Techno Crazed (Hacked Investigations) (9 page)

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Ian sat at the computer set up in the corner and updated it with the routing information needed for remotely accessing Leon’s home.

His attention turned to the chip lying on the desk near him. He had a feeling that something was still hidden in Rich’s personal ID chip. Pulling the chip into his hand, he accessed it with his power and looked at the information again.

The raw binary format was the same as before. Digital material flowed over his eyes, showing him information he already knew about Rich and his life. An odd feeling kept getting stronger. The information was the same, rigid form. “Maybe I’m looking for something different,” he muttered to himself and started again from the beginning.

The binary code laid the files and other debugging information in a normal array with everything present. Aside from that information, the disk itself was relatively empty. Small spaces normally existed between files and metadata on the chip to ensure that the files would not be written on top of each other. Accessing his arithmetic chip inside the head, he asked it to process all of the material, including the spaces in between the metadata and the empty drive area.

Sitting back and letting his chip do the work, he focused on the feeds and information coming from Leon’s house. Leon had fallen asleep, holding the check John had given him in one hand and an empty bottle of whiskey in another. Outside, everything was peaceful. He was about to log out when he saw minor traces of background information slowly sent out from the server. Focusing on the stream, he noticed that the house was monitoring the location of Leon’s ID chip and transmitting it outward.

Making a careful hijack of the stream contents, he began feeling nauseated. The stream was going directly to a local MAX Home Security office. Obviously, he wasn’t the only one interested in checking into Leon. Carefully tapping the source code and location of the binary executable, he sighed in relief. Whoever had added the arbitrary piece of code to the system after Ian and Hannah’s visit had done a poor job. It hijacked a minor network service and was solely monitoring Leon.

Grinning to himself, he changed the code, faking it to identify Leon moving around the house randomly, using the expected personality model the server had of him showering every day at 6:30 AM, having breakfast at 7:15 AM, and so on.

Logging out, he considered the option that their ID chips had been added to massive search lists. He needed to talk to Hannah about making their chips dead for the time being.

Getting up, he noticed that the diagnostic scan he had started from his arithmetic chip was bringing up schematics and information from Rich’s chip. Structurally, the chip itself was intact. Its integrity was normal, its file system working, but the anomalies were in how much distance the normal standard buffer was set to. It varied from one to three times as much as normal.

Typically, file systems were strictly encoded and enforced to follow certain standards, but Rich had altered it to suit his own purposes. While the empty space between the files normally ensured that there was enough lenience to prevent accessing the wrong file by accident, Rich had used it as a way to hide something.

Bringing up the results on the graphical display, he ran a simple cross-reference check and verified the results. Cursing to himself, he pulled out a layout map of the file structure and asked the computer to mark, compare, register, and verify the map he thought he was seeing.

A fierce blaze filled his skull. The chips inside were firing constantly, filling his head with binary gibberish that made everything unreal. His hands felt too big, his lips numb and his heart raced too fast. It grew worse, making his entire body shiver. Minutes passed, and his world began to make more sense, his senses returning to normal. Wiping sweat from his brow, he got up and grabbed himself a cup of coffee. He heard Hannah slowly getting up and dressing in the other room. The new data came up on the screen.

His yell of surprise drew both Bernard and Hannah to the main room, looking for possible intruders. “It’s all good, but Rich was more clever than I thought.” He tossed back his small cup of coffee before pointing at the screen. Letters were beginning to form on it. “It’s a simple octal code referencing numbers and letters. It was hidden in plain sight between the buffers. Let’s see what he has to say.” Ian went to the small kitchen area to get another refill of coffee.

Hannah sat nearby, but Bernard had already vanished back to nurse his mutated plants, muttering about false alarms.

The message finally formed.

Ian,

If you’re reading this, I’m most likely dead. No hard feelings about the whiskey I drank from your desk the other year, okay? Anyway, what you thought when you initially approached me was correct. MAX is hacking local servers and setting up their own monitoring protocols. That’s how they’re so effective. They’re also adding remote controls and management systems, for instance, to push too much gas into the engine, while at the same time stopping the cooling mechanisms of the car. The end result is a small explosion that tears the car apart.

Yesterday, I found out they were forgetting something. While they erase all logs of outgoing control messages, their own servers log the incoming feeds. If you can access those, they will be the piece of evidence that tears MAX down. Ironic that their security system will be their downfall, don’t you agree? See you somewhere across the bit-split.

Rich

Ian paced for a moment. “You know, Hannah, even if we get the senator to speak, he has no hard data. He’d just get himself sued for taking bribes, and MAX Home Security would get a slap on the wrist. With this, however, we can tear them apart. Once and for all. Those logs, feeds, and responses for the commands sent will be their doom. We just have to find out which station to get to, and I believe the blueprints will help with finding that out.”

Finding the right MAX Home Security station took a while.

“Here, these two will not do. There simply is not enough bandwidth to sufficiently monitor the data. Over here by the outskirts, the electric grid is full of holes, so I’d doubt it is that one, either. However, this one here, by the industrial section, is the most likely place. Enough electricity, plenty of bandwidth and, most importantly, water for cooling, which is also used in the smelter down the road. If I had to pick one, it would be that,” Ian concluded after studying the map for several minutes.

“You forget that you need to access there, get out alive, and get the info to the senator and beyond from there. I agree that this would be great, but it’s just the first step,” Hannah said, rereading the message Ian had brought up. “Even then, we need the access codes, need to get past security guards and so on. It’s not so simple.”

“Well, we already know the codes. And we can use this chip for the system to think we are Earl Cleaver, one of my former coworkers. He was a real ass. Besides, the guards won’t really bother us if we look like techs. I know, I worked there, remember.” Ian grinned, ready to face off with his former employer.

* * *

They entered the McDonald’s across the street from the security station and ordered a couple cheeseburgers and fries. Sitting at the table in a quiet corner, Ian focused inward and accessed the Internet via the restaurant’s WLAN. Piggybacking the data stream, he remoted to their new safe house, and onwards to Leon’s server.

A few moments later, he had the location he needed inside MAX memorized and had a plan of how to proceed.

The initial contact with the security server was like hitting a finger against a brick wall. It resisted the touch and didn’t budge in any direction. Knowing full well that this was not enough to trigger an alarm, but more of a digital way of nudging someone to see if they were awake, Ian continued by projecting that he had a data stream coming in, faking the same type of signal given by Leon’s server.

A small hole in the digital wall opened, and he was able to peek inside. Changing his port adjustments now that he was inside the server, he probed the connections and devices across the network until he had a good grasp of what was going on.

Looking at Hannah, he smirked. “Be prepared to run over there when the alarm sounds.”

Feeding a looped video from the street outside as the main camera image, he tested the main video feed from the security terminal. Everything seemed to work just fine. A digital security hound came to see why a video stream was accessing too many locations at once. He threw the dog a proverbial bone by masking his own ports as high-channel communication protocols and routing information requests from other switches around the building. As an added bonus, he threw a small Trojan against the firewall in front, telling it which port was open, allowing it to enter the system.

With the security distracted, he cut the power to the main camera and verified that the loop was still in place. A little bit of tinkering later, the system had initiated a countdown to trigger both a false keypunch login and brute force methods at the maintenance door behind the building.

They walked slowly outside, pulling out a checklist of router names. Ian had reprogrammed his old badge with codes from Earl Cleaver’s. To prevent being detected inside the building, he disabled the transmitters on their ID chips.

Outside, they walked to the first fenced entrance with no guards and punched in the six-digit access code. The door buzzed open, letting them in. A moment later, the alarm triggered behind the building, alerting the guards.

The entrance was clear, the cameras looping false images, and the guards were gone. When they were behind the camera, Ian reached upward and told the camera to power back on, while remotely killing the looped image. A few moments of purging logs later, no trace of them ever entering remained.

They walked inside the building and made a beeline for the stairwell. The room they needed would be on the third floor. Not that he liked the idea of being so deep within the building, but they’d do what they came to do and get out. He didn’t plan on them getting caught.

“Are you sure about…?” Hannah started before cutting herself off and taking a deep breath. She walked up the stairs alongside him, wearing something close to the business casual dress code MAX Home Security liked their employees to wear, except her outfit showed a little more cleavage than he’d have preferred. But they were using that in case someone stopped her. She’d be able to talk her way into pretending to be a ditzy employee who forgot her badge.

He’d be able to sneak in and out before then, so he hoped that things didn’t go too horribly wrong. Or wrong at all.

They made it to the third floor’s door. He went first, peeking into the hallway and making sure it was clear before going any further. During his time there, MAX Home Security hadn’t used security cameras inside the buildings, except for core critical areas. They hadn’t expected anyone to be able to break in.

Well, they shouldn’t have pissed him off.

He motioned to Hannah to follow him before staring down at his notepad. It was important that he pretend to act normal with the guards. Who knows how much they knew? Besides, if someone recognized him, they could be seriously screwed.

A security guard walked around the corner ahead of him, and Ian grimaced. He glanced at the door of one of the many server rooms before looking back down at his notepad. He walked toward the door and held the reprogrammed badge near the reader.

The security guard walked by and nodded his head, so Ian returned the gesture in kind.

Walking in, he closed the door behind him. Tapping into the chip in his head, he looked over the information once more to figure out which room they were holding that information in. Just as he’d thought, the room was around the corner from the direction the security guard had come. No doubt there would be at least one other guard in that section.

When he’d worked here, the guards had been pleasant at times, but mostly assholes. He didn’t want to have a run-in with any of them. Not now.

A hand descended on his forearm, and he snapped his eyes open to see Hannah staring at him with a look of worry in her eyes. “Are you okay?”

He nodded and closed back down the active connection to the chip. He needed to focus on the matter at hand. “I’m fine. Let’s get a move-on.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

Hannah’s discomfort grew. She wanted to get this done and over quickly too.

Ian opened the door and turned toward the direction the security guard had come from. She just hoped that the guy had been alone.

Rounding the corner, she saw that another guard stood watch on a door. Hopefully, that wasn’t the room they were after. Somehow, Ian knew a lot of what was going on. Maybe it was part of him being a technomage. Maybe she’d have to find out exactly what he could do. But did she really want to know?

The guard turned his head toward them, and his gaze narrowed on her. Oh, shit. What did he want? Part of her wanted to turn around and run as fast as she could, but maybe he was just eyeing her boobs. Who knew?

Ian slowed as he reached a door on the left. He kept his gaze mostly on the notepad in his hands and then turned to the door. Maybe this was the one. He held his badge over the door and walked in as soon as it unlocked.

Hannah started to follow, when the security guard came toward her. “Excuse me, miss. Where’s your badge?”

Her eyes widened, and she stood there for a moment before being able to find her voice. Staring down at her chest, she frowned. “Oh, no!” She ran a hand through her hair. “I can’t believe this.”

The door closed behind Ian. She needed to talk herself out of this before he got back.

“Miss? Where’s your badge?” the security guard asked again. His gaze dropped back to her chest.

“I must’ve left it at my desk.” She sighed and started to turn away. Maybe if he thought that, she’d be able to get away from this situation and let Ian take care of what he needed to do before they met up again.

“Wait,” the guard said sharply. “I need to call this in. I’ll need to escort you to your office, then you can pick up your badge and return to work.”