Think or Swim: Part IV
At 3.38 am in Trondheim in central Norway, in a circumspect building located in the drydock of the redundant Trondhjems mekaniske Værksted shipbuilding firm, an incident was logged at a property belonging to Rosenborg Retirement Ltd. The pension fund owned 24 upmarket resorts across southern Europe, from Croatia to Sicily, from Spain to Greece, but Hacienda Brûlé on the outskirts of Nerja was "the feather in the cap", as Mao Kelly's old Latin teacher, Mrs Claire Champion, liked to describe life's superlatives.
Over the course of 147 seconds, the Rosenborg facility management system noted the loss of one terabyte of data, a power outage, a power spike and the apparent fact that the data was not missing at all. This unprecedented sequence of events caused the system to run a number of cross checks, thereby granting the intruder the necessary time to complete his plan.
Having logged and processed the incident in Spain, the Norwegian system, now in amber alert mode, handed off the matter at 3.41 am to the company that had written the software, SimbaCode in Nairobi.
There, Samuel Mubigambo, 22, the Rosenborg junior account manager, was working his way through a series of mathematical questions in preparation for the SAT Reasoning Test he would take at the weekend and thereby pave the way for his entrance to HarvardU Online. Fifty two seconds elapsed before Mubigambo put away his mobile test device and attended to the message that was flashing on his terminal's screen.
Two hours later, after he'd run a series of standard diagnostic checks, chatted to his friends on a half-dozen social networks and had four cups of coffee, Samuel Mubigambo informed Rosenborg Retirement Ltd. that his team had found the bug that had led to the error reading.
SimbaCode, he added, would be billing for the trouble-shooting on top of its monthly retainer.
As Samuel Mubigambo hit the "Send" button, Mao Kelly was enjoying a blissful sleep in one of Hacienda Brûlé's finest apartments.
After hacking into resort's "cloud", he had downloaded a terabyte of its data, an amount the covered the preceding 24 hours, and then copied the lot. That done, he forced the energy supply to shut down for 147 seconds and began to run through the darkened complex.
He'd set his communicator to search for vacant apartments and once it found one that matched the parameters he'd given it, the gadget began directing him towards the door. Apartment 12B, owned by Petter Sjo (58), a self-employed arms dealer, and his wife Gro Eli Thrane (54), a professor of male oppression studies at the University of Agder, had been serviced that morning in anticipation of their arrival and was due for inspection 72 hours from now, the day of their checking in.
"Left, straight ahead, left again, up the stairs and the second door on the right," said the communicator's synthetic voice in Mao's ear. He noted that 67 seconds had elapsed since he'd set foot in Hacienda Brûlé, and that he had another 40 seconds left before the power supply kicked in and the CCTV cameras began their unremitting recording.
As he ran, he programmed the facility management to backdate by 24 hours the deduction of 100 litres of water from the apartment's account. The EUSA limit was of 50 litres per person per shower but Mao knew he'd need double that to wash away the sand and the salt and the tears. Another backdate, the disposal of bed linen, would help keep those searching for DNA off his trail for a while.
He made it into the apartment with eight seconds to spare. In the instant that the power supply resumed, an altered terabyte of data rejoined the resort's memory and Hacienda Brûlé once again purred with life. Rosenborg Retirement Ltd's decision to automate maintenance and security had been vindicated.
At 9.32 am, during the daily video conference, the company's chief of security, Solveig Kierulf, asked the attendees to prepare to implement an upgrade of SimbaCode's facility management software. A "vulnerability", she said, had led to an amber alert at Hacienda Brûlé during the night, but the matter had been resolved satisfactorily and security had not been breached and neither had sensitive data been lost or corrupted.
Over the course of 147 seconds, the Rosenborg facility management system noted the loss of one terabyte of data, a power outage, a power spike and the apparent fact that the data was not missing at all. This unprecedented sequence of events caused the system to run a number of cross checks, thereby granting the intruder the necessary time to complete his plan.
Having logged and processed the incident in Spain, the Norwegian system, now in amber alert mode, handed off the matter at 3.41 am to the company that had written the software, SimbaCode in Nairobi.
There, Samuel Mubigambo, 22, the Rosenborg junior account manager, was working his way through a series of mathematical questions in preparation for the SAT Reasoning Test he would take at the weekend and thereby pave the way for his entrance to HarvardU Online. Fifty two seconds elapsed before Mubigambo put away his mobile test device and attended to the message that was flashing on his terminal's screen.
Two hours later, after he'd run a series of standard diagnostic checks, chatted to his friends on a half-dozen social networks and had four cups of coffee, Samuel Mubigambo informed Rosenborg Retirement Ltd. that his team had found the bug that had led to the error reading.
SimbaCode, he added, would be billing for the trouble-shooting on top of its monthly retainer.
As Samuel Mubigambo hit the "Send" button, Mao Kelly was enjoying a blissful sleep in one of Hacienda Brûlé's finest apartments.
After hacking into resort's "cloud", he had downloaded a terabyte of its data, an amount the covered the preceding 24 hours, and then copied the lot. That done, he forced the energy supply to shut down for 147 seconds and began to run through the darkened complex.
He'd set his communicator to search for vacant apartments and once it found one that matched the parameters he'd given it, the gadget began directing him towards the door. Apartment 12B, owned by Petter Sjo (58), a self-employed arms dealer, and his wife Gro Eli Thrane (54), a professor of male oppression studies at the University of Agder, had been serviced that morning in anticipation of their arrival and was due for inspection 72 hours from now, the day of their checking in.
"Left, straight ahead, left again, up the stairs and the second door on the right," said the communicator's synthetic voice in Mao's ear. He noted that 67 seconds had elapsed since he'd set foot in Hacienda Brûlé, and that he had another 40 seconds left before the power supply kicked in and the CCTV cameras began their unremitting recording.
As he ran, he programmed the facility management to backdate by 24 hours the deduction of 100 litres of water from the apartment's account. The EUSA limit was of 50 litres per person per shower but Mao knew he'd need double that to wash away the sand and the salt and the tears. Another backdate, the disposal of bed linen, would help keep those searching for DNA off his trail for a while.
He made it into the apartment with eight seconds to spare. In the instant that the power supply resumed, an altered terabyte of data rejoined the resort's memory and Hacienda Brûlé once again purred with life. Rosenborg Retirement Ltd's decision to automate maintenance and security had been vindicated.
At 9.32 am, during the daily video conference, the company's chief of security, Solveig Kierulf, asked the attendees to prepare to implement an upgrade of SimbaCode's facility management software. A "vulnerability", she said, had led to an amber alert at Hacienda Brûlé during the night, but the matter had been resolved satisfactorily and security had not been breached and neither had sensitive data been lost or corrupted.
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