Then go from memory! Meanwhile, we’ve got to shut it down before too much gets out there.”
The voice on the phone sounded panicked. “I know! What if we can’t?”
“Then we’re going to have a hell of a lot of sick people come tomorrow.”
SAVAS Deposition 2
CBD: And what was the result of the filtration plant failure?
MR. SAVAS: Minor. New York only got about 10 % of its water from the Croton pipeline. They manually shut off the flow before much of the tainted water got into the main supply into the City. What did was diluted out. We got lucky.
CBD: And this was the worm?
MR. SAVAS: Yes. The computers running the plant were all infected, of course. They lost control of them. Like with our car. Everything is plugged in now, even things that are life and death. Something as basic and driving, as basic as water.
CBD: So, it’s your belief that Anonymous tried to murder you by hacking your car?
MR. SAVAS: Not Anonymous. We were learning better than that. Fawkes.
CBD: But you have said that he called himself Anonymous.
MR. SAVAS: I could call myself the Pope but it wouldn't mean I could lead services at the Vatican.
CBD: You claim you were nearly killed by this Fawkes. How could he hack your car?
MR. SAVAS: Turns out it's not that hard. We were in a brand-spanking new Dodge Charger model outfitted for police work. One of the most powerful engines in a production model — seemed some great wheels to make time upstate. What a bunch of idiots we were. Like the civilian models, it came standard with a new high-tech digital interface. Everything from GPS navigation and mobile apps to handsfree phone calls. Probably would do your dishes if you asked nicely. Used the latest mobile phone tech to connect to the internet. Ran one of several operating systems vulnerable to the worm. QED. Infected.
[REDACTED]: And how would you know all this?
MR. SAVAS: You do remember I have a cybercrimes group? Angel filled us in once we got back, as luck would have it in one piece. We went back to older Crown Vics from the garage after that. They weren't networked and so were isolated from infection.
CBD: How would Anonymous know to target you?
MR. SAVAS: Fawkes, not Anonymous. And that one is a bit of a mystery. Maybe by pairing our FBI origin coordinates with the prison destination. Hanert could have been a trigger, a flag, and once raised, they could monitor our phone calls made from the car system. We were really stupid. So much for off-grid. We ignored the OS backdoor in the car we were sitting in. And we knew that wasn't going to be the end. The clock was ticking. Fawkes knew we were poking around. It was just a matter of time before they tried something else to slow us down.
CBD: Wouldn't the break-in at the drone factory have had the same result?
MR. SAVAS: No. Lopez and Houston, they were ciphers. No ties to anything. Sure, it would have given Fawkes a jolt, but nothing to bring FBI, and our division in particular, into the cross-hairs. They were in and out like ghosts. And thank God Houston took the paper copies.
CBD: Please elaborate.
MR. SAVAS: On what? The break-in?
CBD: Yes.
MR. SAVAS: This is second-hand, but they had the same problem we were facing, this dependence on digital technology for nearly everything, and now behind it all, the worm, of course. So, they worked off public computers, I think the library. Angel gave them temporary codes to the federal databases, access to names, locations, sat imagery, and more. Down to the positions of the guards on an hourly basis as I understand it. They even had the specs on the security system. Not sure what happened, if anything, to the computer systems they used to do all this research on.
CBD: And they used this information to break into the factory?
MR. SAVAS: Yes. They had schematics for the buildings, and Angel had put a trace on orders coming in and out to verify the likely center of operations and data storage at the facility.
CBD: Which was your target?