Chapter 5 - The Cyber Attack
The Sterlings were bleeding, but Victoria was too arrogant to surrender. If she couldn't win the PR war, she was going to burn the house down.
It was 11:00 PM on a Thursday. We were in the middle of our highest-volume shipping week of the quarter. I was in my office, reviewing legal documents, when the lights flickered. A second later, the fire alarm in the building began to blare, and my computer screens went completely black.
My phone rang. It was Sarah Lin, our IT director.
"Elena, get down to the server room right now!" she shouted over the alarm. "We’re under a massive cyber attack."
I sprinted down the stairwell to the basement. The server room was flashing with red emergency lights. Sarah was frantically typing on a secure terminal, her face illuminated by the harsh glow of the screen.
"What's happening?" I demanded.
"It's a logic bomb," Sarah said, her fingers flying across the keyboard. "One of the planted employees—Todd from dispatch—must have left a backdoor in the system before we locked him out. It just triggered. It’s trying to wipe our entire logistics database. If it succeeds, our trucks won't know where to go tomorrow. We’ll lose millions in inventory, and the client backlash will destroy us."
"Can you stop it?"
"I'm trying to quarantine the execution code, but it's mutating," she said, sweating. "They hired a professional. This isn't Todd's work. This is a mercenary."
I felt a cold knot in my stomach. Victoria was actually trying to destroy us.
"Don't just stop it," I ordered, leaning over Sarah’s shoulder. "Trap it. Trace it back. Leave the connection open just long enough to grab their IP."
"That's risky," Sarah warned. "If I miss the window, the servers fry."
"Do it."
For ten agonizing minutes, the only sound was the hum of the servers and the frantic clacking of Sarah's keyboard. The progress bar of the malicious wipe reached 85%. 90%.
"Come on, come on..." Sarah muttered.
At 96%, Sarah slammed the 'Enter' key. The screens froze. The red lights stopped flashing. The progress bar vanished.
"Gotcha," Sarah exhaled, falling back into her chair. "I sandboxed the malware. Our data is safe." She turned to me with a feral grin. "And I got the ping. The attack was routed through a VPN, but the original source IP slipped for a microsecond. It’s registered to a private office building downtown."
"Whose building?" I asked.
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Sarah typed a few commands. "Sterling Holding Group."
I pulled out my phone and dialed David Rossi. "David. Call the FBI Cyber Crimes Division. We have a live intrusion trace pointing directly to Victoria Sterling's office."
