Valley Of The Spies

Foreign agents have been stealing tech secrets since the 70s. But in the wake of Facebook’s recent crisis, the biggest companies in the world are facing the challenge at unprecedented levels.

- Erik Carter

On the day that they entered the headquarters of a renowned technology company, members of the security unit were nondescript—quiet as a mouse. It had to be that way, naturally. For months prior, the tech behemoth’s upper management had suspected that something nefarious was going on inside their organization: files were disappearing; millions of dollars’ worth of intellectual property was being copied, they believed—personal and private information, too. Worse, the executives in the corporate suite were mystified about the culprit. But they recognized the veracity of an adage in the tech industry: There are two kinds of companies—the ones that have been hacked, and the ones that haven’t been hacked yet.

As the tech company’s staff went about their usual quotidian tasks, working at their computers and carrying on with their familiar assignments, the security sleuths surreptitiously flipped open their laptops, connected to the network, and subtly began their forensic investigation. The team ran software to search for viruses and malware, but found nothing. They checked the servers for illicit software, but again came up with an absence of leads. Eventually, the operatives set up network-monitoring tools to detect where traffic might be leaving the building. Soon enough, their screens were filled with charts and numbers— reds, yellows, greens—that zigzagged up and down like a digital seismograph. One of those spikes indicated that a massive amount of data was flowing out of a single computer elsewhere in the company’s offices.