Turner thought about his own situation and could easily see himself in Brendan’s shoes.
“You can’t expect to eliminate a fanatic and not have his lemmings come for you,” Turner said. “The fucking press, they can be so ignorant.”
Manion laughed, but there was no humor. “Some of them could stand for some common sense and decency,” he agreed. “My commander reached out to Addy before he approached me with the idea. You know, kill me off so I wouldn’t have to worry about my family anymore, so I wouldn’t have that hanging over my head.” He looked to Turner. “So that’s what we did. Addy’s got some serious pull and made it happen. I was listed as a casualty on a bird that went down.” He looked to the sky. “A lot of good soldiers lost their life on that Apache,” he said bitterly. “It’s ironic that they gave me mine back.”
“Now you have all the more reason to make a difference,” Turner said.
Manion nodded. “I’d been getting my feet wet doing some work in Afghanistan, and when you’re brother was killed Addy decided it was time to let the cat out of the bag and officially bring me on board.”
“He’s a smart man. Jesus, it’s great to see you, Brendan,” Trent said as the two pounded fists.
They had just made it back to the others when they heard the loud report of a weapon.
Chapter 152
“We’ve got it,” CDWG Director Cynthia Grayson said with a smile. “Nice work everyone, incredible job.”
Her team had been working feverishly to break the encryption on the files they had intercepted from the Bratva just before their Chicago compound was destroyed. Hacker Dennis Zander had provided them with the crucial piece of information that led to their breakthrough. He had told them that the bank account numbers in the files the Russians were using for their operation never changed, and that detail ended up being the key to breaking the encryption relatively fast.
The transmission they had intercepted had been done in haste just before the explosion at the Bratva’s compound in Chicago. The Shop had identified the communication from a USB modem when it connected to the same cell tower that Maria Soller’s phone had used. Once the team of analysts utilized an NSA back door to decrypt the secure copy between the computers, they quickly realized that some of the files had been sent unencrypted. From there, it was a matter of comparing an unencrypted file with an encrypted file that Zander had helped them identify from the financial institution data that had been archived in the NSA’s Top Secret Stellar Wind data collection program.
Now it was time for Grayson to collect her thoughts and report on the progress. She headed into her office and went straight for the special phone on her desk. She pressed the button labeled “Situation Room” and eagerly awaited an answer.
“Cyndi, good morning,” President Cross said.
“Good morning, Mr. President. Do you have Addy with you?”
“He’s here, and also Assistant Director Hood from the FBI.”
“Gentlemen,” she said.
“Good morning, Cyndi,” Addy Simpson chimed in. “I sure hope you have some good news for us.”
She tried to quietly clear her throat. “I do, both good and bad. My team has broken the encryption on the files.”
“Great news,” the president said before she continued.
“We’ve also confirmed that they’re using the surgeon bots to modify the Automated Clearing House files from the Federal Reserve. You may know them as ACH files.”
“ACH files?” Simpson said, and then paused as if the wheels were turning in his head. “Is that the system the Fed uses to distribute electronic transfers for payroll and payments?”
“That’s right,” she confirmed. “The hacker we brought in from Chicago has been a big help. Between what he’s told us and the code the team here has reverse engineered, we’ve confirmed that the Russians plan to modify each of the target bank’s incoming ACH files. It looks like their plan is to change the amount of the transfers within each ACH file so it will take funds from and aggregate those funds into accounts that are seldom used.”
“Wouldn’t that be easy to spot?” President Cross asked.
“You would think so, but from what we’ve been able to determine, the way they’re going about this will maintain the correct amounts for total debits and credits for each ACH file, and that’s how the banks verify everything once the payment file is finished processing.”
“You’re saying their overall numbers won’t be off, so it won’t immediately be brought to their attention?” Simpson said, pausing for a moment. “So, let’s say I’m supposed to get a thousand dollars,” he continued, “but instead they send it to another account that’s in the same file and zero out mine? They just swap the amounts out?”
“That’s right, they’d send you something like twenty dollars and change, and the rest would go into some other account where they’re building up a large balance. These files can total tens of millions of dollars in transactions, and they typically process several per day, so it’s impossible to verify the amount for each individual account was correct.”
“That sounds too easy,” the president said.
“It’s not as hard as it should be,” Grayson agreed. “There should be more protective measures in place. Since they’re targeting accounts with low activity, it could be a week, maybe more, before the magnitude of what’s going on will be discovered.”
The president took a long moment to respond. “Do you know how they plan to move the money around?”
“I was just getting to that. Let me try to keep it simple,” she said. “The DataBank software application is accessed with a web browser. What they’re doing is injecting hidden transactions into the browser of a user who is legitimately authorized to do wire transfers.”
“So they’re piggybacking off of a real transaction?” Simpson asked.
“That, and not to get too technical, but they’ve cleverly manipulated the browsers to display what they want the user to see. In other words, at least initially, those extra transactions will be invisible on the screen.”
“Got it,” Cross said. “They don’t need that much time.”
“Correct. They just need the bank to process an ACH file, and typically you’re two people with the proper authorizations and a couple of clicks away from funneling out millions.”
The president grunted his understanding. “Once the money is wired out into a money-laundering haven — take your pick, Lichtenburg, Switzerland, the Caribbean — it will be too late to pull it back.” Cross drew in a deep breath and exhaled. “Now for the most important question. Can you stop them?”
“Well, sir, I believe they’ve already started with some financial institutions. My team is working on it, but it’s touch and go. I suppose the good news is that we’ll be able to figure out who was affected by this, but as far as stopping it without shutting down the banking system goes, we’re still working hard to figure that out. We won’t stop until we do.”
Shutting down the banks posed many of the same risks as the attack itself did. The president drummed his fingers on the table as he considered the options.
“Can you stop them from doing any more damage? Maybe block the ACH files from leaving the Fed in the first place.”
“It’s going to be close,” Grayson said. “Most banks on the East Coast will start processing the files from the Fed soon. Once that starts, if they’ve got things ready to go and they’ve initiated the attack, we’ll need a miracle to stop them.”