by Kat Wheeler
Still looking at her strangely, he took both his cell phones and his smartwatch and set them on the desk. She reached into her purse to grab a pack of cigarettes and gestured to the door.
“I thought you quit,” he asked as they headed out of his office and down the back stairs that would lead them to the smokers’ area next to the employee parking lot.
“I started again yesterday.” She’d been cigarette free for two years, but as soon as she’d seen the news in the paper yesterday morning, she’d grabbed a pack from the bodega and started again. It was a disgusting habit, and she hated herself a little for being so weak.
Reaching the metal picnic table outside in a small grass area reserved for smokers, Cameron lit a cigarette and began pacing.
“What the hell, Cameron?”
“Okay,” she said as she continued to pace. “You’re going to think I’m crazy, but I need your help. After I called you Friday, I went home, and I took Barry’s HomeTech Hubs apart. And I found something. The unit he claims won’t integrate has an extra board in it. It’s a transmitter of some kind, and I need you to find out what it does.”
“Okay, but what’s with all the secrecy? You could’ve just told me in my office.”
She reached into her inside jacket pocket, pulled out just the front page of Sunday’s New York Post, and handed it to him.
“Wow, Matt Rodriguez is dead. That’s crazy, but it still doesn’t explain your level of paranoia.”
“He was murdered, Casey, and I don’t want to jump to conclusions, but what if it has something to do with that extra chip? The way I see it, there are two options here. One, it’s an isolated thing. Some PI put it in there to catch a cheating spouse or something. No big deal, right? But what if it’s not? How many calls do you get a day about these things not integrating into the system? What if the ones that don’t work with SmartTech are all units with this extra piece in it, which means it’s much more widespread?”
She stopped pacing and stubbed out her cigarette, then immediately lit another one before sitting down across from him at the table.
“I feel like those three nerds on The X-Files, but, Casey, these things have a lot of info in them. You could do some serious damage if you had an all-access pass to people’s technology. Seriously, think about it for a second. What couldn’t you do with this?
He sat for a minute, smoking and thinking before he replied.
“The Lone Gunmen.”
“What?”
“From The X-Files, that’s who you mean. The Lone Gunmen.”
“No, there were three of them,” she said slowly as if talking to a child.
“Yeah, The Lone Gunmen.”
Frustrated she stood up and began pacing again. “Whatever. We’ve suddenly stumbled into the weirdest version of ‘Who’s on First’ ever. Speculation is meaningless. Believe me, I’ve almost driven myself insane this weekend with what-ifs. We can’t do anything until we know what it does. Can you find out? In the meantime, I’m going to reach out to Barry and find out who the customer is. I also need you to check a few of the HomeTech Hubs we have around here. We need to know if it’s in more than one. Can you check some of the units dealers have sent us? Not ones sent by Synergistic, just to be sure?”
“I can do that. But, Cameron, pulling something like this off would be more complicated than you think. First, how would they get these chips in the units before they were sold? All the manufacturing would be done in an automated factory. You couldn’t just add something to random units, someone would notice. And how could you manage where they were shipped to? If you were looking for dirt on people, it’d be a crapshoot. You’d have to hope one ended up somewhere useful.”
“I thought about that, and I have two possible scenarios if this isn’t an isolated incident. One, it was done after manufacturing at one location. Like a retail store or something. You could easily get a job at a big box store and slip the chips in after hours. Do it in a prominent enough zip code and the chances of getting sensitive information are pretty good. But we’ll know that once you check a few units we have from across the country. If it’s not, I have a theory. I spent a lot of time yesterday researching after my discovery, and right before Synergistic started production on the HTH, they opened a manufacturing facility in upstate New York. It was marketed as a way to bring jobs back to the US, and they got a ton of tax breaks for it. But what if only the units from that location have this chip in it? They manufacture a significantly lower number of hubs, so it would account for the percentage of failures being so small. And the cost to manufacture is higher because it’s done in the States, so you could easily lose the extra cost of this device in there somewhere, and no one would know they were any different.”
“Jesus, now I’m starting to believe you. And we could track the manufacturing locations by serial number if I find anymore chips.”
“You know me, Casey. I’m not crazy.”
“There’s one thing you haven’t thought of. If this is widespread and is in multiple homes across the country, what will this do to SmartTech? No one’s going to want a home automation system if they can be hacked. Privacy concerns on our systems are already a big deal. It won’t matter that the HomeTech Hubs aren’t ours and our systems won’t work with them. This will tank our business too. Are you going to tell Steve?”
Steve Perkins was the CEO of SmartTech, and everyone was terrified of him, including Cameron. Steve was a firm believer in leading by fear. Every member of the sales team knew all the unwritten rules. If you ever, for any reason, fell below 80 percent of quota, you got fired. Quarterly sales meetings were stressful exercises in abject humiliation for all of them when Steve publicly berated them one at a time. Calling them up to give a presentation on their region and nitpicking everything they said. Memories of her first presentation in front of Steve were still the stuff of nightmares; it was the closest Cameron ever came to crying at work. No member of the sales team ever voluntarily spoke to Steve. It was common practice to run the other way or duck into an open office if you saw him in the building. Cameron was one of two women on the sales team, and she especially went out of her way to avoid him. With a temper like she had, she sometimes feared her emotions would get the better of her, and she’d lose it in one of those meetings and go off on him. It hadn’t happened yet, but every time they met, she worried about talking her way out of her job.
“Freaking Steve,” she said. “I thought about that, and right now there’s nothing to tell him. That’s why we need to know if it’s an isolated incident or not. It could be nothing. But if it is something, then you can tell him. He’s nicer to the tech team.”
Casey snorted and stubbed his cigarette out, knowing Cameron was trying to pass that landmine onto him. “Here’s what we’re going to do. We go back to my office. Talk normally about whatever in case this thing is listening. Show me the extra chip, and I’ll test it. You go talk to Barry. I’ll let you know when I find something.”
Chapter Eleven
Programmers are easy
It was two hours later before Cameron made it out to Barry’s shop on Long Island. The traffic gods were with her today; on a bad day, it could’ve taken five. His office was back in an industrial complex midway between the city and the Hamptons, providing him with the perfect location to service both markets. Instead of feeling irritated that she was just here three days before, she was anxious, riding on the energy of finally delivering the unit to Casey and edging closer to getting some answers.
Her challenge would be getting Barry to tell her who the client was. He was a giant in his own mind and always tried to subtly allude to who his high-profile clients were without really saying it. Like every SmartTech customer wasn’t “somebody.” Their systems retailed for millions of dollars, but the shine of celebrity had worn off pretty soon after taking the job, and the mansions that once seemed like fairy tales were just houses to her
these days. Hopefully this one wouldn’t be a big thing, and he wouldn’t be constricted by an NDA. But even if he were, there were other ways to find out. Traditionally his employees were less conspicuous than most. They’d never be so careless as to use the customer’s name or address on POs or tech support calls as her less security conscious customers did. She only hoped she didn’t have to dig that deep to get answers. Patience was not one of her virtues.
She parked her Jeep and took a deep breath. Reaching into the passenger seat, she grabbed the box of donuts she’d stopped for and headed inside the office.
Opening the front door, she rolled her eyes as she passed Barry’s wall of infamy, barely glancing at her picture on the wall amongst the others. Getting past the assistant at the front door was easy. Barry’s daughter was working the phones and the front desk in between getting her master’s degree and her wedding, which seemed fast approaching. In no time, Cameron found herself in the back room sitting with two of Barry’s techs.
Rob and Paul were working to build a rack when Cameron found them. Because it was filled with components, the delicate work of wiring the rack with different-colored wires in an intricate fashion was slightly mesmerizing to watch. Almost like weaving a very complex tapestry. Both were happy for the distraction and to talk and eat her donuts. Donuts were the secret weapon of salespeople, opening doors and getting purchase orders with every calorie. She’d started off casually, just shooting the shit, trying to find a subtle way to get the information she needed out of them. Over half an hour passed before she made her move.
“So Barry gave me some HomeTech Hubs on Friday. Were you guys on that job?”
“I was,” Rob answered. “That Minsky project has been a shit show since the beginning. Those HomeTech Hubs were just the latest in a long line of issues.”
Minsky. She had a last name.
“Oh yeah? That’s a bummer,” she replied, smiling to herself. “Is the homeowner being cool about it at least?”
“Mark? Yeah, he’s an okay dude, and for the most part, his system has been functional. It's just a few little hiccups that have been persisting. The lighting keeps doing weird stuff. We’ll get it straightened out soon enough.”
Mark Minsky. Well, that was easier than I thought.
“Hey, just out of curiosity, are we your biggest dealer this year?”
Ah, vanity. Thy name is the AV guy. If she had a nickel for every time someone asked her that.
“I think you guys slipped down to third this year. But don’t worry, you’ve still got a few months to catch up before the end of the year.”
That ought to light a fire under them.
Chapter Twelve
Discovery
An hour after pulling into Barry’s shop, Cameron was back in her car and on her way to the Hamptons. Programmers were suckers. It took her forty-five minutes to get the information she needed from them and one google search to get the address. Turned out Mark Minsky had an article on his house written up in Hamptons Magazine, so she not only had the address, but she had pictures of the property as well. She was fortunate that Barry was out, or it might not have been so easy.
As she drove, Cameron engaged the Bluetooth in her Jeep and instructed the car to call Casey. He answered immediately and sounded stressed.
“What’d you find out?” she asked, bypassing the usual pleasantries as she took the exit off the LIE that would lead her to the Sunrise Highway and take her the rest of the way to the Hamptons.
“It’s early, but I’ve got some preliminary info for you. Mostly because I’ve seen it before. First, you can let go of some of your paranoia. It can’t record and transmit our conversations when the hub’s unplugged, so we can speak freely around it. I’m still not sure if it picks up all connected data when it gets plugged back in, so we’ll want to be careful about that. The chip is designed to aggregate all data from any connected device, then send all recorded information once a day. Looks like at midnight. It’s nothing new. It’s the same kind of chip everyone uses for keystroke trackers and parental safeguards.”
“So basically, it’s spyware,” she stated, clarifying her understanding of what that meant. “Depending on the tech installed in a home, you’d have access to everything from all the data on any of their devices to when they come and go and what temperature they keep their thermostat set. It’s a complete window into someone’s life. Especially someone who has a SmartTech system. They’d have way more tech installed in their home than the average person.”
“It’s more than that. It syncs with all connected devices. That includes tablets, cell phones, fitness trackers, whatever. So not only can the device access all data from someone’s home, but when you got home from work each day, it would connect to your mobile devices. It could see where you’ve been and when. It could also access stored passwords and network information from the places you’ve visited. You need to find out where this was installed. There’s no telling what information has been compromised without the end user’s knowledge. Think about it. If someone could set this up, and the user had access to classified sites like the Pentagon, you’d just given someone the roadmap to hack in undetected.”
“Now who’s acting like those guys from The X-Files?” Cameron replied, trying to lighten the mood, even though inside her heart felt like it was beating out of her chest. This was way out of her pay grade.
“The Lone Gunmen.”
“Jesus, Casey, I’m not doing this with you again. There were three of them. More than one is not ‘lone.’ And that’s beside the point. I got the info on the homeowner, and I’m on my way there now. The address is in Southampton. It’s a summer home. His primary residence is in the city. Homeowner’s name is Mark Minsky. I haven’t had time to read the info I found on him. Can you google while I drive?”
“Sure, super easy.” She could hear the clicking of his keyboard as he answered. “This guy has a Wikipedia page. Looks like old New York family money. The family owns a bank, and he’s a venture capitalist. And there’s our connection to Synergistic. He’s a long-term investor. Looks like he’s been giving them money since the start.”
“A bank? Could someone use the chip for secure bank codes and passwords? Is this about a robbery?” She was so shocked by the implications that she almost missed her next exit.
“It’s possible, and it may be the most probable of all the scenarios I’ve come up with. If he ever took a laptop back and forth from home to his office, he’d have lots of good info on it. Wanna rob a bank?” he joked.
“Ha ha.” Blowing off the suggestion, she plowed on, picking up a little speed, her anxiousness in getting to her destination mounting. “Did you have a chance to look at any other hubs to see if this is an isolated incident?”
“I did. I didn’t find any other chips, and I went through at least twenty units. I’ll keep looking, but my best guess is that it’s a one-off. The chip wasn’t implanted during the manufacturing process. It was installed after. It may not be the only one out there, but it’s not a widespread occurrence.”
“Well, that’s a relief, at least. Should we even be doing this, then? I mean, should I just reach out to the detective on the murder investigation, tell him what I know, and walk away?”
“Probably, but I’m still going to dig deeper into this chip. I want to see if I can trace where the data is being sent. What were you even going to do at the house, go talk to the guy?”
Cameron paused a few minutes before replying, knowing she was getting ready to cross a line and wondering how deep she should get Casey involved.
“Do you want plausible deniability?”
“Are you kidding? What’s the plan?”
“I’ve got a Raspberry PI with that special software on it. I’ve also got his Wi-Fi password. I was going to do a scan and see all the devices associated with his network. It’ll give us a complete picture of everything connected to
his network and what sort of data has been compromised.”
“How’d you get his Wi-Fi password?”
“Luckily, Barry’s guys put in an extra SSID for his team to use when they’re servicing all their accounts. They always use the same password. I saw it on a Post-it when I was in his office.”
“Idiots. Well, turn off your phone and your tablet about a mile out from the property. You don’t want any of your devices associated with the network. Even by accident.”
“Gotcha. Look, traffic’s a bitch. I might not make it out there until five or so. If you’re gone for the day by the time I get this done, I’ll just meet you at your office Wednesday first thing.” She had two appointments scheduled for tomorrow she couldn’t miss. “Can you e-mail me whatever additional info you find on the transmitter?”
“Sure thing, boss. Then after this, we go to the cops. It looks like this is an isolated incident. There’s nothing else we can do.”
“Agreed. Thanks, Casey. I know this isn’t in your job description, and I appreciate you helping me out.”
“No worries. This has been the most interesting part of my day. Though it was more fun when I thought we were dealing with a conspiracy. I’d stay late tonight and get really into this, but the baby’s only a month old, and my wife needs the help.”