The server farm was supposed to be completely isolated. The engineers thought they had sealed it off from the Internet using what was called an “air gap,” geek-speak for a condition where no two computers in different networks could talk to each other directly.
But the reality was that most air-gapped systems weren’t fully isolated. They were almost always connected, somehow, to another system, or maybe even to several systems, which, in turn, were accessible to the outside world. Breaching a system that was supposed to be air-gapped almost always took some doing. But it was almost always doable.
In this case, the vulnerability was in the server building’s environmental control system. It was programmed to keep the server farm at a very cool sixty degrees Fahrenheit. To do this, it received information about the room’s temperature from a thermostat.
Despite everyone’s best intentions, the environmental control system’s computerized brain also received some information directly from the servers themselves. It was just a little bit of information, nothing that anybody would worry about. Just their operating temperature. This was done to make sure that none of the precious computers—which was really what a “server” was—got too hot to perform its function properly.
It was no big deal, except this tiny little connection point between two hideously complex systems might as well have been a gigantic barn door thrown wide open for anyone with the savvy and determination to discover the vulnerability.
There was no lack of determination, because the server farm in question belonged to the National Security Agency. It was used as an intermediate waypoint for data. Surveillance data, to be precise. Email conversations, files, attachments, telephone conversations, texts, all manner of communiques between nearly every web-enabled human in the northern hemisphere.
This information also included webcam conversations that a snazzy bit of software translated and transcribed for analysis and archived for later use. The data was collected from all over the world and filtered based on dozens of statistically relevant factors. Each of these factors was chosen for its historical likelihood of being associated with criminal, and especially terrorist, activity. “Hits” were forwarded for further evaluation. “Non-hits” were archived.
Allahu Akhbar. Caliphate. Martyrs. Tonight. Inshallah. The phrase was full of “factor” words. Hayward had ensured that Katrin’s webcam conversation would be characterized as a “hit.”
He did his best to control his breathing while the search executed. It took two minutes, one hundred and twenty eternal seconds, and Hayward’s emotions ran the full gamut while he waited for the results. He felt elated at the prospect of real progress locating Katrin, but he feared Grange’s Agency team might somehow manipulate the information on the NSA’s server.
The search function halted. A new window popped open on the screen. There were fourteen precise matches for the phrase Katrin and Joao had read aloud. Each match had an associated IP address. Each IP address was akin to the originating computer’s fingerprint.
The CIA goons weren’t stupid, and they had undoubtedly used the same specialized web browser that Hayward had used. Each match of the phrase represented a re-transmission of the webcam conversation from one server to another, hopscotching its way around the world to confound any attempts to locate the true source.
But the sneaky browser wasn’t smart enough to outsmart the NSA, whose data pipes had vacuumed up each instance of the phrase as soon as it was transmitted, each transmission amounting to one more data point among trillions accumulated every day in the war on terror. The list of IP addresses on Hayward’s screen amounted to a log of every waypoint Katrin and Joao’s voices had traversed on the way to Hayward’s computer.
Almost there. Hayward entered each IP address into a simple web-based locator. Its function was to match an IP address with a spot on the map.
The results were almost instantaneous. It was evident the webcam connection had been bounced all the way around the globe no fewer than three times. But now he knew exactly where it came from.
Hayward jumped to his feet. Katrin was alive, and for the first time, she felt within reach.