Black Hat Blues (10 page)

usual as far as Paul could tell—lots of scheduling issues and fund rais-

ing talk, but mostly details about meetings, pending legislation, and

more meetings. Then he sent his e-mail along, posing as Clover.

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: RE: Referral

Danny,

Busy beyond belief right this moment, but I should be able

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47

to help. Let’s talk on Monday or Tuesday when things have

settled down a bit.

Ken

A few minutes later, Danny replied that Monday would be fine, and

Paul diverted it to his own machine. Hopefully Danny would put any

thoughts about the target out of his mind until they needed him again.

In the meantime, Paul could take over his e-mail duties just fine.

“Everything’s rocking along,” Paul announced to the room. Chloe,

Sacco, and Sandee all looked up at him. “Sacco?”

“All set with the earmark to insert,” Sacco said, his voice a little

louder than necessary as usual. “It looks good. Hell, it might even be

decent legislation, but hopefully actually doing some good won’t raise

any alarms with these fucks.”

“I think we’ll be fine,” said Paul. “Give it an hour or so and then

we’ll shoot the procurement language on over to him. Should give

him a couple hours to shoehorn it in but not enough time to dig too

deep.”

Sacco checked something on his laptop, which also had all the data

from the Congressman’s phone. “Yeah, the Congressman’s calendar

confirms that the conference committee’s meeting through the night

so they can get everything wrapped up over the weekend and signed

and passed on Monday morning for the big press event.”

They’d had their pick of bills they could have inserted the earmark

into—a dedicated budget item that provided funding for a specific

program. In this case it was being inserted into a large infrastructure

bill that had been lingering around for several months but had recently

been fast tracked after an overpass in Georgia had collapsed two weeks

earlier. Sacco, who watched all the Congressional machinations for the

Crew, decided this was better than the federal land use bill they’d

originally planned on using, since the sudden fast tracking would mean

all kinds of congress critters would be inserting earmarks into it and

there’d be more chaff disguising their activities.

Paul turned his attention to Sandee. “How’s Mr. Data doing?”

“He’s plugging away, says everything’s running the way he thought

it would. Should have something soon,” he said. Sandee had a direct

link over an encrypted IRC channel with the Crew’s data analyst. As

soon as he was done he could throw up some names for them and they

could formulate their earmark request perfectly. He’d been a real find,

although they still felt the need to keep him in the dark about most of

48

Geek Mafia: Black Hat Blues

the details of the con. But that was partly his own choice—he knew

enough to know he didn’t want to know anything else.

Paul sat back on the couch and reached over to give Chloe’s leg a

squeeze. She smiled at him. “Do you think we should check on Bee

and c1sman?” he asked.

“Let them have their fun. We don’t need them on this right now, and

they’re in their element.”

“Do you think Bee will ever get a clue about his crush on her?”

“Maybe,” she said. “But this is a hacker con, and Bee’s a single

woman with an incredible mind for gadgets and hardware hacking

who’s outnumbered 5 to 1 by horny, mostly single geeks. Poor c1sman’s

gonna have a lot of competition down there. I’d be surprised if he

summoned up the courage to make a move. I hope he does, but I’ll be

really surprised.”

“I hope he does too,” said Paul. And not just because he’d like to see

Bee finally with someone. C1sman was in a weird place mentally, and

Paul wasn’t at all sure he was adjusting to the hardcore criminal hack-

ing life very well. Paul had suffered similar doubts when he started of

course, but he had a lot less choice and Chloe was dragging him along

into it. C1sman’s motivations weren’t nearly as clear-cut and he had a

lot more options, even if he didn’t see them yet. Bee would bind him to

the Crew, which would be great. They could use him.

Downstairs it was almost time for the keynote. He figured Bruce

Potter, one of Shmoocon’s founders, would be taking the stage to intro-

duce the speaker, an academic-based hacker who’d led a project expos-

ing some nasty vulnerabilities in electronic voting machines. Paul sort

of wished he could be there, but he knew the video would be online

in a month or less. Shmoocon was an interesting kind of hacker con-

vention, mid-sized and extremely popular. The attendees and speakers

constituted what Paul had come to think of as the upper middle class

of the hacking community. Most of them were security or network

professionals of some sort, some of whom no doubt got into a lot of

mischief in their younger years but who had grown into well paying

jobs and familial responsibilities. There was an undercurrent of youth

as well—college students or twenty-somethings who were still search-

ing for their place in the world. The vendors and sponsors tended to

be security companies and publishers, all legit, all trying to make a

buck. Despite the con’s home in Washington DC, the talks mostly

steered clear of politics except in either the most general or specific

of cases. Privacy rights and personal freedom were always big topics

of concern, but issues like social justice or political activism on non-

Rick Dakan

49

technology issues seldom got much attention. And of course, like any

con, the social aspect was just as much a draw as the talks, if not more

so. The large hotel bar and lounge area would be full in the evenings,

and Saturday night Shmoocon rented out an entire nightclub over in

Dupont Circle to accommodate attendees. Paul and Chloe would be

skipping those events of course, but Bee and c1sman might be able to

take advantage.

The idea of running a complicated con from a hacker convention had

been a calculated risk. Paul had gone back and forth on the idea, as had

Chloe. At one time or another both of them had argued vociferously

for both points of view. As it turned out, the first time they both agreed

happened when they were both on the “pro” side of the argument, so

they’d gone with the plan. Using Shmoocon as cover gave them a lot of

advantages. They were able to get c1sman well positioned to let them

piggyback on the convention’s bandwidth, and once they’d decided on

using the con, he’d submitted his plans for running a TOR server at

the convention, one modified with new improvements of c1sman’s own

devising. The TOR worked in concert with other computers to help

make the user’s internet activity anonymous. Users logged into TOR

would have their activities routed through layers of anonymous servers

before proceeding on to wherever they were headed on the internet.

This process masked the user’s IP Address, making it very difficult to

trace back the packet to its original point. The newer, more robust TOR

server c1sman and his hacker friends had set up worked in conjunction

with computers all over the country and in Germany. The whole point

of the display at the convention was to stress test the arrangement, so

they were encouraging as many con attendees as possible to hop on and

give the setup a try. Hopefully all that activity and bandwidth would

provide more than enough cover for the rather risky attacks the Crew

was launching this weekend.

And if things went wrong, Shmoocon also offered perfect camou-

flage. There were over 1300 attendees at the event, any of whom was

theoretically a suspect if law enforcement somehow got involved. Paul

thought the odds of that happening during the actual weekend of the

convention were pretty slim. Their plan should cover their tracks very

well. But the almost inevitable investigation after the fact was another

matter. Smart people would start digging around, trying to figure out

just what the hell had happened. If they figured it out and managed

to trace it back to Shmoocon, that still left them with over a thousand

suspects. Beyond the fact that a sizable fraction of the attendees regis-

tered under pseudonyms, the real culprits, aside from Bee and c1sman,

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Geek Mafia: Black Hat Blues

weren’t even actually attending the convention. Paul, Chloe, Sacco, and

Sandee were in the hotel under fake identities and often looked the part

of hackers, but they weren’t doing any socializing or interacting with

the rest of the convention. Even the most diligent investigator would

have a hard time finding any trace of them.

Paul watched and read strangers’ e-mails for the next hour and a half.

It was both boring and thrilling. Again and again temptation pulled

at him to change a word or two just because he could, but of course he

didn’t. It was a real high, and he wondered how people who worked at

places like the NSA dealt with the temptations to pry into everything.

Maybe they didn’t, or maybe they just got used to it. Maybe both. All

Paul knew was that he loved the power that having Sacco, c1sman, and

Mr. Data in the Crew gave him.

“Oooh!” said Sandee. “Good news everybody. We’ve got some names

from Mr. Data. He seems very excited. Either that or he accidentally

hit Caps Lock.” Sandee worked the keyboard for a few seconds and

then pulled a small USB drive from the side of his laptop and brought

it across the room to Paul. He plugged it into his own machine and

copied the list of names to his desktop.

“Here we go,” said Paul. “Time to give the target his marching

orders.” Then he started to write legislation.

Oliver loved his job. Well, Oliver HAD loved his job. Now he was

looking for a new one, but there were plenty of offers on the table,

and there was some level of potential for love in all of them. But he

needed to clear his head, take a break, and put things in perspective

before he made any big decisions. Plus his current, previously lovable

job, wasn’t aware that the feelings weren’t mutual anymore and so still

had no qualms about paying his way to a hacker convention all the way

out in San Diego just because he said he needed to go. He didn’t even

feel guilty about it. There was still some slight chance he’d stay with

the company, although with his friends jumping ship and the new gov-

ernment mandated changes in testing procedure going into effect next

month, it didn’t seem very likely. Still, there was a chance, and if he did

stay, the stuff he learned at Toor Con could theoretically come in handy

at work. Or at his next place of employment for that matter.

Ollie stretched out on his king sized bed 22 floors above downtown

San Diego. He’d just been staring out the window down onto the field

where the Padres play. Great seats if there’d been a home game that

weekend. Even so, it was cool. Outside, the September evening was

crisp and clear and breezy, a far cry from the heat that still suffused

St. Louis. It was good to be away, on his own. He’d even turned his

cell phone’s ringer off so he’d only have to answer calls if he wanted. A

nap would be nice, then maybe a free beer or two up at the Marriott’s

hospitality suite. Then he could head over to the convention center and

see what was going on.

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Geek Mafia: Black Hat Blues

He woke up around 7:00 PM, trudged into the shower and threw

on a t-shirt from last year’s Toor Con that featured an ASCII design,

just like every other year. He liked the old school sensibilities Toor

Con tried to espouse. Even though he wasn’t yet thirty, he still felt

more of a connection to the original hackers than to the modern scene.

Of course the flip side was that it was the modern scene that afforded

him plenty of lucrative and exciting work as a full time penetration

tester, so he wasn’t going to complain too much. He just sort of wished

people didn’t take everything quite so seriously these days. It seemed

like being a hacker must have been more fun back in the 80’s and

early 90’s.

Ollie had been to the San Diego Convention center twice before.

Once for a Toor Con, and once for San Diego ComicCon. The differ-

ences and similarities between the two amused him as he crossed the

train tracks and made his way inside the sole open doorway. During

ComicCon, the place was FLOODED with people. Flooded. It took

up what seemed like 10 city blocks—the entire main floor of the hall

plus more in the annex across the street—and by mid-day the place was

packed solid with fans. Toor Con occupied just three small ballrooms

on the second floor that could hold a couple hundred people each. He

walked down the wide, white, hallway that seemed to him like some-

thing out of Logan’s Run or some other 70’s sci-fi version of the future.