Reality Apes Fiction

This week when I read about the Chinese cyber-attacks, and especially the computer security firm (Mandiant) that revealed them, I couldn't help but think of well, The Shadow Warriors, and how in  1993 (twenty years ago) I discovered that the Computer Security Conference (even then an annual one) was held at Raffles Place in Singapore, and I had an (imagined) computer security firm with a mission and employees, and I took them to Singapore and bad stuff happened, and The Shadow Warriors novel was born.   Paul Strassman gave me the idea for the software agents (shadow warriors) who roamed cyberspace causing trouble and finally began an  info war, or information warfare.  I had a character we first meet in Hong Kong named Ocho Lee, who was at the root of the trouble.  This was before Hong Kong became part of China, although if you were ever in Hong Kong, you know that it was always China and today China has become like Hong Kong, not what everyone worried about back in the day.       

Remember the domino theory?  That once the commies got their mitts on unsteady little democracies, they would all fall like dominoes.  That didn't happen, and if fact if was the Communist bloc that fell like dominoes.  How could we have had it so wrong?

But I digress.    Even in 1993 computer security was a hot topic as it is today.  This week The Boston Globe had an interesting article about the  company (Mandiant) that blew the whistle on the Chinese. Mandiant is not our government but a "digital forensics" company that protects private companies from hack attacks and information theft. Private firms playing major role against cyberattacks
Most of the Mandiant gurus are "retired intelligence and law enforcement agents who specialize in computer forensics."  I went to the website and they were all men, kind of a surprise in this day and age.  Mandiant is the Blackwater of Computer Security according to the Globe
 Mandiant Report
This is interesting stuff, and although I am no longer writing about technology (it changed faster than I could write and sell) the temptation is still there.

My ficitonal computer security company was Nemecek Associates.  Franz Nemecek was a retired one-time math professor who fled the Hungarian revolution.  Wayne Wendel  was a hacker's hacker in the MIT tradition.  Emma Lee Davis happened into computer security and is the admittedly least technical of the trio, but definitely has her nerdy moments and she functions as the project manager who doesn't have to dig down dirty into the bits and bytes.  Nemecek is assisted by various hackers, old MIT buddies of Wayne's.  This was so much fun to write about, and I have two unsold books about Emma's (and the others) adventures.  The most fun  is when  Emma and Wayne go to Burning Man and the exciting times they have on the Playa. Lots of computer geeks and gurus to go Burning Man.

If you think all this sounds like a good read, pick up a copy of The Shadow Warriors, available in trade paperback or in ebook form.  Try Amazon or Smashwords for the e-book, Amazon for the paper copy.  The author is Judith Copek, who made a huge mistake by not checking Google before she assigned the title of so many other books, games and what have you to her novel.  A mistake not to be made again.

Computer security can be exciting, even riveting, because it's the white hats against the black hats, and they're both smart and interesting.     And devious.  Always devious.     

Another cool information warfare site!

Infowar Monitor
 The revolutions in the Middle East are also being fought on the net, Facebook and even Twitter.  In fact a Tweeter observed the raid on Osama Bin Laden's compound, wondering WTF?


The Syrians, as one might expect, have tried to usurp cyberspace for the own devious aims.  See the above link. 

Shady Doings in Singapore

While  we were in Singapore, my husband attended a business meeting, and I was free to see the sights.  My itinerary became my protag's (main character). We were both tourists and that made the writing easier, because I didn't have to know the area like a native.  A lot of my photographs inspired scenes in the book.

My husband's group went on a harbor tour in a boat just like the one in the photo.  They served a pretty ordinary "western" buffet and I was terribly disappointed not to get some chili crab or even Hainan chicken rice, some of the local specialties.  I put the cruise into the book, of course, without editorializing on the food.

Young string musicians played while we ate - very charming. 

A few paragraphs from the novel.

Monday, May 8

Delegates  Dinner Cruise of  Keppel Harbor aboard  a traditional Chinese Junk

Keppel Harbor world’s busiest.   Singaporean buffet and music

A  commercial armada  of ships of every nation at anchor.  So much tonnage in one place impressed all of us, for Information technology people always need to quantify.

  Even now, I recalled a perfectly flawless evening. I wore my thin pink linen shirt and dark pink silk shorts. Tied my hair back with a floppy white bow, and wore those cute sandals with thin gold and white straps. Franz said I looked nice. Wayne had said just wait until those breakfast buffets catch up with her, and made disgusting oinking noises. But I had the last laugh, because his dumb jet lag diet left him too sleep deprived to join us, and he had to settle for a coffee shop dinner.

            Franz told the cabbie  to let us off at Clifford Pier. The skyline was  fantastically modern, a mega-contrast to the men lounging on the sidewalk in their trishaws, one up in travel evolution from the rickshaw. Smoking while they waited for customers. The kind of scene I loved: an old man tried to get his trishaw going with a hefty woman and her paunchy husband in tow. His skinny bowed legs hung  out of baggy yellow shorts, and his head is covered by a conical fisherman's hat. No matter how he pushed and strained, the trishaw wasn’t  moving. He dismounted, hunched his bony shoulders and indicated he could only transport one of them.

            Then I noticed Peter Weber way down the pier, lounging against a post, looking lost in some private joke. We all boarded an elaborately carved red, green and gilt-trimmed junk, reserved just for us. 

When I walked up to him, Peter said, "Pretty in pink.” Flirting as usual. I took his arm and chided him for not taking me to lunch at the hawker center, and suggested it was time for a Singapore Sling, since we’d been here one whole day without a sip. He promised to take me to Raffles Hotel after dinner, where the drink had originated. He turned to Franz and said loud enough for me to hear, “when she got tight, everything was all right so we kept her provided with gin.”

 I rolled my eyes.

The sunset that night was the kind you remember forever--a big swollen ball on fire in the tropical twilight. I stayed on deck while  Peter and Franz disappeared to get drinks. When the musicians came on board, I recognized the girl who lunched with “No English.” When I looked back at the pier, I saw “No English” himself, standing just where Peter met us, scowling and staring at his feet. I yelled “Hallo Luby,” and did I ever get a reaction! Luby dropped his jaw and gaped at the junk, but I was incognito in sunglasses. He crushed his cigarette and stalked down the pier with his rolling, muscle-bound walk.