“I imagine so, given the right tools and a bit of time, but I can tell you this much just from this cursory exam: It was professionally and expertly fried.”
“What does that mean?”
“Simply, the main board was destroyed so that all data was corrupted. My first guess would be a very insidious worm, with specificity for this purpose. Likely contained on a disc, inserted into the drive, used to infect, then removed when the task was complete.”
“Can you tell if data was removed first?”
“Trickier, but we can certainly try.”
“How about retrieving anything? Digging in and finding what data was on there, uncorrupting?”
“Trickier yet.”
“It’s there. It’s always there, no matter what. I know that from Feeney.”
“Well, that may not be quite true. Eve, there’s a group of techno-terrorists. They call themselves the Doomsday Group.”
“I know who they are. Glorified hackers, like to infiltrate systems, upload what they can, screw with the data. They’ve got some good, twisted brains and plenty of financial backing.”
“A bit more than glorified,” he corrected. “They’re responsible for downing a number of private shuttles by skewing data in air traffic control. They helped themselves to several works of art, and deliberately damaged others at the Louvre by shutting down their security. They killed twenty-six employees of a research lab in Prague by sabotaging their system, shutting down the air supply, and sealing all doors.”
“I said they were twisted. I know they’re dangerous. What does it have to do with a fried unit in a dead man’s art studio?”
“They’ve been working on a worm of just this nature for the past few years. Potent, portable. Its design is not simply to corrupt data or hijack it, but to eliminate it, and on a large scale. To network, to proliferate.”
“How large a scale?”
“Theoretically, a disc could be slipped into a drive on a networking unit—even a network with fail-safes and blocks, with virus detectors and bug zappers—and download the entire data bank from that network, then corrupt the units. An office, a building, a corporation. A country.”
“Not possible. Even midlevel security detects intrusive viruses and bugs and shuts down before infection. You can’t download without detection from CompuGuard. Home units like this, okay, you might get it off and down before the security dropped on you. Small operations networks, maybe. Maybe even with the CompuGuard shields in place. But nothing over that.”
“Theoretically,” he repeated. “And this faction is reputed to have some particularly brilliant minds on board this project. The intel indicates the worm is near completion, and could work.”
“How do you know about this?”
“I have connections.” He gave an easy shrug. “And it happens Roarke Industries is under government contract, a Code Red contract, to develop and create an
exterminator program and shield against this potential threat.”
She sat on the side of the bed. “You’re working for the government. Ours?”
“Well, if by that you mean the U.S., yes. Actually, it’s also a conglomeration sort of thing. The U.S., the Euro Community, Russia, a few other concerned areas. Roarke Industries Securecomp arm has the contract, and R and D is working on it.”
“And Reva Ewing works in R and D, for Roarke Industries Securecomp arm.”
“She does. Eve, I said Code Red, that’s highest clearance. This isn’t something she’d have chatted about with her husband over dinner, I can promise you.”
“Because you didn’t chat with me about it over dinner?”
Irritation sparked, then was controlled. “Because she’s a pro, Eve. She wouldn’t hold the position she does if there was any doubt of that. She doesn’t leak data.”
“Maybe not.” Coincidence, to her mind, was just a link between points. “But it’s certainly possible someone else doesn’t have the same confidence in her that you do. It sure adds an interesting angle.”
She pushed off the bed, circled the room. “Check this out, will you?” she said absently with a gesture toward the mini data center. “Techno-terrorists. What does a philandering metal sculptor have in common with techno-terrorists besides his wife’s position? Why, if they found some use for him, do they kill him, his mistress, and frame his wife? Of course, with the wife in a cage on two counts in the first, this could put a crimp into the research and development of the extermination program and shields.”
She looked toward Roarke for confirmation.
“Somewhat. But not an insurmountable crimp. She’s heading this, and a couple of other sensitive projects, but there’s a very competent team as well. All data on the project would remain locked in-house. None of it is taken outside.”