You Will Know Vengeance, page 14
The only way to keep that from happening is to adjust your uploading and downloading bandwidth to the exact same frequency as the target’s. This requires a person to manipulate the data transfer by hand.
I’ve watched enough cheesy ’80s action movies to say this is like jumping an 18-wheeler, flatbed truck off a bridge and landing on the bed of another 18-wheeler below—one that is not only going the same speed but also doesn’t crash when the truck lands.
Even the boys from The Dukes of Hazard never pulled this maneuver off.
But Cyfib could. Somehow, he managed to lay a copy on top of the Croatian hackers’ system and hijacked it after he recorded their activity on our servers. Using some code that only he has access to, like a maestro conducting an orchestra, he manipulated the flow of data in and out of our servers perfectly.
It was like watching Houdini cut himself in half and never stop talking to the crowd: beautiful, sadistic, and mind-blowing.
Of course, Cyfib found me snooping and deducted twenty units from me.
Fake money well spent.
Now in the War Room, Cyfib approaches me. I have just called Odinson down from Valhalla to join us mere mortals in the fields. The least I expect is a punch in the face. Instead, he cuts Foshi_Taloa a harsh glance that our quiet man rightfully takes as a command to jump up.
After a flash of keystrokes, Cyfib enters his command system. “Dog, use your software to give me a parallel port to the target.”
Shit. My knees all but buckle. He knows about SkipTrace. Of course he does.
If the devil is in the details, Cyfib’s middle name might as well be Fine Print. I grab a keyboard, enter my commands, and get the warden what he needs: an open port on our target’s IP address.
“Sent to your system, sir.”
The warden never acknowledges the transfer. His laser focus is already moving forward.
At this moment, I don’t feel the crushing weight of Hackers’ Haven. Even AldenSong sends me the biggest smile I’ve seen since he found an emulator of the original Wolfenstein first-person shooter on a server.
I ping the target and filter his bandwidth spend through our access to the Internet provider’s relay points. I send the info to the third screen above our heads. Cyfib glances at it and enters something into his system.
On the second screen is, for lack of a better word, the frequency that our planned looping system is on. On the third screen is the frequency of our perp. The numbers are close to one another, but not exact.
Not yet.
Cyfib’s hands fly across the keyboard. The screen above him ramps up the download speed to match the target but overshoots it by four megabytes. However, he evens out the upload speed to within a kilobyte of the target’s.
The warden stares at the giant screens and squints his eyes. He holds one finger over his keyboard’s enter button.
Like playing an arcade game that requires you to hit a buzzer to stop at just the right moment and line up with the prize in the bin, Cyfib waits.
For a second, I think the same numbers on the two screens overlap. Maybe my eyes are playing tricks on me.
I see it again. Why is he waiting?
Then it hits me: by the time the numbers are on the screen, it is too late. He’s waiting to predict the split second before the numbers align.
Click.
He presses the button. Our four giant screens fill with media windows that are not ours.
The screens appear frozen. One shows an intersection map with dots on the buildings. The way those dots form a square it looks like a kill-box shape, meaning anything that enters the area meets four different angles of gun and/or rocket fire.
The screens aren’t moving, though. Maybe the hackers had detected a change in processing speed. Tension in the room amps up as we all wonder the same thing.
Are they aware that we are watching them?
Then the screens shift from a coded window to a live traffic one of Constitution Avenue and 2nd Street in DC.
No screens shut down.
We are in.
A cheer erupts in the room like the winning touchdown thingee has happened in the World Series or whatever sport has touchdowns. I don’t know because I don’t watch people play with balls.
However, the warden’s face stays stern and focused, his cheeks pulled in like he’s just sucked on a lemon.
“Dogs, the target will notice our intrusion in under five minutes. Finish this correctly, or you all go to the Hole.”
Nothing screws up a plan like an unreachable deadline.
Chapter thirty-nine
Unspoiled
“Tanto, you seeing what I’m seeing?” Aldy points to the live feed camera. Rather than the street and traffic, the camera focuses on the entrance and exit for LOT 48525.
“Good eye, Aldy. Someone get us a reverse lookup of what we’re seeing.”
“Done, son!”
Of course, I should have known PoBones would be the first Johnny on the spot with any information ammo.
“There’s a motor pool for government vehicles there.”
“Okay, Foshi_Taloa, get us a list of recent file downloads from the target.”
“You sure we haven’t missed our window?” Aldy says, tense. He has a point, but something in my gut tells me we are still in the game.
“If they’d already gotten what they needed, they would’ve shut everything down . . . that one, open it.”
The first screen lights up with a list of coded entries, the kind that need a cypher to decrypt.
“Anyone got a clue which software works with these?”
No one answers.
“Aldy, I need you to look through the target’s database for digital receipts. Look for something ending in dot gov.”
“On it.”
The big man opens the target’s database and enters the search parameters. Within ten seconds, the results pop up, producing two files.
“Got it. They spent thirty-five bucks and change on some software recently.”
“We need exact numbers for this to work.”
“Thirty-five fifty-two.”
“PoBones, cross-reference that amount with government discounts of software. Barca, can you find the filename extension they’re looking for?”
It is a risk to include this monster in our search, but it is a simple task. Hopefully, the goodwill will stick.
“Dot em pee ess,” says Barca.
Aldy pops open a search engine and searches for file properties before I can ask.
“Ducky says it’s some type of scheduling system,” Aldy says, referring to the untraceable search engine Duck Duck Go, a personal favorite of those in the privacy community.
“Ding!” chimes PoBones. “Car Renter Lite is the software. It’s for checking in and out cars.”
“Perfect. That’s the file they’re in. Someone download a demo and open the file.”
Within seconds, Foshi finds the software and uploads the file to our screens. A travel itinerary pops up with a name we all know: David Masterson, the U.S. Secretary of Defense. According to the readout, he is six minutes from departure, and these hackers are setting up a kill box for him.
Speaking of time, we finished in four minutes and fifty seconds. No Hole time for us. For now.
If it weren’t for Cyfib, we’d have flags flown at half-mast tomorrow.
As if the devil knows I am thinking about him, Cyfib says, “Dogs, shut down their system and get the log files on the server. I’ll contact my bosses and they will contact the target’s security detail.”
A smattering of Yes sirs pop up around the War Room. The absolute best part of Cyfib’s looping means we are through any and all firewalls for the attacker’s machine. I send a packet into their system I call Program Lidocaine. It is a worm I invented back in the early two thousands. It shuts down a system slowly and freezes everything up to and including the BIOS system.
In layman’s terms, it puts the computer in a coma.
We watch as the target’s screen twitches, as if there is a serious bandwidth lag. A curser jumps across the screen. The hacker has no clue what’s happening. Then the screen flickers, a blue screen of death appears, and we lose contact with the target.
Someone’s pants just went brown.
As everyone cheers, the warden puts his finger in my chest.
“Dog, get to the Infirmary to get checked out and then come to my office immediately after.”
No good moment goes unspoiled around here.
Chapter forty
Blow Up in My Face
In the Infirmary, Dr. Fel touches my neck with his icy hands. A million thoughts attack my brain. They all come back to the same question: How did Barca know how to sabotage the Coffin so that I’d be at his mercy?
There were no blueprints outside of our servers for LODIS. As far as anyone in Hackers’ Haven knew, the idea originated from some blueprints we discovered when we reverse- engineered a bunch of Latvians who attempted to break through our firewall about a year ago. The end result was we broke their wall first and found these plans among their log files. From this, Cyfib ordered us to build the prototype. Thank goodness some of the residents of Double-H have engineering degrees.
So, how did Barca know about the workings of the Coffin?
Maybe he took time to sneak in, take the thing apart, and re-engineer it.
That’s what I would’ve done.
Did he let all the oxygen out of the tank? AldenSong and I both thought, maybe, the tank had run empty on its own with a leak or something. Now that hypothesis isn’t as solid.
For every paranoid query, I have some sort of answer. Except for these two lingering questions: How did Barca know about the hack?
Every possible answer to that question led me to the big one underpinning it all: Who is Barca, really?
As Dr. Fel runs his cold stethoscope across my back and chest, occasionally asking me to take a breath, another tremor shoots through my right leg.
“Does that happen often?”
“Maybe . . . I don’t know . . . why?”
“It’s probably nothing.”
I’d spent enough time in hospitals with my drugged-out mother to know that the words probably nothing were the same as don’t look down.
“You’ve got one of the oldest functioning security chips in the compound, an outdated model, so it may get faulty.”
Yay. Even my leg wants to punish me today.
“We’re going to run an EKG and MRI on you, just to be sure.”
Great. More time stuck in here while Barca soaks in his heroic accolades. He’s locked in his untouchable, good-hearted status for now. I can no longer openly cast doubts about his good intentions actually being manipulations.
I have to confront him and let him know I am not afraid to die, that his scare tactics will never work on me, even if they end with my death. The best thing to do to a bully is stand up to them and watch them crumble.
Of course, there is no way to predict how badly this choice will blow up in my face.
Chapter forty-one
Spaceship with a Hole in It
When I leave the Infirmary and head to the warden’s office, my sphincter is tight enough I could rename it Jaws of Life.
The Box of Death takes no visitors that aren’t guards. For him to call anyone in there, let alone me, is as rare as a unicorn riding a unicycle.
My feet move for me, taking me to the warden’s mirrored door before I’ve half-processed what’s happening.
I knock on the glass, and it produces a higher noise than I expected, almost as if I just knocked on a small, hollow vase.
“Come.”
I twist the doorknob and leave reality as I enter a cyber-Neverland.
Inside the cube is the largest consecutive computing station I’ve ever seen. The entire room bristles with electricity and a few hairs on my head stand up.
To the left of me is a parade of input devices: four keyboards, three different types of mice, an ocular headset, and a pair of noise-canceling headphones. And next to that is a simple notepad, Bic pen, and Cyfib’s white stone pipe.
On the double-sided mirrors that serve as walls are streams of data and command prompts. The warden is using the glass as monitor space as well as a view of the War Room. The floor is a clear map of the United States with flashing green, yellow, red, and black dots. Even the ceiling shows live news reports from six different channels.
Cyfib picks up the pipe and places it in the corner of his left lip. He chews it as he studies me. I don’t know whether my capture of the hacker is praiseworthy or demands condemning. Either consequence is on the plate for the warden.
“I want Gakunodu operational by the end of the month.”
Of all the sentences my mind predicted Cyfib would say, that was not one of them.
Gakunodu. When I first started this project, I named it Gakunodu because that is where Bushido warriors most felt safe before, during, and after a battle. It was a sacred tent where even the most battle-stressed and wounded warriors found refuge.
In Hackers’ Haven, Gakunodu is a trap, not a refuge. It is the automated version of what we hackers do: it lures in dumb people looking for illegal things. It also is a way to trap hordes of dummies in fast succession rather than our apparently inefficient one-at-a-time approach.
I volunteered to build this trap with one purpose: if I built it, I’d know how to destroy it as well. And it would have to be destroyed, one way or another. It is a society killer. Or it would be if I ever got it live.
“Sir, this project has not been alpha tested; there’s no telling how buggy it will be on a beta test, much less—”
Cyfib jams the sharp end of his pipe into my side, and I scream out.
“Tanto?” AldenSong whispers my name from the War floor below and his voice sounds in the Cube of Death as clearly as if he was in here with us. One screen in the Box of Death shifts from data to show a glowing circle. In that orb is Aldy.
Cyfib has the room bugged so well that he not only hears every word, but he can even automatically track the speaker.
The Cube of Death is not soundproof.
I meet my assailant’s gaze. Cyfib is easily fifty to sixty pounds heavier than I am, but every inch of the bastard is pure muscle. His gray eyes stare not at me, but through me.
“Dog . . .”
I grimace but keep my gaze firm.
There was a time I’d cower. Maybe he remembers it. When I refused to hunt and went without food for six days. When he put me in solitary for a week because I blatantly let a target go. Some prisons call their solitary confinement areas holes because they are dark and damp. Others are bright, with lights that never go out.
Ours are a mixture of those hells: not only do the lights shift at unpredictable times from pitch-black to strobe-light effect, but they thrash metal music blasts at ear-bursting intensity.
Since my time in the hole, I’d gotten much better at hiding my losses. I’d even created a way to fake my wins, at least temporarily: I would submit corrupted log files to our server that created a sliver of reasonable doubt for a judge or jury over the defendant, or in other words, my target.
Back in the Cube of Death, I take a breath before responding with the obligatory, “Yes, sir.” The warden yanks his pipe out of my gut and my right hand covers the bleeding wound.
I know not to immediately answer him with an agreeable response because he would change the timeline to an even sooner date. Cyfib loves to move the goalposts, to make it impossible to please him. Which is why I let him think one month to finish the project is a win for him and a loss for me.
What sucks harder than a spaceship with a hole in it is that now that I’m done stalling, I must figure out how to destroy Gakunodu without destroying myself as well.
Chapter forty-two
Some Choices Are More Damning than Others
My brain is processing everything as I walk down from the Cube of Death. I’ll have to wait to get stitched up, but at least the bleeding from my wound is slowing. Cyfib just took advantage of our stopping the hack and caught me when I was most vulnerable. That’s what the devil does: he brings you up right before he slams you down.
Gakunodu. Damnation.
I thought this program was on the back burner. The team is pulling in good numbers. Something must have changed for this project to require a quick deadline. I wonder if someone above Cyfib’s pay grade must’ve decided our current kill levels aren’t enough.
Honestly, the program is 80 percent done. It only needs a working compiler. Without this part of the program, Gakunodu is like the underpants gnomes in South Park. The gnomes sneak in at night and steal your underpants. Their business plan goes something like: first, steal underpants. Then something happens, but they don’t know what. Then, of course, they profit. How, no one seems to know, because of that missing second step.
That’s when it hits me: Cyfib is in a good suit and tie.
He had a meeting. I wonder if it was a meeting with someone in the corporation who owns the facility. That would make sense. The powers that be want that piracy-enforcement money. Lance-a-Little uncovered a file a few years back that was a pay-for-play contract that was mostly redacted. In it, some company that owns this joint gets not only a bit of federal funding for housing us inmates but also a cut of the court’s fines. So, the lawyers get a percentage, then the government, and finally this company. Where we hackvicts are bringing in a few drops of revenue, Gakunodu turns on the money faucet full force.
So, let’s do some simple math. Whether or not I like it, I’m a resident of the Free Country of Texas. We’ve got around twenty-five million residents living here that range in age from babies in diapers to people in adult diapers. Surely not half of all those people are illegally downloading things, so let’s say half of those are people over fifty and under eighteen. That leaves twelve point five million. Further, white people do dumb crap. I’m a fine example because I’m white and I got caught doing dumb crap, so let’s just count my fellow saltines in this equation. I think we’re probably 65 to 70 percent of the Texas population, so 65 percent of our number of possible perps is around eight million people.
