You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
Chapter 11.<br />
<strong>Homeland</strong><br />
What if you threw a blockbuster news event and no one showed up? We'd just dumped<br />
one of the biggest troves of leaked documents in the history of the human race all over<br />
the net, and no one really gave a crap. Some critical combination of the sheer size of<br />
the dump, our sketchy promotions strategy, the pain in the ass nature of Tor, and the fact<br />
that the net was full of people saying that they were hoaxes and stupid and that there was<br />
nothing juicy there -- it all added up to a big, fat yawn.<br />
Joe finally came by my desk at 3:30, just as I was falling into the post-lunch slump, wherein<br />
my blood sugar troughed out so low that I felt like I could barely keep my eyes open -probably<br />
as a result of all the horchata I'd guzzled at lunch, the sugar sending my blood<br />
sugar spiking to infinity so it had nowhere to go but down.<br />
“Hello, Marcus,” he said. He was dressed in his campaigning uniform, a nicely tailored<br />
button-up sweater over a crisp white shirt, slacks that showed off the fact that although he<br />
was pushing fifty, he still had the waistline he'd had as a college varsity sprinter, a Joe for<br />
Senate badge on his lapel. He had like eight of those sweaters, and he kept a spare in a<br />
dry-cleaning bag by his desk, just in case a car splattered him or a baby got sick on him<br />
between campaign stops.<br />
“Joe,” I said, feeling like I was about to be sick. “Look, I'm sorry I wasn't in yesterday, I was<br />
really under the weather. And well, today, you know, it's just been crazy. I've just about<br />
got the network here sorted out, but the website --” I waved my hands in a way that was<br />
meant to convey that it was a total disaster.<br />
He looked grave. “I thought that the Web site was all in order? I remember you saying<br />
something to that effect. Or did I misunderstand?”<br />
I was sinking lower with every utterance. “Well, yeah, it looked okay but when I started<br />
doing a code-audit I found a bunch of potential code-injection vulnerabilities so I've been<br />
doing what I can to reduce the attack-surface of the site, you know, so I can get it all down<br />
to a manageable scale, and --”<br />
He held his hands up to stop my torrent of technobabble. “My, it certainly sounds like quite<br />
an undertaking. I really thought that Myra was better than that.”<br />
And now I really felt like a jerk. Myra, my predecessor, had done an awful lot with very little,<br />
and here I was, dumping all over all her hard work to cover my own useless butt. “Well,<br />
yeah, I mean, she did, but things move really fast, and the patch levels were super lagged,<br />
and you know, the last thing we want is someone hijacking our donors' credit card numbers<br />
or passwords, or using our site to install malicious software on visitors' computers, and,<br />
well --”<br />
“I get the picture. Well, you sound like you've got important things to do here, Marcus. But<br />
I want you to remember that this campaign needs you for more than your ability to patch<br />
<strong>SiSU</strong> www.sisudoc.org/ 164