Assignment Los Alamos: To Catch a Hacker

By Barry Jay Freeman

Mossad Agent Ari Stern is assigned to find a fugitive Iranian computer hacker, Ashraf Nazari, who has popped up at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and to determine his reason for being there. He is suspected of shooting a guard in pursuit of hacking the lab's Supercomputer information, and it is believed he is trying to steal the plans for a new hack-proof computer system based upon advances in quantum physics. Ari invites Agent Stella as his assistant, Leah his wife, his American friends the Bensons, with Sam, Stella's US Navy fiancé, for pleasure mixed with business at Taos Ski Valley, a short drive from Los Alamos. Coincidentally, Stern and entourage stay at the ski resort hotel where a disguised Nazari is hiding with Leila, his Turkish femme fatal companion. It is the story of espionage and counter-espionage against a background of the ski mountain and all of its pleasures.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barry Jay Freeman
• Release date: Sep 8, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005906023

Barry Jay Freeman

Barry J. Freeman is a retired Chicago attorney, who now lives in suburban Lincolnshire, Illinois, with his beautiful, curly-haired wife, two face-licking, overindulged dogs, and two love-but-ignore-you cats. He and his wife have improved the world by giving it two female and two male children, who have in turn given them five wonderful grandsons destined to do great things. Since his retirement, the author has published two collections of his light poetry (Never Pull A Lion’s Tail and I Finally Pulled A Lion’s Tail (both of which are illustrated by awesome photos),and five novels (And Other Immoral Purposes, A Tale of Two Lawyers, The Wanted, Ahmed's List and Assassination in Santo Domingo). His first two novels explore the law business (a subject about which he knows well). He has also published two short books primarily for kids containing two illustrated short stories in verse (Nero the Hero and Who Are those Strange Creatures? The former is about a captured African elephant, and the latter is about a baboon, both of which become heroes. Writing has taken him out of the jaws of retirement and has become his full time passion.

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ASSIGNMENT LOS ALAMOS:

TO CATCH A HACKER

A Novel

By

BARRY JAY FREEMAN

Text Copyright 2022

By Barry Jay Freeman

All Rights Reserved

CONTENTS

Preface

CHAPTER 1 – 15th Thursday

15th Thursday (earlier that evening)

CHAPTER 2—16th Friday

CHAPTER 3—17th Saturday

CHAPTER 4—18th Sunday

History

CHAPTER 5—19th Monday

CHAPTER 6—20th Tuesday

CHAPTER 7—21st Wednesday

CHAPTER 8—22nd Thursday

CHAPTER 9—22nd Thursday Night

CHAPTER 10—23rd, Friday

CHAPTER 11—September 22, Saturday

ASSIGNMENT LOS ALAMOS:

To Catch a Hacker

PREFACE

Recent news of industrial interference by ransom-seeking hackers piqued this author’s curiosity and moved me to indulge in some painful research. To that end, I rapidly learned that even to begin to understand the science of hacking requires computer knowledge well beyond my age-challenged brain capacity. I did learn, however, that the bustling world of cybersecurity—the pursuit of keeping confidential computer data out of the hands of hackers—requires the constant development of impenetrable passcodes and unhackable systems to stay ahead of hackers who inevitably break those codes and penetrate those systems. Hackees are therefore constantly battling to stay ahead of hackers.

All of the bountiful benefits of this age of computers face the danger of destruction on the battlefield of cyberspace. For example, the electrical grid that runs everything we do involving electricity in this country (which is pretty much everything we do) is vulnerable to hackers who seek to control it. Who needs caissons and cannons?

One potentially unhackable system now under development involves Quantum Physics. Quantum physics is the study of matter at its most fundamental level—well beyond this writer’s comprehension. Quantum computers use a technology based on that study and are far superior to those currently in everyday use. They are a reality, though a work in progress, and so is their still theoretical use in storing and transmitting hacker-proof data. Thankfully other beings lay awake at night with such matters to perplex their learned brains. As I write, some of those brains are alive and well and work at Los Alamos National Laboratories in New Mexico. The lab has always been a place of scientific wonderment since built by the government in the early 1940s to create and develop the atomic bomb. Los Alamos is only a short distance from Taos, New Mexico, and, except in this book, they usually have nothing whatsoever to do with one another.

Taos is a quaint little old Spanish colonial/native American town in the middle of almost nowhere, loaded with fine art. It has the additional advantage of being adjacent to Taos Ski Valley, a heaven on earth for all varieties of skiers. To own a second home and winter in the area is to live a privileged life. To visit friends who were so privileged is likewise to be privileged—and so this author was (thank you, Susan and Bob). We ski no more and travel little, but the memories help the medicine go down.

I might add a word about the security at Los Alamos: although not as lax as my story paints it to have been in 2012, security at the lab has always been of great concern. But the government has substantially upgraded it of late—or so I have read.

And thus, I write my story of quantum computers, cybercrime, and espionage against a background of the splendors and wonders of Taos and Los Alamos. The characters are fictitious, and the story is likewise. Please enjoy the reading as I have enjoyed the writing.

CHAPTER 1 – 15th Thursday

11:35 p.m., March 15, 2012. While lying in bed, before his long Israeli day ended and sleep swept aside his conscious memory, Ari Stern pulled up his best recollection of Ashraf Nazari, known in the world of computer hackers as the Frog. Ari remembered the spring of 2009 when the young Iranian had slipped into Israel from Iran by way of Lebanon, sent by Iranian Intelligence to compromise the secrecy of the Israeli defense computer network. His mission was to implant a hacking device without detection to enable Iran to intercept top-secret data regarding Israel’s nuclear capability.

Ari further recalled that it was Israel’s good fortune that a mole, implanted by the United States within Iranian Intelligence, happened upon the plan and informed the US CIA, which in turn notified Israel. Israeli Intelligence called in the Mossad, Ari’s employer, to smoke Nazari out and nip the hack in the bud. Ari chuckled when he thought of being assigned the task and how he dealt with it. By using a substitute computer not connected to the defense network, which looked identical to his target, he’d misled Nazari into placing his malware into a fake system. This deception allowed Israeli counterintelligence to cleverly use it in reverse—to feed false information to Iran while successfully hacking into the Iranian systems. Ari loved his job.

Via encrypted computer text, Nazari had communicated to his Iran superiors what he believed to be the successful completion of his mission and accompanied the report with plans for his safe escape back to Iran. Israeli Intelligence ironically intercepted and easily decoded the communication through the reverse hack he had enabled. Consequently, Ari and three other Mossad agents quickly acted to head him off and take him into custody. Cleverly, however, he somehow made it back over the Lebanese border and escaped. Ari was anxious to finish what he had started, but sleep took over any further thoughts of Nazari until morning.

15th Thursday (earlier that evening)

Ides of March 2012, Tel Aviv, Israel. Ari Stern and his wife, Leah, were in attendance at the popular Beach Club Bar, enjoying a table for two overlooking the expansive beach on the Mediterranean coast of Tel Aviv. On this 2056th anniversary, Ari and Leah toasted Caesar’s shameful assassination, for lack of anything better to celebrate, with a Peisachovka vodka martini garnished with three Israeli olives. For several satisfying years, at least twice a week, the distinguished couple had made it their habit to partake with a cocktail or two in the disappearing act of the brilliant Middle Eastern sun as it descended against the darkening starlit sky. After sundown, absent missile attack warnings, they moved their evening to a nearby restaurant for a long, leisurely dinner, followed by a stroll on the beach before retiring to their comfortable Tel Aviv apartment for the night.

While having a second toast to Caesar’s demise and still enjoying the colorful Israeli sunset, the familiar Beethoven’s Fifth ringtone of Ari’s cellphone sounded from the inside pocket of his blue blazer. He quickly extracted the phone and checked the caller ID.

Sorry, my love, he said in his native Hebrew, It’s my office. I have to take this, and he put the phone to his ear as he left the table.

Ari, my friend, the caller said, it’s Dove. Call me back, and the line went silent. Ari immediately called his Mossad office on an app-enabled encrypted line, and his fellow agent answered on the first ring.

So, are you as usual at your fancy Beach Club, asked Dove, with Leah, I hope? Sorry to interrupt with business, but I thought you would like right away to know that Ashraf Nazari, the Frog, was spotted near Los Alamos, New Mexico, and we think you should go there and find him—like yesterday.

Good news. Thanks for letting me know, Dove. Been looking for that Iranian sonofabitch for two years since his escape. I’ll see you first thing tomorrow morning for a briefing and maybe leave for the US in the early afternoon. Do you know what he’s up to?

We think so. See you early tomorrow. Have a nice night, and the phone went silent.

Ari went back to the table and resumed sipping his martini. Looks like I’m going back to the US—maybe tomorrow—to New Mexico near Santa Fe this time, and it’s not a vacation. It’s still cold in March in that area, the beginning of spring ski season. We’ll pack tonight for winter in the States.

We? Leah asked.

"Well, I think my presence in the area might be better explained if I use the old vacation cover—same as I used when we went to Highland Park and stayed at the Bensons’. While everyone, except the Bensons, thought we were there on vacation visiting friends, we were, in fact, stopping a terrorist attack on the naval base. Maybe I’ll call the Bensons and ask them to join us in Taos to play "ski vacation" with us. Their presence would make my cover all the more convincing. Besides, I miss them."

They should be pretty tired of us by now, don’t you think? We just left them in January—after our intended vacation in the Dominican Republic. That was actually supposed to be a vacation, wasn’t it? Leah observed.

Yeah, he replied. A vacation interrupted by the assassination of the Dominican president-dictator. But we did have a good vacation, despite the extra-curricular excitement. Right? I don’t know about you, but how could anyone be tired of me? I should hope they are still close friends. We make their otherwise dull senior-citizen lives pretty exciting, whether they like it or not. I’ll clear it all with Mossad tomorrow and call them.

Two years before, in 2010, the Sterns met Sam Goldberg, a young, dark-skinned native of the Dominican Republic, then a junior grade officer in the US Navy and an Aide to the base commander of Naval Station Great Lakes. The Bensons, long-time American best friends of the Sterns, had discovered an ISIS plot to attack the base. With the concurrence of the US authorities, Mossad assigned Ari to prevent the plot from succeeding. During the assignment, Ari and Leah stayed in the Benson home in Highland Park, Illinois, a northern suburb of Chicago only a few miles from the naval base. Ari and Leah worked in tandem with Sam and the Bensons to successfully defeat the plot.

Subsequently, in December 2011, the same cast of characters, plus Mossad agent Stella Rubenov, worked together in the Dominican Republic when a Stern-Benson vacation in that country was interrupted by an Iranian attempt to kill the president and take over that government. During the events of that adventure, Stella and Sam Goldberg fell in love and became engaged.

"I wonder if Agent Rubenov, Stella, is busy. Maybe I will take her along as my side-kick. She was great in the Dominican, even while she became romantically involved with Sam. They were able to spend a week together in Miami before Sam had to return to his naval base. I believe Stella is back here in Israel. I’ll ask tomorrow.

When was the last time we skied?

It was before we were seventy, if I remember correctly, Leah answered. I think we were skiing in Taos six or seven years ago with the Bensons.

CHAPTER 2—16th Friday

By 5:30 a.m. the following morning, Ari was all into the exercise routine prescribed for him by Mossad’s toughest physical trainer. His warmup consisted of a three-mile run to his favorite gym in the middle of Tel Aviv’s Kerem HaTeimanim neighborhood. Once a poor area with cheap single-story tin-roofed homes built in the early 1900s, developers were rapidly rehabilitating the district into the in place for young professionals desiring to live a more Bohemian lifestyle. Three others were working out when he arrived, all with national guard units readying themselves for active duty in Gaza, where trouble was again brewing between Israel and the Palestinian community.

Beads of sweat poured over his forehead from his wavy white hair and dripped onto the Stairmaster, which hummed in rhythm to the rapid movements of his arms and legs. He varied his routines from day to day: sometimes, he worked his muscles with weights, and other times he elevated his heart to levels unknown to people who had attained his age. He punched a bag, sparred, and did just about everything else to keep himself in the condition necessary to maintain his position as a top Mossad operative in his very senior years. Mossad tested him physically and mentally every year, and he passed the test with flying colors. But he knew one day soon, his age would come up to bite him in the ass, and they would put him out to pasture—retired or dead. His daily workouts were the best he could do to stem the tide of time, ever relentless, ever persistent, but reliably inevitable.

On his run back, through the cool, dry air of early morning Tel Aviv, to a hot shower and his usual Israeli breakfast of eggs, fish, and fruit, his mind turned from exhaustion to the subject of the morning—Ashraf Nazari. Since Nazari’s unfortunate escape over the Lebanese border, Mossad had with difficulty attempted to keep him under its watchful eye. To that end, Ari was anxious to meet with Dove Goldman for an update.

At 7:45 a.m., Ari walked into Dove’s Mossad office in the familiar headquarters of Israeli National Intelligence. Dove greeted him with a hand shake, a small cup of Turkish coffee, and Nazari’s bulging dossier. Pouring a cup for himself, He let the muddy concoction settle for a few minutes while they exchanged small talk, and the dossier remained closed and waiting on the desk between them. They took their first cautious sips of the hot liquid before launching into the subject at hand.

OK, said Ari, I’m all ears.

So, Dove finally said, "A night guard at Los Alamos caught someone loitering around the computer laboratory after visiting hours who meets the description of Ashraf Nazari. When the guard asked ‘what the fuck’ he was doing there, Nazari took out a pistol and shot him. Before the badly wounded guard could sound the alarm, Nazari ran to a parked car and sped away.

"The guard’s description to the police and his later photo identification confirmed the shooter as Nazari. The night was snowy, and the roads were a bit slippery, so several minutes later, when he came to a main highway intersection, he slid through a red light and smashed into another car. It was a bad smash-up, and the driver of the other vehicle was severely injured. However, when the police came to investigate, the man we think to be Nazari was gone—disappeared into thin air. By the looks of the car he was driving, he must have been pretty severely injured himself. This happened Wednesday evening in New Mexico, early yesterday here, and the police still haven’t found him.

We would like you to locate him and find out what the fuck he was doing there. You know the US is working on many earthshaking projects at that place, and they would prefer to keep their secrets to themselves. We know all too well that Los Alamos’ security leaves a lot to be desired. The FBI is on the case, but your friends at US intelligence have agreed to welcome you as their guest because of your experience with this guy, and they have given you free rein to do your usual thing.

Can I see the dossier, please? Ari asked.

It’s yours. Take it with you. He slid the thick folder towards Ari.

Ari opened it and flipped through the documents and photographs compiled over the years from the time Nazari was first exposed. Near the top of the collection was a recent picture of the subject taken at a bar in Tehran with a good-looking woman on each arm. At age 29 (at the time of the photo), he was 5’10’’, relatively tall for an Iranian, and weighed about 200 pounds. He had a light tan complexion, short black hair, an athletic build, and large protruding ears. Under a long, crooked, oft-broken nose, he wore a thin, black, well-trimmed mustache. He was fluent in English, Arabic, and Farsi (the official language of Iran) and was known to be an enthusiastic ladies’ man with sharp green eyes, a quick wit, and a short temper.

The dossier documented the story of his adult life, most of which Ari already knew. Upon receiving his secondary school degree at the top of his class, Nazari joined the Revolutionary Guard, Iran’s elite army. The Guard immediately assigned him to the Ministry of Intelligence—against his will because he wanted to be a fighter—and he began to fool around with computers. The Ministry immediately recognized his computer skills and sent him to MIT in Boston, where he achieved a Master’s Degree in Computer Science and, in the process, learned the complicated art of hacking. Since he left as an army private, a tadpole, and transformed into an officer mastermind hacker, someone equated him to a frog which became his online handle—alias Frog.

As evidenced by the photo, he wasn’t a particularly ardent Moslem, but he was loyal to Iran and wanted the country to take a prominent place on the world stage. He felt his country was far more advanced than all other middle eastern countries, except maybe Israel, and should at least be the dominant force in the Arab world and respected as such by the world in general. Though he received his highest education in the United States, he hated its success and power and admired the Ayatollah and the Revolutionary Guard for striving to achieve Iran’s greatness. He hated Israel because of its success on the world stage and its nuclear advantage over Iran, and he looked upon it as an evil competitor that needed elimination.

Ashraf Nazari’s super education in computer science led him to the forefront of Iran’s latest endeavor: cyber warfare: The use of computer technology to disrupt the activities of a state or organization, especially the deliberate attacking of information systems for strategic or military purposes. (Google Dictionary) He became a singular expert in the complex art of hacking, which he practiced for the pure thrill of breaking into the inner sanctum of governments and playing with their most vital secrets. He believed there was no cyber system he could not crack nor any data he could not thereby extract if he put his mind to it. His sights were now set on the secrets in the computers of the Los Alamos laboratory and its atomic energy division.

Nazari thought he had successfully compromised Israel’s atomic weapons arsenal and database. However, he now knew Israel had early on discovered his hack, and he would someday soon have to do it again. Los Alamos was a bigger and better target at the moment, potentially providing Iran with a myriad of more valuable atomic weapon data and other US secrets he might uncover in the process. Los Alamos managed the United States’ nuclear stockpile and was involved in the production and development of plutonium pits: the radioactive cores of nuclear warheads where chemical reactions occur, causing the weapons to detonate. Los Alamos researched, designed, developed, and created nuclear weapons of war along with other invaluable projects for the peace, security, and military advantage of the United States.

Dove watched Ari’s eyes grow wider as he realized the treasure trove into which Nazari was now attempting to tap. What you do not see there, Dove said, "is that geniuses at Los Alamos are currently developing technology that will prevent power stations along the US power grid from being hacked. To implement this technology, they are also building the transmitters and receivers for grid power stations. As you may know, the US power grid is currently vulnerable to cyber-attack by its adversaries, who could shut the country down with the push of a button. We know of this new technology from our intelligence people, so we assume Iran’s Intelligence could also know about it.

"I will now repeat and clarify what’s going on at the lab, whether you are already up to date on it or not. We know the United States’ energy grid is dependent on computers, which constantly monitor and control the entire US power distribution. Technology advances keep providing hackers like the Russians with new tools to penetrate computer systems. They are continually searching for new ways to attack the computer-dependent world to secretly enter a country’s power grid, among other things. New methods to keep ahead of enemy hackers are under constant development throughout the cyber world.

"So, sensitive information sent through electrical grid computers is ingeniously encrypted, and security people continually develop highly complex, mathematically based security codes to protect it. But as computer intelligence in code-breaking increases, the constant race between those coders trying to protect the grid and hackers trying to break the newly developed codes escalates, and protection gets harder. Bottom line: the US believes its power grid is vulnerable to Russian hackers.

"Rather than competing through the development of more and more complex codes, we have reason to believe the NSA at Los Alamos National Laboratory is developing a new method for protecting cyber information called Quantum Ensured Defense (QED). This method is based on quantum physics. By sending data inside a single particle of light, a photon, they can protect transmitted information from hackers. Instead of focusing on keeping eavesdroppers out of the power grid, QED makes it impossible for them to view the photon encapsulated data used to control it.

"Photons are already used to transmit information through fiber-optic wires strung on utility poles. Data is now sent over the internet this way: Pulses of photons are passed through fiber-optic wires from a transmitting computer on one end to a receiving computer at the other. QED will use quantum transmitters and receiving devices designed at Los Alamos in power plants or substations. They will encode information into individual photons at the transmitter, send them over fiber-optic wires, then detect the photons at the receiver and recover the data.

"The data is thus protected because a photon can’t be cut in half, can’t be accurately copied, and can’t even be tampered with without changing it in