Chapter 30 #3
“I’m Escher,” the man tells us. He doesn’t offer to shake hands.
“I’ll get you set up. You’re in Room A. There’s a bathroom and a kitchenette.
Fridge is stocked. There are frozen pizzas in the freezer.
If you want anything else, there are a couple of takeaway menus.
Tell me what you want and I’ll get it. Once you’re in, there’s no cell service.
Connection is by ethernet cable. Access codes are on the laminated sheet on the table.
My email is on the sheet, too. That’s how you communicate with me.
You’ve got the room until noon tomorrow. Any questions?”
I shake my head.
Escher’s head turns slightly toward Lindy. “Anything I need to know about that?”
“No,” De Leon says. “He’s not a prisoner. I’ll take off the hood and ties once we’re inside.”
“Good enough,” Escher says. “Let’s go.”
He leads us through the right-hand door, down a short hallway, and through another door.
Escher’s not a big guy. Maybe five-ten, hundred-seventy.
He’s wearing a black crew-neck sweater and jeans, with a blue bandana over his hair.
No biker paraphernalia except heavy leather boots.
But it’s there in the way he moves. This guy’s a martial artist of some flavor.
And although he’s got it in a pancake holster under the sweater, I’m fairly sure he’s packing.
I wouldn’t want to tangle with him any more than I’d want to go one-on-one with De Leon.
Escher shows us into a larger, but equally windowless, room.
There’s a big wooden table in the middle of the room with several gamer chairs drawn up to it.
There are cots with pillows and folded blankets along the right and left walls and an archway into a tiny kitchen with a fridge/freezer, sink, hot plate, and coffee machine.
A small door off the kitchen leads, I assume, to the bathroom.
There’s a thick cable running across the middle of the floor, covered with yellow tape to call attention to the trip hazard.
Under the table, a bundle of smaller cables arch up out of the big cable and through a hole in the middle of the table.
They sprout across the top of the table in an electronic bouquet.
I carry our bags to the table and while De Leon gets Lindy settled in a chair, shakes Escher’s hand, and closes the door behind him, then removes Lindy’s zip-tie and hood, I get our various electronics set up.
I’ve got two laptops with me. Lindy’s brought two as well and I figure at least one of his has dedicated optimized password hashing circuitry the way mine does.
De Leon has what’s probably a normal laptop.
There’s a multi-outlet charging station next to the cable, so I plug everything in.
A single laminated sheet on the table tells me how to log in and do a signal check.
It’s as easy as plug and play. I have my two laptops set up in the time it takes De Leon and Lindy to give each other heated glares and take turns in the bathroom.
Lindy sits down next to me, pops on a pair of black rim glasses, and sets up his devices swiftly. “Didn’t trust me to arrange the meatspace, huh?”
“That was all the paranoid psycho you let restrain you,” I respond, logging into Snarlzilla and letting everyone know I’m in the safe room.
I ignore Lindy and De Leon sniping at each other for a few minutes while I open a secure chat with Kinofoo and CenturyGirl.
DM4XX: Parameters have changed. Blackhat is a known player. We’ve negotiated personal safety.
Kinofoo: What assurances do you have they won’t burn you?
DM4XX: Nothing solid. But I’m not sure I want to livestream anymore. If I bring him into Snarlzilla, can you watch to make sure he doesn’t poke around, doesn’t install malware? Record the hack as insurance, but no livestream?
CenturyGirl: Ah, I’m surplus to requirements again. But yes, no problem.
I close out the chat and delete the log, just to be safe. Then I invite Lindy into Snarlzilla.
“What is this?”
“Proxying server. It’ll cover our tracks. Even if they catch us mid-hack, they won’t be able to trace us here.”
“Dark web?” Lindy lifts his eyebrows at me. “Naughty, Maxie.”
“Like you didn’t find Sasha and his crew on the dark web.”
“MercsRUs dot com.”
I scoff at him and get to coding.
There are layers and layers to this bastard.
First, I have to find Lumpstone’s virtual network.
It’s no surprise that Lumpstone has competent IT support who have changed the access port from the default to hide this gate into their virtual fortress.
The second scanner program I use finds the open port.
Once I have the gate open, it’s a straight brute-force hack to get the server password.
While that runs, I check the fridge. As Escher promised, it’s fully stocked.
A deli container holds chicken salad that smells surprisingly good.
I make sandwiches for me and De Leon and a garden salad for Lindy.
Lindy’s looking unusually smug when I bring his salad and bottles of water to the table.
“Don’t get used to me waiting on you,” I say.
“I’m in.” He grins.
“Dick. I should have taken that one. How’d you get in?”
“Summer intern bragged all over social media about his internship, then used his girlfriend’s name as part of his password.”
“Idiot. It’s nearly October, though. Why’s he still got a user account?”
Lindy shrugs. “Used to take Orelo months to shut down interns’ accounts, too.
Some of them come back on school breaks.
Easier to just leave their account dormant for a couple of months than to set them up a whole new account every time they come back.
I figured if Orelo did that, Bluett might, too. ”
“Intern doesn’t have administrative-level server access, though, does he?”
Lindy shakes his head as he takes a big bite of salad and chews.
“Got me right into the company directory, though, and either the VP’s Executive Assistant is banging the boss or he’s been a naughty boy on company time, because he did.
Ten-character mixed password? RazorBlaze cracked it in less time than it took you to make our lunches. ”
He pats his laptop. He must have the chips optimized the way I do.
“No lockouts?”
“CAPTCHA,” Lindy snorts.
“Stop lights?”
“Fire hydrants.”
“You are ridiculously lucky.”
Lindy laces his fingers together and flexes his palms until his joints pop. “Lucky or good?”
“Lucky, and if you have nothing to do, you can get a botnet going and attack Lumpstone’s homepage.”
“Why? It won’t affect their intranet.”
“Best case, they host their own and it overloads their servers. Worst case, it just gives their IT staff a collective migraine so they’re less likely to notice what I’m doing.”
Yes, a sudden surge of traffic can also tip off those self-same IT staff that they’re under hack, but generally, it keeps them so busy just trying to keep their server online, they don’t have any capacity to counter a hack.
“Eh,” Lindy grumbles. “High school hacking.”
Despite his grumbling, he gets on with it.
I show him Project Pistachio and let him loose on the amateurs still buzzing around in the invitational framework.
Whether he uses their systems to create the bot or sets up some sort of click-bait front, I don’t know and don’t care.
What I know is that when my brute-force attack finally cracks the server, lag time goes through the roof because the company servers are creaking under the weight of the traffic to Lumpstone’s site.
“I’m in,” I tell Lindy.
“I’m out,” he says, picking up his empty water bottle and waving it at De Leon.
With a grumbled, “brat,” De Leon hauls himself out of his chair and heads into the kitchenette.
I try to suppress a smile.
Lumpstone is running an older version of WEDGE, one I’m very familiar with from the Navy.
I’m in in less than ten minutes. I turn off everything but the emergency lighting, although they’re probably not in a windowless cinderblock the way I am, but sometimes labs don’t have outside light.
I disable all electronic locks; they do have electronic locks on the animal cages, so those go off, too.
Finally, I turn off the CCTV inside and outside before installing a super-password on the systems I’ve disabled.
Twenty-character, randomly generated password.
Chew on that for a while, you animal-torturing assholes.
Lindy’s struggling with his version of WEDGE, which has been patched. Under the combined assault of our crackers, it falls in less than an hour. I let Lindy do the honors with the lights, locks, CCTV, and super-password.
Finally, he pushes back from his laptop and holds his palm out to me. Rolling my eyes, I high-five him.
“Four hours, fifteen minutes, door to door, Maxie.”
I nod and sit back in my chair. “Good hack. Log out of Snarlzilla so I stop paying by the minute.”
I’m not, but he doesn’t know that.
Lindy nods and taps his keyboard. “I’ll let Sasha and Jo know.”
A message box pops up on my screen.
CenturyGirl: I got it. He has the camera on his laptop blocked, but I got clear footage of him from yours. I can edit you out, don’t worry.
DM4XX: Thanks for everything.
I delete all the programs I’ve uploaded, log out, and close my laptop.
Lindy stretches and tucks his hands behind his head. “Tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
“How you’ve burned me. I know you have. I knew it as soon as you insisted on providing the hosting.
I didn’t fight any of it, Max. I let him put the hood on me.
I went where you told me to. I used your dark web server.
I didn’t call for help. I’m not pushing back. I just want to know what to expect.”
I blow out a long breath. “If this is truly where it ends, nothing.”
“And if this isn’t where it truly ends?” Lindy asks.
“You don’t want to go there,” De Leon growls.
Lindy slants him a glance. “Hypothetically.”
“Hypothetically,” I say. “If this wasn’t the end and you tried to pull me in again, I’d release the recording of the hack.”
“Burns you, too.”
I nod. “It does, but you and your millions are a much more attractive target for Lumpstone and Bluett to sue. Enjoy the lawsuit and kiss your professorship goodbye. Maybe they’ll hire me as a temp.”
Lindy snorts. “I want you to be my TA.”
“What about poor Chad?”
“He can fetch us coffee.”
“Take that damn picture with my code down and that’s a deal.”
“Done.”
“You’re nowhere close to done,” De Leon says. “Ready for part two of your punishment or do you want to wallow in your success for a little longer?”
Lindy scratches the back of his head. “Wallow?”
“Such a brat,” De Leon grumbles.
“Feed me before you beat me?”
“You don’t need me for either activity,” I say. “I’m out.”
I open my laptop back up and pop off an email to Escher to let him know we’re done, an email to Cynnie to let her know it’s over and I’m on my way back to her, and one to Manny to let him know I’ll text him when I get to the airport.
“I’ll see you in class on Tuesday, right?” Lindy asks as he watches me pack up.
“Uh-huh.”
“Nachos after? I’m paying.”
“If you can sit down by then, I’ll have nachos with you.”
Lindy grins. “Can I get a hug?”
“Don’t push your luck.” I sling the strap of my bag over my shoulder.
De Leon comes around the table, holding out his hand. I shake. “Thank you. You’ve been a giant pain in my ass but, thank you.”
“Same. See you next Sunday.” He steps in and gives me a bro-hug. I slap his back before I move away.
“What’s on Sunday?” Lindy asks.
I shake my head at them. “I’ll leave you to explain. Ask Logan before you even think about bringing him.”