Except, Jack thought to himself, all the pictures of himself and his colleagues.
Further digging into the e-mails revealed another secret. Just eleven days before the Campus hit, Center had stopped all e-mail communications with the Libyan. The last e-mail from Center said, simply, “Switch communication protocol immediately and delete all existing correspondence.”
Jack thought this was interesting. “I wonder what the new communication protocol was.”
Biery answered after looking through the system for a few seconds. “I can answer that. He installed Cryptogram the same day that e-mail came.”
“What’s Cryptogram?”
“It’s like instant messaging for spies and crooks. Center and Kartal could chat back and forth over the Internet and even send each other files, all on an encrypted forum, knowing that no one was looking in at the conversation and all traces of the conversation would be immediately and permanently scrubbed from both machines, and not hosted on any server in between.”
“It’s unbreakable?”
“Nothing is unbreakable. You can be sure that somewhere some hacker is doing his best to pick apart Cryptogram and others like it, trying to find a way to defeat its security. But so far no exploits have been discovered. We use something like it here at The Campus, but Cryptogram is actually a generation improved from what we have. I’ll be switching us soon. CIA has something about four gens older.”
“But…” Jack read back over the brief e-mail. “He ordered Kartal to erase the old e-mails.”
“That’s right.”
“Clearly he didn’t do what he was told.”
“Nope,” Gavin said. “I guess Center didn’t know his man in Turkey didn’t remove them. Or else he didn’t really care.”
Jack answered back: “I think it’s safe to assume he
“Why do you say that?”
“Because Center sat there and watched us kill Kartal’s buddies and he did not warn Kartal that his cell was under attack.”
“That’s a good point.”
“Jesus,” muttered Jack, thinking about the implications. “This bastard Center takes his computer security seriously.”
“A man after my own heart,” Gavin Biery said, with no indication of sarcasm.
After the English-language e-mails had been checked, they went to work with the translators on the other electronic correspondence, but there was nothing of interest save for some communication between the members of the Libyan ex — JSO cell and some back-and-forth chitchat between Kartal and an old colleague in Tripoli.
Next Biery tried to trace the e-mail address from Center, but very quickly it became clear that the mysterious benefactor of the Libyan cell was using a complicated spoofing system that bounced his connection from one proxy server to another around the world. Biery tracked the source of the e-mails back through four locations, finally making his way to a node at the South Valley branch of the Albuquerque/Bernalillo County Library system in New Mexico.
When he announced this fact to Jack, Ryan said, “Nice work. I’ll talk to Granger about sending a couple of operators there to check it out.”
Biery just looked at the younger man for a moment before saying, “Don’t be naive, Ryan. The only thing I
When that did not pan out as they hoped, Jack and Gavin began going through Kartal’s financial software, tracking the wire transfers Center sent to the Libyans as payment for their footwork in Istanbul. The transfers came from the Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank Ltd. in Dubai, and at first they looked like they would be a solid lead as to the identity of Center. But one of Biery’s computer geeks hacked into the bank’s account-holder data. A trace of the owner of the account revealed that the money had been illegally transferred out — electronically stolen — from a Dubai-based hotel group’s employee payroll fund.
While this was a dead end as far as identifying Center, it did provide a clue. To Biery, the computer network expert, this was evidence that Center was himself a skilled hacker.
Scanning through the systems file folder, Gavin found something interesting. “Well, hello there,” he said as he began clicking open files, moving around windows, and firing his cursor all over areas to highlight lines of text at a speed that Ryan found impossible to track with his eyes.
“What is all that stuff?” Jack asked.
“It’s a pretty nice attack tool kit.”
“What does it do?”
Gavin did not slow his manipulation of the windows and files on the screen. Jack guessed he’d looked at about twenty different files in the past forty-five seconds or so. As he clicked and, Jack assumed, absorbed all the data on the screen in front of him, he answered, “The Libyan could have used this stuff to break into computers and computer networks, steal passwords, get hold of personal information, change data around, clean out bank accounts. You know, the usual bad stuff.”
“So… Kartal was a hacker?”
Gavin closed all the windows and turned around in his chair to face Jack. “Nah. This isn’t real hacking.”
“What do you mean?”
“This is a tool kit for a script kiddie.”
“A what?”
“It’s the term for someone who can’t write malicious code themselves, so instead they use a ready-made package like this, created by someone else. This attack tool kit is like a Swiss Army Knife of cybercrime gadgets. User-friendly hacking materials — malware, viruses, key loggers, password-breaking code, stuff like that. The script kiddie just sends this out to a target computer, and it does all the work for him.”
Biery’s attention returned to the monitor, and he began looking at some more files. “There’s even an instruction manual for him here, and special tips on how to gain access to computers run by network administrators.”
“If he gains access to a single computer run by an administrator, he can see other things on whatever network the computer is part of?”
“Right-o, Jack. Just think of yourself. You come into work, light up your node, put in your password—”
“And then do whatever the hell I want.”
Biery shook his head. “Well, you have user-level access, so you do whatever the hell I let you. I have administrator access. You can see a lot of data on our network, but I have a lot more access and control at my fingertips.”
“So this Libyan had the tools to slip into certain networks as an administrator. What kind of networks? I mean, what type of companies, industries? What could he get into with these scripts?”
“The type of industry doesn’t have anything to do with it. He could target any industry. If he wanted to steal credit card numbers, for example, he might attack restaurants or retail point-of-sale or something like that. But if he wanted to get into a university system, an airline, a government agency, a federal reserve bank, he could do all that just as easily. The tools to break into networks don’t discriminate by industry. The tools will do whatever they can to find a way to root into the network via different attack vectors and vulnerabilities.”
“Like?”
“Like passwords called ‘password’ or ‘admin’ or ‘1234’ or ‘Letmein’ or something else easy to guess, or ports left open that would allow access, or information that is not behind the firewall that might reveal information about who has access to what info, so then the attacker can target those people via social media and the meat space, so that he can make an educated guess about what their password might be. A lot of it is the exact same social- engineering stuff you spies do.”
“Back up a second. What the hell is the ‘meat space’?”
“The real world, Jack. You and me. Physical stuff. Not cyberspace.”
Jack shrugged his shoulders. “Okay.”
