Chapter 1 #3
“You’re in the Tower?” Chandler said.
“Of course,” Jason said, in a tone that added the unspoken you idiot.
“Yeah, uh, okay. That should verify you, for sure.”
It should. Although the Tower’s park and even its atrium were popular tourist destinations, nobody could ride the elevators without clearance, and the internal security network tracked and logged every person in the building.
It was unthinkable that anyone could wander through the Tower without authorization.
Not only that, but direct user tampering of GPS numbers was impossible.
Any personal GPS coordinate sent to a third party bore an encrypted PlaceNet stamp verifying that the numbers had come directly from the phone’s GPS chip and not from any injected text.
So there was no reason for Chandler to suspect that the numbers Jason sent him were wrong.
Because they weren’t wrong—but they were imprecise.
Jason had modified the messaging app’s call for coordinates so that the longitude rounded after two decimals.
And as every kid learned in grade school, deleting decimals was the same as changing them to zeros.
So the truncated longitude coordinates collapsed to a very specific point 2,200 feet directly east of Jason: right smack-dab in the middle of the Tower.
The included, genuine altitude data meant that when Chandler turned his smartlens-augmented eyeballs toward the ping, he would see it above him, on the fourth floor of the Tower, where EmployNet was.
Though Jason knew this should work, there was the usual breathless, tingling moment of waiting to see if the hook would set and land the phish or if he would be the one trying to avoid being reeled in.
In his smartspace window, numbers and digits flowed into the login fields. He heard Bruno suck in his breath.
The fields disappeared as Chandler pressed Enter, replaced by a screen that said, “Thank you for finishing the training!” A button beneath read Submit.
“I bet I never hit that button,” Chandler said.
“Yeah, it’s not exactly clear there’s a final submit step, is it?” The real training, of course, had no such button, and Jason’s did nothing when Chandler pushed it, except to allow Jason to say, “That’s it! The flag is cleared. Thanks, Albert.”
“Thank you,” Chandler said. “I wouldn’t have gotten anything done today if I’d had to do that stup—that training again.”
Jason chuckled. “No worries. You saved me trouble too. Have a good day, now.” He disconnected.
Both of Bruno’s eyebrows were suspended above his smartglasses now. “That’s real hacking?”
“Like I said,” Jason said, “hacking isn’t just about computers. Hell, the original phreakers worked landline phones. Hacking just means taking a system, any system, and figuring out how to use it for something it wasn’t designed for.”
“Any system,” Bruno said. “You mean people.”
Jason nodded. “It’s called ‘social engineering.’ People have levers. You just gotta find the right ones.”
“Well, I give you credit for thinking outside the box.”
Jason shook his head. “Hacking takes what’s in the box and does something unexpected with it.” A moment ago, a text file had appeared in Jason’s smartspace. He opened it now. The contents were very short:
Username: chandlera
Password: rightcoltcelltack
“How do I know it works?” Bruno said.
“We test it.” Jason had earlier found a public-facing site that had NNA portal access, a government site for external contractors to bid for NNA contracts, which NNA officers would approve. He pulled that site up now, selected WasteNet, and pasted in Chandler’s login info.
The screen flashed and turned red, its way of shaking its head.
Jason shook his head back, frowning. Chandler must have mistyped his password.
He scanned it, looking for the mistake. It was all real words, thankfully.
The problem was almost certainly capitalization, and the most common slip was if the first letter was capitalized and the user didn’t time the shift keystroke with the letter keystroke.
Jason capitalized the leading R and hit Enter again.
The screen flashed red.
“Problem?” Bruno said.
“Just a little snag,” Jason said. He could feel Bruno and the goon looming. It did not help. “I’ll get it.”
Bruno snorted. “You’re a cocky shit, but you’re no Hacksaw. I’m starting to worry I won’t see a return on my ‘investment.’”
“Okay, so I haven’t destroyed the internet, shattered the economy of the entire planet, and plunged the world into a decade-long depression,” Jason said back. “Yet. But keep your eye on me.”
“Oh, I am,” Bruno rumbled. “I am.”
Jason tried capitalizing the C in colt. Again the login failed, but now the boxes filled themselves out, overwriting what Jason had entered. The login screen now read:
User ID: A=1
Passkey: 14-9-3-5-0-20-18-25
He bit his lip. A=1? It reminded him of those codes he and Mia had made as kids, the ones where numbers stood for letters of the alphabet. A was 1, B was 2, and so on. If this was one of those codes, the passkey would say . . . Nice Try.
Jason jerked, and his stomach swooped with a shot of adrenaline. His smartspace flickered. Someone else was in the system. Someone was watching him. Right now.
He reached over with his left hand and pulled his watchdog program into his field of vision.
It was supposed to tell him when someone was probing his system.
He punched its window with his finger. It didn’t respond.
He punched it again. This time it displayed the message: Error number 20-15-15-0-12-1-20-5. No network access.
His eyes flew over the error number. In that same basic alphabet code, it said, Too Late.
Every one of his programs closed itself. In their place came a cascade of windows: emails, online purchase receipts, contacts. Whoever this was, they were looking for identifying information. “Is this part of your plan?” Bruno asked in his deep voice.
Jason didn’t waste time replying. He yanked his phone out of his pocket. The green light was on; the camera was live.
A female voice, rich, low, and seductive, emanated from the phone in his hands, making him jump. “I see you, hhhhhhaaaackkkerrrrr.” The last word was artificially drawn out, metallic, computerized—predatory. “Turn around.”
Jason turned his head and found himself looking into the black hole of the muzzle of a handgun.
He had never seen a gun in real life, much less experienced one pointing at his face. The effect was riveting, as if the whole universe had compressed to those nine millimeters of black space. It took effort to raise his eyes to the man behind.
Bruno and his goon had new smartspace overlays above their heads: huge, floating NNA badges. “Jason Eric Cromartie,” Bruno said, “you are under arrest for cyberterrorism against a federal network.”