‘I’m not talking about it anymore, Aba, I’ve made my decision,’ Aazim said to his father standing in the doorway.
Ilias sighed. He knew he was defeated. ‘All right, okay, subject closed. But there’s something else I need to tell you. I’ve been thinking of taking a trip to Lebanon. It’s been a while and I could really use the break. Both of us need a little time on our own, I think. I’ll start planning soon.’
‘That’s great, Aba,’ Aazim said, relieved that his father had moved on from the previous conversation. When his mother was alive Aazim had tried to convince his parents to visit the old country and he was glad his father was finally going to do it. Ilias returned the smile and left Aazim alone.
Chapter 3
Aust Global Fund occupied a fairly new office building but the business itself had been established for over twenty years and dealt with various forms of financial services and loan provisions, structured finance, corporate and investment banking, and insurance. The client base was domestic and international, with many investment projects overseen in developing countries. Sam constantly travelled overseas to Pakistan and Syria, and he later ventured into Afghanistan, believing there was an opportunity to get in first and establish a base before the country boomed.
There were around one hundred and fifty staff members and eight comprised the IT department. Aazim was happy handling the latest technology the company had invested in. In his experience, a lot of companies seemed to cut corners, retaining old, inferior equipment and constantly applying band-aid solutions. What they didn’t realise was how much the business depended on IT in the age of technology. In Aazim’s view, keeping ahead with the latest was the key to ensuring smooth operations and minimum impact to the business.
After a few months at Aust Global Fund, Aazim had settled in and his hard work was beginning to pay off. He made new friends, and although he kept in touch with Rami he didn’t see him outside the mosque gatherings. He began learning his religion like a toddler: from the beginning, taking in everything like a sponge. He observed religious dates strictly, refrained from drinking alcohol, and was aware that gambling was off limits, not that he was interested in this anyway. Aazim was beginning to accept his mother’s death as God’s will, and this eased his pain.
Ilias, on the other hand, began noticing changes in Aazim that disturbed him. Conversation between the two had deteriorated and they didn’t even eat dinner together anymore. One day Ilias walked past Aazim’s bedroom and heard noises. He opened the door slightly and was surprised to see his son on his knees, wearing a skullcap and praying. No one in their family had been that religious, and to Ilias it was another sign of the widening gap between him and his son.
Aazim had met the other server specialist in his department, Kareem, who had the same domain administrator access to the network environment as Aazim. Kareem also had a Middle Eastern background; there were only a handful of Muslims in the company but each held a key position in senior management or IT.
Aazim knew that Kareem had been a colleague of his parents because he had heard them mention him, but he had never met him until now. He remembered his mother speaking highly of Kareem’s work ethic and loyalty to the company. According to his mother, Kareem was ‘a man who could be trusted’. Although he and Aazim were the same age, Kareem appeared to Aazim to be much older. He was withdrawn and nervous, and he worked long into the evening after everyone else had finished their shifts.
Aazim found it odd that no one mentioned the previous employee who’d held Aazim’s current job. The man must have left under some cloud, Aazim assumed, and he now faced unfinished projects with hardly any of the relevant information to complete them. Whenever he asked Kareem about his predecessor, his colleague always turned to work matters or nervously excused himself and left the room.
Aazim asked Sam casually one day why the job had become vacant.
‘Your predecessor was offered a job by a competitor,’ Sam said, shrugging. ‘It’s a shame because he was a good technician. But anybody would do the same for the right money, I guess.’
One early morning, just as Aazim arrived at work, Kareem burst through the office doors and rushed over to him, stopping only centimetres from his face. He looked exhausted and scared. He was dressed in the same clothes he’d been wearing the previous day and it was obvious to Aazim that he had been working through the night. Being the only ones in the office at that time of the morning, they had to ensure all systems were up and running before business started. Kareem’s pasty skin and bloodshot eyes told Aazim it was going to be a busy day.
‘I … I have … I have to tell you something, Aazim, something very important,’ Kareem stammered. His whole body was shaking.
‘What’s wrong, Kareem? What’s happened?’ Aazim said, thinking that Kareem took technical problems a little too personally.
‘No, Aazim, I … I … damn!’ Cursing in frustration, Kareem took a deep breath and tried again. His fists were clenched so tightly his knuckles had turned white.
‘I found something on the AccountsClass01 server in the data centre and … and I want you to take a look at it. Aazim, it’s very important. I used the Oracle algorithm to get it and …’ He struggled to string together a sentence, his words making no sense to Aazim. ‘I don’t have time to speak to your –’
At that moment Sam opened the door and walked in, a couple of serious-looking men wearing dark clothing and leather jackets following close behind. Aazim knew they were not staff and certainly not building security, but their faces were familiar. No employee at Aust Global Fund would be allowed such long, ungroomed facial hair. Kareem looked stunned when he turned and saw them, and the blood drained from his face.
‘I need to speak to you, Kareem. Would you come with me, please?’ Sam grabbed the man by the elbow. ‘Would you excuse us, Aazim?’ he added with a fake smile.
Kareem opened his mouth to say something but Sam intervened, fixing him with a piercing gaze that demanded attention. ‘Now please, Kareem.’
‘What’s going on here? What’s happening?’ Aazim asked, bewildered.
‘Everything’s all right. We just need to have an urgent chat privately, that’s all. We’ll pop into the meeting room to sort out a couple of issues.’ Sam’s attempt to be reassuring didn’t convince Aazim, who knew that something was definitely up.
As Kareem was taken away he tripped slightly and bumped into Aazim. He was trying to indicate something with his facial expression when Sam took him by the elbow and led him away. While the two walked off to a meeting room, the leather-clad men remained behind. One took Kareem’s laptop while the other gathered all the notes he could find on Kareem’s desk and in his drawers. It all seemed very bizarre to Aazim. It was inappropriate behaviour by a manager and he would confront Sam as soon as the opportunity came up.
Leaning against the desk and keeping a watchful eye on the two men, Aazim put his hands in his pockets. He felt a scrunched-up piece of paper. Not wanting to take it out in front of the two men, he left it where it was. They rifled through Kareem’s drawers without a care for his personal belongings. Once satisfied they had covered everything, they followed Sam into the meeting room without saying a word to Aazim or acknowledging his presence in any other way. As they shut the door behind them Aazim took out the piece of paper and laid it out on his desk. It seemed to be a password of some kind, but Aazim had no idea what it was for. He would have to ask Kareem about it later.
Hours went by and there was no sign of his colleague. Aazim was beginning to worry and he was having trouble concentrating on his work. He checked the meeting room and found it empty. No one else had seen Kareem, and Sam wasn’t in his office. Aazim wondered what Kareem had seen that had scared him so much. Sam’s behaviour was also unusual, taking Kareem away like that without an explanation. And who were those guys with him?
Towards the end of the afternoon, Aazim opened an email sent to all IT staff. It read: ‘This is to notify you all that Kareem has decide
d to continue his career with another company. Due to the employment conditions of his new employee he has resigned as of today and left on a road trip. He will be sorely missed but we all wish him good luck in his new adventures.’
Sam’s secretary had forwarded the email on Sam’s behalf, but Aazim noticed that Sam’s original message was dated one day earlier than the one forwarded by the secretary. Sam’s message had yesterday’s date, when Kareem had still been at work.
Aazim was feeling increasingly uneasy. Remembering Kareem’s last words, he decided to check out the accounts server. He needed to find out what was so urgent that had kept his workmate up all night and scared him so much. Troubleshooting computer errors and bugs was the best part of Aazim’s job; this would be no different. Things always happened for a reason. If you used the right tools and followed the patterns, Aazim believed, you’d eventually resolve the issue and find a fix.
The AccountsClass01 server was a large computer that stored clients’ financial accounts Australia-wide and globally. Security was extremely tight, as it contained confidential details of transactions and clients’ names, locations, funds, withdrawals, deposits and so on. There were other servers where users had normal access for everyday business accounting but this one was different: the server was listed as Priority 1 Support in case of hardware failure, and the highly sensitive content as Critical 1. This meant the server had to be running twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, except when outages were scheduled for maintenance and upgrades. Aazim didn’t know much about the financial side of the company and didn’t take much interest in the contents of data stored.
The server resided in a separate internal firewall connected to its own router and public internet protocol address, or IP. There were no domain name systems servers in the firewall and he couldn’t resolve the IP. All applications required users to authenticate before accessing and password resets on a monthly basis were mandatory. The server had its own separate internal domain and administrator access was local only. Such tight security made it safe from internal breaches and internet hackers.
Normally upgrades, bug fixes and other changes on the computers were automated, and scheduled tasks were created for after-hour deployment to all systems at the same time. As the AccountsClass01 server was separate from the main network, changes were done manually from the console in the computer room or data centre. It was a job they all hated: every piece of software had to be copied onto a compact disk and installed locally, the manager had to approve a written request form before the changes were done, and an audit trail was sent to the manager afterwards. Sometimes the staff flipped a coin to see who would do the next maintenance assigned.
Aazim set out for the data centre in the server room and logged in AccountsClass01 to see if he could discover what had spooked Kareem. Reading the log files was the only thing he could think of; it was a starting point when troubleshooting errors. Nevertheless it made him nervous, and he knew he would have to be careful not to alert his manager. If executing programs showed in the audit log he would have some explaining to do.
Traces in the logs showed Kareem’s sign-on account had accessed the Oracle database management application. All four databases contained twenty-four gigabytes of client information and Kareem had spent over five hours reading through the files. What had he been doing in there? Aazim wondered. Why had he risked his job?
Aazim had to find a reason for accessing the databases without raising suspicion. He remembered that the server was due for a general software upgrade and maintenance. A full backup of all data was required in such cases so as to revert to the previous state if upgrades were unsuccessful or caused corruption. This alone would give him a couple of hours at least. He immediately wrote up a form request and emailed it to Sam, marking it as a high priority. Hopefully this would get approved within a couple of hours, provided his boss was in the office. Aazim went back to his desk to get his USB flash disk. He always kept it at work as an easy and quick way of transferring data from one computer to another.
The approval to go ahead with the changes did not come until later that evening when everyone in the office had left for the day. Aazim figured Sam must have processed the request from his home office because there was no sign of him at work. This was fine by Aazim; apart from security staff he was on his own. He shoved the flash drive in his pocket and caught the lift down to the data centre.
Once logged onto the server, the first thing he did was check the logs to see what Kareem had spent most of his time accessing. A particular Oracle database that stood out was integrated with the SWIFTNet messaging platform. Short for Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, it was a messaging system established in the mid seventies for worldwide financial transaction between banks and other financial institutions. As one of the members, Aust Global Fund provided its own custom software, network infrastructure and services that linked over eight thousand financial institutions in over two hundred countries. Founded in Brussels, SWIFTNet’s main objective was to create a common communication language that would link the financial world globally.
As Aazim tried to open the Oracle database a message popped up asking for a password. He entered his administrator account but this failed to give him access. He used several other accounts, equally without success, and racked his brain trying to think of a way in. Secure access was the whole point to this server and Sam was the only one who knew the password to this application.
Suddenly he remembered the note Kareem had given him. He searched for it in his pocket and spread it out on the table. He looked at the sequence of random letters scribbled by hand: BhGYhhE. He typed it in the login screen and hit OK. He was in. He wondered how Kareem had obtained this password. Had he stolen it from Sam?
Four main services fell under SWIFT: Securities, Treasury and Derivatives, Trade Services and Payments, and Cash Management. A service allowing a secure transfer of funds from one point to another, Payments and Cash Management were of interest to Aazim and he could understand how they were managed. A few years ago his mother had taught him to use accounting software like MYOB – Mind Your Own Business – and showed him how to fill in his tax form. In return he fixed all her computer problems. He knew how to find his way around the program, and in any case, minimal on-the-job training with SWIFT was required for troubleshooting issues.
He knew that what he was about to do was illegal and breached customer confidentiality and contract obligations: he was basically prying into people’s bank accounts. On the other hand he was excited and couldn’t resist the challenge of going as far as possible.
He saw that financial trading was being conducted all over the world, but in particular European companies where large sums of money were being deposited by individuals into all sorts of institutions and businesses. Nothing unusual was revealed in the databases and it would take him years to go through all the transaction records. He decided to pick a handful of financial institutions Aust Global Funds was partnered with and a number of individual clients. Nothing unusual, but money transfers were displayed just as before.
After three hours of investigating he came up with nothing and the maintenance deadline neared. He was about to give up when he found something odd: the account balance and deposited funds by some individuals did not add up. In each case the transactions were recorded but the balance remained the same; money was diverted and siphoned off into a company’s account and then withdrawn. It hit Aazim like a knock on the head: the withdrawal records were all made by foreign accounts residing mainly in countries like Pakistan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Indonesia, Somalia and Lebanon. The amounts deposited by individuals were exactly the same as the withdrawals. Records showed they originated from legitimate companies but all traces of the source had been lost.
Registered companies were presented as fronts for illegal activities. If that was the case it was cyber laundering of digital cash on a mass scale. For hard currency to get legitimised it required entry
into the mainstream economy. Aazim picked names of individuals at random and the records showed them making simultaneous cash deposits into various businesses, but never over nine thousand Australian dollars at a time. He realised that was too small an amount to be picked up as suspicious. From there the cash was distributed by Aust Global Funds into other legitimate financial institutions and later withdrawn. Aazim found a list containing names of individuals, businesses, financial institutions and various other organisations that Aust Global Funds used to distribute electronic cash; there were close to a thousand entries. He recognised a couple of the larger finance companies but the rest were unknown to him.
He sat back to think for a moment and take in the enormity of the situation. He realised that Kareem must have uncovered it and had wanted to share his conclusions with Aazim. But was he wrong in this assumption? Surely Sam would have an explanation if he approached him. Then again, two employees responsible for AccountsClass01 had suddenly found jobs elsewhere and no one had ever heard from them again. In Aazim’s previous job he had worked on a contract for the Victorian police and learned enough to know how technology was used for illegal gains. Could he alert the partners and bypass his boss? He pondered the idea and quickly dismissed it. For all he knew the corruption was instigated from the very top.
Aazim looked at his watch. It was way over the maintenance deadline and he knew the audit report would be sent to his boss ten minutes after logging out, showing exactly what he had accessed. There was no going back to his desk, pretending all was well. If he planned to confront Sam and demand an explanation, take it to higher management or take it straight to the authorities, he needed evidence. He might well ‘disappear’ like Kareem and his predecessor, but having that data might give him some leverage. He took out the USB flash drive and inserted it in the server USB port. Selecting all four databases, he started downloading.
THE BROTHERHOOD Page 3