Chapter 34
Chapter Thirty-Four
Emma
“Give us a minute and we’ll be right there.”
Ben turned with a curt nod and left, closing the door on his way out. As soon as I heard the latch click, Asher turned to me. I raised my hand.
“Look, Asher, I get it. What you don’t seem to get is the list of grudges would include people my father messed with, people I went to school with, worked with, who think the only way I’ve made it this far was on my father’s coattails.
What can I say? Pick a name in tech. If it’s not the person you pick, it’s probably someone who knows someone.
You know how incestuous tech is in the stratosphere not to mention how cutthroat it can be in some circles all the way down to sea level. ”
I locked my box and turned off the monitor. What more was there to say? I tucked my laptop under my arm, intending to head for the elevators, when Asher gently grasped my upper arm. I glanced from his hand to his face and back to his hand. He released my arm.
“I realize the possibility is very likely zero, but I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t ask the question. You said it yourself: The profession is interwoven and—your word, not mine even if true—cutthroat. Just think about it, okay?”
“If it’ll make you happy…” I didn’t look back to see if he was following me.
***
Ben, Will, and Tim were already seated on one side of the conference table. One guy, probably John Boyd, the president, was at the head of the table, and another guy—Nick Costanza from Legal?—sat to his left. Before we took our seats, Asher performed the introductions, confirming my assumptions.
John spoke first. “Miles is on his way. Nick has confirmed that access to the personnel records is permitted for the purposes of this internal investigation. Access by any outside entities will be by warrant only. Ben has brought us up to date with all of the latest information.”
“We’re making some progress on identifying who’s behind the creds. They’ve covered their tracks pretty well, but at first glance, not a single person stands out.” Ben slid what looked like a list across the table to Asher. He picked it up. “This is the list of those who’ve left and circumstances.”
“All the signs are pointing to inside help. Access attempts indicate purpose. Are we any closer to figuring that out?”
Ben, Tim, and Will shook their heads.
Someone tapped on the door right then, and I heard Miles before he took the seat next to Asher.
“Sorry I’m late.” He passed a thumb drive to Asher and another to Nick.
“Those drives have the HR information you requested, Asher. Nick, the drive I gave you is a duplicate.” Nick nodded, but didn’t speak.
Miles opened his laptop. “As you may be aware, Asher requested the records of anyone who had left IT for any reason since its inception. There were eight departures.”
The information on the first five was benign. The employees had left for family or were poached. Not at all unusual, and Miles stressed that the exit interviews were positive on both sides.
While Miles briefed the group on the former employees, I was multitasking: listening to Miles and looking over the search results from the sniffer.
After we’d offloaded the preliminary findings, I reset the search parameters and left it to run in the background.
The data collected overnight were interesting, particularly in regard to the intruder’s activity pattern, but I wasn’t ready to say anything just yet.
Then I realized there had been a very subtle change in the room vibe as Miles dropped both shoes.
“Which brings us to Tate Riser, Baylor Moore, and Hugo Wayne. All fired for cause.”
Asher picked up the thread. Tate tried to hack into the time tracking app. Baylor was fired for harassment. Turns out Hugo had seriously mad skillz; Asher had assessed them as outstanding, definitely high praise, but the guy was eventually fired for insubordination.
“Do we still need to look internally?” Miles asked.
“The current employees in IT have the expertise, and while I don’t believe any of them would do this, we have to be thorough.”
“Asher’s right,” Tim said. “Due diligence.”
“Yeah.” Ben ran his fingers through his hair.
I raised my hand and felt seven pairs of eyes on me. Chill, Emma.
“It sounds like any one of those three has the talent to hack the network, but your outprocessing regulations mandate that their access would’ve been shut down even before security had them off the campus.”
“And it was. Timestamps from IT and Security documented the cred lockout and time removed from campus to the second,” Ben confirmed.
“And to confirm, Hugo’s skill level was assessed as excellent.” I turned to Asher. “Good enough to hack in?”
Asher didn’t hesitate. “Yes. But the intrusion was carried out using legit credentials. The profile we can’t match up yet—”
“We’re tracking that down,” Ben noted. “I did pin down when the profile was created. Asher, Tim, Will, and I are the only employees authorized to create user profiles and set permissions.” Ben raised his hand.
“I know what you’re thinking. No we didn’t create the profile.
Yes, I have a list of people who were working at the time, but between this building and campus B across the street, there were close to four hundred people active, and that’s just on the domestic side. ”
“So right now, it looks like this: First: Someone has created a dummy profile, for lack of a better term. Second: All three ex-employees have the skills necessary to mess around the network once inside. In addition, they have the skills to build a ghostware program, right?” I alternately pinned Asher and Ben.
Both confirmed with a nod. “Third: The intrusion alarm traced to a local ISP, meaning whoever was in at that time is local. So we’re back to point one.
Who created the user; who unlocked the door? ”