Twenty-Nine Cozy Bears

22

Washington D.C., CISA Offices

Hank Gorr, head of the Washington DC CISA office, glanced up as his office door received a polite knocking, and then opened to expose Doug and Samantha. Both were quiet and respectful as they entered the office and closed the door behind them, following Hank's invitational wave to come in, before dropping his attention back to the report he had been reading to catch up for this meeting. After digesting the last paragraph, Hank slid the report back into its cover and set it in his black leather filofax.

Hank finished reading, sat back in his chair while removing his glasses, "I need to read faster. Any tips?"

"I might have a few. I'll email them to you," Samantha said.

"Thanks. Now, why are you two here this early?" he asked.

"Wanted to give you a heads up on the news from Israel, before it got wicked around here," Doug offered.

"Good choice of words; wicked," Hank mused, taking the meaning as it was meant when in coercion with problems. As a descriptor, the word wicked defined a problem as unsolvable. At least, not solvable at the present time no matter how many resources were sacrificed in the effort to procure a solution. The wicked problem was not an evil problem or anything of that nature. It was an organic problem, a cunning puzzle. A suffocating mound of string and tar.

Homelessness is a wicked problem. One wicked characteristic of the homeless problem is how difficult it is to define homeless. Are these men a women mentally ill? Is that why they were on the streets? Could they even take care of themselves if given a home to live in?

Doug took a seat and Samantha followed, lowering herself into the chair and curling her legs close to her body, while sipping on her tea.

"Poor choice of career," Doug said, mostly to himself. When he noted Hank's wondering expression, Doug shrugged off the remark with, "Too many wicked problems."

Hank nodded, "In fact one of each I'm afraid, at the very least. And toward that end, what has come to us from our friendly Mossad?"

Samantha's nose wrinkled but she said, "Looks like they have a small team working inside Iran. I doubt, however, they are a cyber team. It appears they hare sabotage and espionage possibly. Doubts are frequent but it appears one of theirs has identified a resurfacing threat."

"Someone back from the dead?" Hank asked, only half in jest — the other half well aware of the danger any of their sanctioned opponents represented — giving his spine a chill. "Who? Who has rejected their grave?"

"Mossad is adamant that it is Him," Doug said, keeping his eyes focused on the desk top rather than meeting Hank's.

"Him?" Hank said, grasping for meaning with exasperation and then rejecting that same meaning when it clung and stuck to his understanding. "Him? No. That was what, seven years ago now?"

"Just about eight, but yeah," Doug nodded, glancing up to his boss. "The agent, one of Mossad's, reported that she ran into him before, back then, and that it is definitely Him, and that he continues to operate without a name."

"And we said..." Hank began.

"Yes," Samantha broke in, "and we said She needed to get as far away as soon as as fast as she was able."

"Good," Hank said. "Send that in writing as well. Poor woman probably believes he doesn't recognize her or something just as unlikely. Remind them who we are talking about. It won't be a dead agent handed to them, but something they'll regret and be unable to get out from under."

Hank shook his head suddenly and stood up, frustration shaking his stance as if he had stood up into the tail edge of a tempest, which then calmed. He paced several steps and turned while taking a drink of his coffee. "What the hell is he doing in Iran on a training mission? That's why he's there, right? To act the part of a Red Team mashup?"

"Could be a Hunt Forward operation," Samantha offered.

Hank raised a graying eyebrow, "No, I think it's only our services who butcher the language into burgers like that."

It took a beat before either Samantha or Doug realized their boss was attempting to lighten the mood with a joke. Then it was awkward for another beat.

Cyber Command, which runs the US military's defensive and offensive cyber operations, has conducted dozens of so-called "hunt forward operations" where cyber specialists deploy to partner nations to monitor adversary activity in foreign cyberspace. While arguments and measures could question the intel benefits of these operations so far, what had become unquestionable were the connections and relationships which were made during the events. In fact, most analysts who had been through these Hunts no longer called Germany, or Holland, they called Ike, or Kate. The whole dynamic changed between the two teams. They were no longer nameless, faceless disembodied voices or text content in an email, but living breathing beings who had made them laugh, or held the door or shared in that intense breach they had that day...

APT actors, the military said, were not criminals, they were foreign military forces and insurgents. They did not engage in vandalism or spread graffiti. They committed acts of sabotage and engaged in propaganda and every one of them were expertly trained killers.

APT (Advanced, Persistent, Threats) operators were a new and not fully understood level of threat. They were in a sense, cyber drones. Except these drones had volition, dangerous skills, and charming dispositions.

"They call it Defensive Offense as well," Hank offered.

"What, like the 1984's Newspeak?" Samantha asked, as she sat forward, her interest peaked.

"Nice catch for the Orwell reflection," Hank said with a nod of acknowledgment.

Samantha indulged in a moment of preening, and then sat back again, "I don't really get this logic. I mean, we are going out to deter other countries by costing them resources — to make attacking us look unprofitable?"

"In lieu of black ICE, what else can we do?" Hank asked her.

"Black ICE?" she asked, looking at Doug and raising her shoulders.

"ICE, Intrusion Countermeasure Electronics. Security walls, only Black ICE walls can kill the intruder."

"We have that?" she asked in shock.

"No," Hank said, sitting back down behind his desk. "Which is why we are Newspeaking, head smacking, and using bully tactics." After drinking the last of his coffee, he set the mug on a round leather coaster and then leaned back into his chair. "Anything else?"

Doug shifted in his chair, "I think the Mossad are still trying to blow up the Iranian nuclear site. It got hit with explosives and fire a couple of days ago. Destroyed the building."

"Now? I mean, while they are causing all of this other strife they are also starting a war with Iran?" he asked, his eyes showing only disbelief, if amused disbelief. "Where do they get the energy. They aren't shipping in cocaine are they?"

"No sir," Doug said, letting the comment go in and right back out of his mind. There was no sane reason to do more.