For Readers (and Authors, too)
This blog is for anyone that reads my books, as well as for anyone else who is self-publishing, thinking about self-publishing, or just curious about what it’s like to be an author during rapidly changing times. Whenever you visit here, I hope you’ll share your own comments and thoughts. If you’d like to know whenever I post a new entry, please type your email address into the box in the right-hand column and check the appropriate box (and the newsletter one, too, while you’re at it).
Ch. 19: Knock, Knock
Start at the Prologue and First Chapter here
Frank had decided to begin at the beginning. He had already examined the structure of BankCoin in great detail and found nothing. Perhaps if he were to review it again, this time from the standpoint of processing transactions, he might discover, or even stumble upon – he wasn’t proud – a crucial flaw he’d missed when he’d examined it as a static piece of software. And where better to start than with the Genesis Block – the very first block of transactions created more than [two] years ago. read more…
Ch. 18: Home, James
Start at the Prologue and First Chapter here
Frank was peering at the BankCoin program on the screen of his air-gapped system. He was impressed that the original commercial release of BankCoin included an easy to understand dashboard able to display all kinds of data. It was pretty slick, too, and that was unusual. Open source software was usually developed by and for techies who didn’t care about such niceties. Even in a big, well-funded project like BankCoin, the suits usually deferred 100% to the T shirts on all technical matters. If a company needed open source software to be user-friendly to make money from it, it would usually have to develop it itself, or wait basically forever before the project team got around to it. read more…
Ch. 17: Stop That!
Start at the Prologue and First Chapter here
Frank frowned as he watched the familiar monuments come into and out of view as the 737 climbed, circling over the nation’s capital before heading off to New York. Everything looked exactly the same as it always did – of course. Just the way they did for him every day now at work. He’d been pulling down his huge salary at First Manhattan for months now without really accomplished anything at all. Not that anyone seemed to care, so long as he allowed Lola to keep trotting him around like a pony at a grade school birthday party. The folks on the IT team must be whispering behind his back, though. If he was supposed to be such a cybersecurity hot shot, why hadn’t he found a critical vulnerability in BankCoin yet? read more…
Ch. 16: Sorry to Interrupt You
Start at the Prologue and First Chapter here
Frank should have been reviewing the thick briefing book in his lap on the way to CIA headquarters for his first Russ Task Force meeting. Instead, he was gazing out the window, distracted.
Why had he never thought about protecting BankCoin from a foreign state? True, the bank hadn’t specifically asked him to cover that concern, and at a technical level there was no difference between a state actor and a criminal, but that was no excuse – motivations might matter. With the world banking system adopting the GFBS technology, wouldn’t the Russian Federation have a task force just like the one he was on, except targeted at taking down the U.S. financial system? Of course, they would, if only to figure out how to do it should the need ever arise. read more…
A Guide to the Frank Adversego Thriller Series
As I mentioned some time back, Tantor Media, an imprint of RB Media, the largest publisher of audiobooks, will be publishing the first three books of the Frank Adversego series. They’re getting ready to go into production now, which of course begins with selecting a narrator. To help in that process, I put together a short piece where I describe how I see the series and the characters, and what I think readers resonate with. As I was writing it, it occurred to me that you might be interested in how I see my own characters, and I would certainly be interested in knowing how you do. So here it is, and all comments are welcome (spoiler alert: plot details appear throughout). read more…
Ch. 15: Don’t Worry, Be Happy
Start at the Prologue and First Chapter here
Frank was feeling uneasy as he and Delhohn left their weekly meeting on the sixty-fifth floor. There had been another run of attacks against alt coin exchanges and the press was running with the theme that cryptocurrency systems were inherently insecure. The banks still hadn’t been attacked, but how long would that last? Now that so many alt coin thieves had grown rich, wouldn’t more and more criminals want to stick their greedy hands into the alt coin cookie jar?
“I have to say,” Frank said to Dirk as they walked to the elevator, “it’s hard for me to feel as confident as you are about BankCoin. There’s too many bad guys out there, and only so many alt coins to go around.” read more…
Are the Russians Reading this Blog?
As has so frequently been the case in the past, plot twists I come up with for my books end up being the same gambits real-life actors concoct and then pull off in the real world. And why not? We all have access to the same information. And, sadly, the lack of interest so many IT vendors and network owners have in security leaves way to many opportunities there for the taking. It’s not so much low hanging fruit as piles of coconuts you have to thread your way through to avoid tripping over them. read more…
Ch. 14: Not to be Too Cryptic About it, But…
Start at the Prologue and First Chapter here
I should have heard from him by now, Crypto thought.
Yes – yes you should have! What if he was caught in Adversego’s office? An agitated voice said.
Crypto hated uncertainty, even when the voices weren’t stoking his insecurities. Leaving nothing to chance was the bulwark he relied on to fend off anxiety. And relying on anyone unavoidably increased risk. read more…
Ch. 13: All Fall Down
Start at the Prologue and First Chapter here
Discovering the alt coin vulnerabilities required to make those attacks possible had required great skill and painstaking effort. But the time needed to ensure they would occur was trivial. All Crypto had to do was pick the right sites on the Dark Net at which to offer those vulnerabilities for sale. Capitalist greed had done the rest. It had been amusing to watch the feeding frenzy as the black hats snapped up the exploits and raced each other to launch their assaults. Their efforts left the markets spinning crazily in shock and awe. In a matter of hours, the value of affected and unaffected cryptocurrencies alike dropped catastrophically. Most importantly, the credibility of BankCoin began to rise. And that was what the sole purpose of the exercise. read more…
Ch. 12: Come into my Web, Darkly
Start at the Prologue and First Chapter here
Crypto shadowed Frank’s latest interactions at the GFBS section of GitHub and considered what to do next. Nothing that Frank had done to date suggested that he was on the way – yet – to discovering anything of concern. But the possibility of his doing so was not zero. Happily, it was time for Crypto to launch the next step in his plan, which was to raise the perception in the marketplace that the GFBS blockchain was far more secure than any other alternative. That should reassure Adversego and his overseers as well.
But there was no need to act in haste. Only methodical care and an almost fanatical attention to detail had allowed Crypto to remain unknown for over a decade. Over time, a slow, careful approach had become second nature to him; a source of pride rather than impatience at the extra time and effort such care required. But it was clearly time to act. read more…
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