Chapters (58)
- Cover
- Also by Oliver Harris
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- FORTY-ONE
- FORTY-TWO
- FORTY-THREE
- FORTY-FOUR
- FORTY-FIVE
- FORTY-SIX
- FORTY-SEVEN
- FORTY-EIGHT
- FORTY-NINE
- FIFTY
- FIFTY-ONE
- FIFTY-TWO
- FIFTY-THREE
- FIFTY-FOUR
- FIFTY-FIVE
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Inside the motel room he removed his laptop from its aluminium case, opened it. The screen showed a photo of the Vectis office. Then a second picture, closer to floor level – the junction box for the ethernet.
‘Someone’s already done it.’
‘Done what?’
‘Hacked them.’
Stefan changed windows, logged into a discussion forum. Halfway down a black screen filled with monospaced text someone had posted an almost identical picture: same office, same junction box.
‘The forum’s called Abysm, probably the smallest, most select hacker community on the net. Eighty or ninety members, a lot of them pros. The US Department of Justice has tried to take it down on several occasions. The set-up is invite only: you have to show how you’re going to be useful for the other members, so there’s a culture of bragging, a lot of sharing tips, trading tools. On Monday 20 November, a guy calling himself nomad9 says he’s been approached for a job; talks about somewhere ultra-secure that he’s been asked to get into.
‘“Been asked to do a thing”, were his exact words. It’s an isolated systems network, behind multiple firewalls. The target organisation’s clearly sensitive. All data’s encrypted when it’s transmitted, so he needs to get access internally. He posts some details; there’s a conversation about potential vulnerabilities, a joke about it being banking or military.
‘First he thinks about replacing a keyboard with an identical one containing a keylogger, thereby getting all the passwords. He says his client would be able to make the swap and then retrieve the memory chip.’
‘Which suggests his client is someone already inside the organisation.’
‘Right. This is the make of keyboard in the office: Corsair K95.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Then he says his client reckons the target’s too savvy for that. So he sources a replica ethernet box and puts a device in it that can sit on the Local Area Network, between the target and the server, grabbing all the traffic as it passes through. It’s a classic man-in-the-middle attack. From what he describes online, the device involves a crossover cable and a wireless card: the data he or his client wants to see is transmitted wirelessly and he’ll have picked it up easily enough. Gets in, does all the things I did, except then he disappears off the face of the earth.’
‘What happened?’