Jorja was back at her desk also doing her part in the investigation. She brought up the inventory report and narrowed in on the stuff over in the hills of Virginia. She could probably tell how many rolls of toilet paper were left in the janitor’s closet if she wanted to… . this thing had everything on it… . well almost everything, she quickly realized the janitor’s closet was bigger than she anticipated. She also thought about doing a manual check but she didn’t know how to quite pull this one off… she had never been to the hills and just couldn’t go waltzing in without the proper credentials, besides she would need that from her boss and she didn’t want to tell her boss about anything just yet. Everybody had secrets, she knew that much, especially people in the CIA, especially people with higher credentials, yes Jorja needed to soft-toe around the water cooler that’s for sure, and she had to watch her back along with Greg’s.
She went back to her thoughts, back to her reports. The inventory reports turned up nothing; next she checked the budget reports. She was searching for that proverbial needle in the haystack. The CIA had billions at their disposal and trying to find a legitimate figure within the two hundred dollar toilet seat covers was next to impossible. She wondered just how big this server/machine was, how powerful it was, that could tell quite a bit and give her better odds at finding it. She was hoping it wasn’t some cheap server, something just about any fifth grader could build these days. Jorja has built her share of computers and servers were no different. All that was needed was a motherboard, cpu, hard drive, some internal memory, software, and then from there it was pretty much plug and play and all that could be done for under $200. No, Jorja was hoping for something much bigger, much more powerful, something from the likes of IBM, SUN, or HP. Her hope waned as she spent the next several days reading page after page of figures in her spare time. She even looked through hardware requests and approvals and found nothing. It was though someone just brought in a computer and plugged it into the network. Something like that just does not happen on the most powerful network in the world. Someone plugs something in, and someone somewhere knows about it and sure as shit someone knows about this little puppy, someone, somewhere.
For Greg, things were no different. It took him a few days to execute plans c and d and just like Jorja, they turned up zilch. He needed to go to plan b. On his way back from the vending machine with a mid-afternoon caffeine pick-me-up in his hand he stopped by Jorja’s office.
“Come on in,” Jorja said as she was coming back from a meeting, “You find anything?”
“No luck whatsoever, which I have to tell you, is strange for me.”
“No luck on this end either, I think I’ve combed through every report that we have to offer.”
“I have a plan b.”
“B? You are only on plan b, I’m disappointed.”
“No, no, no, I thought of plan b right after plan a, but proceeded to c,d,e,f, geez I forget where I left off maybe w, well anyway, plan b involves hardware installation. We have to swap out the main hub in the server room and it’s not like I can go prancing in without proper authority. Those guys in there hate me.”
“Hate you, why?”
“Because just about anything they can do, I can sidestep, with the exception of swapping out hardware to bypass hard coded encryption chips within the hubs.”
“You have access to the mail room, you can make the switch there, actually go ahead and order what you need, I’ll okay the request, then once we have the new and improved hub with the right encryption chip for your needs, I’m sure you can Photoshop a legitimate shipping label, then we’ll just ship it to the IT department, and they’ll install it for us, just when you do, order the newest hub, make sure it’s their latest top of the line model. It’s always easier to force a swap when there is an upgrade involved.”
“I already have the label printed,” he said with a smirk, “and we want the ic5300 with 32 gigabit ports, this baby is going to fly.”
Over the next few days Greg and Jorja were on the same page in regarding this IP address. They wanted to know more. It took a few days for the new hub to arrive and it was just a matter of swapping out the encryption chip that Greg had obtained through improper channels. Hardware encryption was one of the hardest to break but if one had the right chip and knew the encryption methods the odds were in their favor. Greg had friends everywhere; that’s one of the main reasons he was so valuable, though most of these so-called friends could very well have ended up on the FBI’s most wanted list with ease, if it wasn’t for Greg’s ability to keep them under wraps and under the radar. This chip Greg had obtained came out of Taiwan just days before and shipped to a drop off place, from there it was simply placed in one of those Amazon a to z swish cardboard boxes and shipped right to his cubical. Jorja had the hub sitting in her office and the switch was made there and sent to the mail department. From there it would be installed within a day once the IT department received it along with the hardware request form signed by Jorja.
Two days later they were in business. The new chip within the hub allowed Greg to peek inside the message header of the incoming request to this server. Each time a message is sent from one computer to another this message is wrapped in a package much like the analogy of a letter and envelope. The package contains the original message, along with the address as to where this information is to be sent then wrapped in any encryption protocols that is needed along the way. At any one time if someone or something would receive this package and take a peak, they would only see gibberish unless they had the actual keys to break the encryption. This is where Greg’s Taiwanese chip came in handy. He was able to break the encryption because he had the keys to open the lock, although he only had the keys to decrypt the address layer of the message. The rest of the message was still encrypted and even the best of the CIA computers couldn’t crack a 128 bit encryption method quite easily, that could take months, years, even decades to do even with the most powerful computers man had to offer. Greg didn’t care, he just wanted to see the address layer, where the information was coming from, and after a few moments he had learned all its secrets, and was shocked as hell as he and Jorja saw the address flash on their monitors.
One of the most famous addresses in the entire world flashed on his screen, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the White House itself. Both Greg and Jorja gasped for air and didn’t say a word. It was made clear that the President and his Chief of Staff, Scott Norwood, had hit the server the most. What the hell did they just stumble upon? Yeah, the President and his chief had access to the CIA’s network at a moment’s whim, even Homeland Security, and the FBI, but hitting a server well hidden from just about everybody, well then, they wanted to know more. But they also knew they were in dangerous waters, very dangerous waters, shark infested waters, shark infested waters with blood. This added yet another layer of complexity to the situation. If this box was used by the President then why didn’t anybody know? The network of friends had to be complex as well. They both thought privately amongst themselves then Jorja broke the silence.
“Greg, what are you thinking?”
“Oh how I wish we didn’t know what we know now… . knowing what we know now I want to know more.”
“Ummmm, yeah… my thoughts but not exactly, it’s like my Silence of the Lamb poster.”
“Why?”
“It’s a picture within a picture.”
“Excuse me?”
“Take a close look at that poster.”
“Yeah?”
“See the moth?”
“I may wear contacts but I’m not blind.”
“Ever see within the moth’s head,” before he could answer, “In the moth’s head, there is a picture of a skull, it’s plain as day when you first notice it, sort of like the hidden arrow in the Fed Ex logo, once you see it, you always see it.”
“So a picture in a picture, like the Droste Effect.”
“Not exactly, that’s different, that’s the same imagine being mirrored over
and over. Looking even closer at the skull on the moth, you’ll notice something even more; you’ll notice the skull is actually a picture of seven naked women from a famous Dali photograph.”
“Well I’ll be damned.”
“Well I have the feeling there is a lot more to this computer than meets the first glance.”
“I know, I know.”
“There is something very peculiar in this IP address, first it’s embedded within our network, next it’s hidden in the hills, and now it seems to be only used by the President and his Chief of Staff.”
“Not to mention, I forgot to tell you, that the hits to this server seem to peak during a country crisis.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I was able to pull average hits from the IP report and there happened to be a correlation with hits and crisis, take the Mall Massacre, there were over five hundred hits on that day alone, most days it seems to be about ten to twenty, again, remember a few weeks ago, the high level alert at the airports, over three hundred hits.”
“The more and more we talk the more and more my curiosity piques, Greg, I need you to take the next steps, we found the who and the where, now we need to focus on the why, we’ll worry about the how later.”
“In order to do that I’m going to have…”
“Don’t say it, I think you know what I’m talking about.”
And without saying a word, Greg knew it meant spying on the President, but he too could rationalize it, everyone had to be monitored on the system, be it the President or Jorja, no surfing for porn on the company dime, they save that for the boys over at the FBI, searching for child pornography was their excuse.
Greg was also able to decrypt the communication layer, now he was able to talk to the machine, well sort of, it was asking for a login and password. He went straight for root as the login and root as the password but couldn’t be so lucky. He stopped there knowing full well if he were to attempt any more break-ins a flag would be raised and if they, the ones who configured this server knew what they were doing, his first failed attempt should signal the red flag. He was praying they were not bright but then reality had set in realizing whoever set this up in the first place knew pretty damn sure how to hide it, and hide it from pretty much the best in the field, himself included.
. . .
Chapter 16
It wasn’t hard to hack the President’s password, the biometric scan of his finger was not needed for this point of entry, which only got you into the network, he was already hooked into the network but he needed the password for the box itself. People are creatures of habit, that’s what made the hacking of his password like child’s play. Habit—the habit of using the same old passwords over and over… why does one need to remember separate passwords for Amazon, Citbank, E-Trade, your email, your network, your voice mail, your laptop, your life… . when one will do… the same one over and over. Most people do this, all people do this, that is if they don’t write them down somewhere, somewhere close. The human mind has a limited capacity to remember insignificant strings of letters and numbers, so people stick to easy things to remember like names and special dates. The President, like everyone else, was a creature of habit and to expose his habits the first place to look was the In-Q-Tel network. In-Q-Tel is a nonprofit venture capital firm that invests in information technology for the CIA. One of their key goals is to tie company databases together through the wording that was put in place by the Patriot Act. Any company that has an online database could be searched for information in order to protect the American citizen. A series of scans within the In-Q-Tel lead to several companies that kept passwords stored in the clear, in other words unencrypted, a bad idea and unacceptable in this day and age but it still happens even in this day and age. People are lazy or just don’t know any better. Anyone can create a website today and anyone with an idea to sell—be it porn or popcorn, can make money by providing an online point of sale. Give the public a false sense of security by asking them to supply a username and password before they supply their credit card or bank information, after all, who is going to hack into a website’s database that sells dog toys or gummy worms—the government that’s who. Again, people just don’t know any better. They store this personal information—user name, password, credit card number, address, and phone number, right into an open source database, thinking their eyes are the only ones looking. It’s the ignorance of the public that really makes his job easy. After only a few minutes Greg had several likely candidates for passwords. All of them were created before he became president. One password was from a flower shop for roses which seemed odd since most secretaries were given the job to keep track of birthdays and anniversaries, one came from a rare online book store where he paid fourteen hundred for a first copy of Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, another from a cigar website where he bought a fifteen thousand dollar humidor to be used as a gift since he bought three of them within six months, and there were a few others as well. The passwords were all pretty easy to decode, there was m3llss4 which is number letter substitution for Melissa, which was not his wife and correctly deduced that’s who the flowers were for, another was abc123, which is a very common one, then there was sdfghjkl, which at first glance, maybe even second third and fourth looks very random but turns out it’s just sequential letters on a keyboard. Then there was 3dogmai, *dogmai, and 1dogmai. It looks as though he found a pattern, more importantly he found the President’s pattern, his old standby, his forget-me-not, his password. On top of that he found the President was way overly conceited.
With a few passwords in hand he was about to do the unthinkable but he wasn’t about to do it alone. He was going to try to log in as the President of the United States, the repercussions, well, he couldn’t even begin to imagine if he got caught—he dialed Jorja.
“I think I have a way in.”
“Come to my office.”
Within minutes Greg was within the walls of Jorja’s office after making a brief stop for yet another caffeine buzz. He walked behind her desk, placed his Dew on the desk blotter and pulled up a chair. He felt very comfortable sitting close to Jorja and noticed she changed her perfume.
“A new scent?”
“Pardon?”
“You’ve changed your perfume.”
“Good nose.”
“Why thank you, now before we get started I need you to get me the President’s login name.”
“I should be able to get that,” and within minutes she had it
“Here it is, CICJW54.”
“So I’m betting he was born in 54.”
“Who? The President?”
“Yes.”
“How do you…”
“Commander in Chief Jonathan Whitaker, 1954,” before she could finish her question. “Okay, are you ready?”
“I guess.”
“Listen, there are going to be some red flags going up if I hit this server with incorrect passwords, I don’t know how much time I have before that happens but once in I should be able to find the files that hold the passwords and statistics and reset them.”
“And if you don’t?”
“I’d rather not worry about that, beside I’m going to try and mask your IP address and make it look like it’s coming from the White House, that will at least buy us something… . what though I’m not sure.”
With that idea, Greg accessed some of his special software located on his home computer and after about fifteen minutes he was ready for his first attempt.
“Okay my dear, are you feeling lucky, well are ya punk, which one would you like to try first? Here’s the list.”
“First off the exact quote is… . I know what you’re thinking. Did he fire six shots or only five? Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is a .forty-four Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself a question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?”
&n
bsp; “I thought sci-fi was your forte?”
She smiled, then Jorja perused this list of six passwords, all of them looked very much the same, with the exception of a number before or after the main body of letters, then asked, “Are you sure about these? They don’t… hold on dogmai… is that Latin?”
“No, but trust me, if you know Jonathan, one of these will work… . think, think onomatopoeia.”
“Like pow, kaboom, bang… I always think batman with those words.”
“No, sorry, I always get them confused… . I mean… . a… palindrome I think… . well sort of.”
“Like Able was I ere I saw Elba?”
“You’re good, very good but I was always keen on rise to vote sir.”
She nudged him in the ribs and said, “Ha, I see it now, 1dogmai… you’re right, then again you’re mostly right.”
“Mostly?”
Ignoring a replay, “How about we go with 2dogmai?”
“Sure why not, it’s your neck in the noose,” then he created a connection and the prompt LOGIN: was staring him right in the face. His fingers tensed and his breathing had almost come to a halt, the idea of hacking the President’s password was again causing his stomach much upheaval.
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