“Bring it,” said Walter.
It took only a few moments before everyone was on the same line. A new voice introduced himself as Barrett Lewis, who was apparently Pro-Tem’s Chief Technology Officer. His voice sounded like a teenager’s.
“Joe explained you guys are experiencing a DDoS attack right now, correct? That’s what our company does, is stop those attacks.”
“And how is it you do that?” asked Lucy. “What are you going to do that’s different than our hosting partner and the ISP?”
Walter glanced up at the defensive edge in her voice. She narrowed her eyes at him to mind his own business.
“DDoS attacks are all about swarming choke points. How can I overwhelm your ability to handle traffic? All I need to do is put together a big, global network of computers, because when it comes to what your local network can process, global wins every time. Aspen uses big Cisco routers and even they’re going to get bogged down if a huge tsunami of packets that arrives all at once.
“Pro-Tem does a couple things to remove those innate weaknesses in local network bottlenecks. First of all, we run a global network of scrubbing centers strategically connected to many of the major Internet exchanges. That means we can intercept malicious traffic headed toward Netertainment and ground the bad stuff upstream from even Aspen. Secondly, since DDoS protection is our core business, we’re a lot better at the inspection process that you are. We keep known lists of active botnet networks that we can automatically filter out because we watch them being used all the time. We also do what’s called asymmetric routing, which means that we’ll inspect all of your inbound traffic, but your outbound traffic will flow normally through your ISP. That halves the network load to inspect packets.”
“That makes sense,” Lucy said begrudgingly. “What do we have to do to try it?”
“Well, fax me back a signed contract.”
“Done,” said a voice over Lucy’s shoulder. She turned and saw Derek standing a few feet behind her. Roger had texted him to come downstairs.
“Then what?” Lucy asked.
“Then I need to have a conversation with Joe and your networking team about how to reroute traffic through Pro-Tem.”
“Barrett, if we do all this... what are we looking at in terms of being back online? How long?”
“Once we flip the switch, we’ll know in five to ten minutes. Performance will have a little more latency—we’re adding extra hops in the routing process—but we can work with you to figure out how to reduce further.”
“Fax the contract.”
“On its way,” Barrett said.
Lucy turned around and smacked into Derek’s chest. He grabbed her by the elbows and steadied her.
“I’m fine,” she said, jerking her arms free. “I have no idea how much this service is going to cost, by the way.”
“We’ll pay it,” Derek said simply. “Relax.”
“I’ll relax when this is all over,” she snapped.
The next few hours were frantic. At 4 o’clock, Walter finally gave Barrett the word to activate the virtual network between Pro-Tem and Netertainment. It was decidedly anti-climactic—there were no flashing lights or sounding buzzers like one might expect in a movie. So they all stood or sat around Walter's desk and waited.
“How will we know when this is working?” Derek asked.
“Fewer angry customers will call Customer Care,” Roger said.
Derek frowned. “Maybe something that’s a little more of a leading indicator?”
Lucy knew the answer to that. “Walter, log into Safari. Make sure to route it through the ISP, not our internal network.”
“Yes ma’am,” Walter replied. He launched the game on his workstation and went through a series of menus where he changed settings for proxy servers and IP addresses. “Here goes nothing.”
After about a minute, an error message popped up: Cannot connect to server, please try again later.
“That’s not what I was hoping for,” said Derek.
“Let’s try again,” Roger suggested. “Global filtering of all of our network traffic can’t be instantaneous when it comes to draining the hopper of crap.”
Walter clicked again. This time, there was a flutter of different pop-up messages before the screen went blank. Then it showed an armored warrior standing in a clearing before the camera flew around his shoulder and into a first-person view.
“Holy shit,” Walter said.
“Try moving around.”
Walter tapped several keys on the keyboard. The view on the screen shifted—but not smoothly. The camera jerked back and forth as the armored character attempted to walk, jump, and look around.
“That’s lag,” Roger was explaining to Derek. “All of our connections are being rerouted the long way through Pro-Tem’s network. Hopefully that clears up the longer Pro-Tem is working for us.”
In fact, Lucy thought that already seemed to be the case. Walter’s avatar seemed to be moving more fluidly now, though not quite playable.
“Let’s hope we’re out of the woods,” Derek said.
Roger sniffed. “I think we have a long way to go before that happens.”
“We need to let LaRue and the Feds know. So let’s you, me, and Lucy meet in my office at a quarter till, okay?”
“You got it,” said Roger.
“Lucy—good?”
“Yep,” Lucy said. But she didn’t feel anywhere close to good. They may have staved off the onslaught for now. But the DDoS was still underway, and as long as it continued, it indicated that their attackers were trying to find a way to kill Netertainment.
31
Bucharest, Romania.
They had failed.
Krystian was having a fitful night’s sleep. Despite the early success of his attack, he had ultimately been unable to bring down Safari and force Netertainment into capitulation. Gone too were any additional penalties he had hoped to impose for missing his payment deadline. You’re late—add another hundred grand if you want it to stop. You’re late again—pay me two hundred or I’ll send child pornography out from your domain name. The fact that he was also out the money for renting a 120,000 node botnet was insult to injury.
The whole thing had become such a disaster that he had had to hit the vodka just to make it all go away. But Krystian had even done that wrong. Too much, too fast, and his stomach had purged its contents into the toilet—with authority, no less. So much for blissful oblivion.
He knew there had to be a way to recover the remaining missing money. Could he find it?
He dreamed of chasing computer-generated characters through steaming jungles. Some of his prey had eluded him and remained just out of his grasp; he had seen them at the clearing, fighting behind the piles of coins. Who had escaped? There was still so much missing—where had they hidden it? He had to find it, and soon; to keep his experience up, he had been holding back on the latest payments to Yuri and he knew the clock was ticking. Krystian’s dreams changed. They morphed into him being chased by hit men through the dingy streets of Bucharest, dogs barking and pistols firing in a mad hunt to exact vengeance. Krystian turned to the left and it was a dead end. He ran to the right in a maze of buildings and alleyways, unsure where he was going, just trying to get away. He was sweating, it was so oppressively hot. The smell of cigarettes wafted through the air despite the streets being deserted. There was no one around him, he was alone, being hunted... he had to get away, but to where? Where?
Rounding another corner on his right, he found himself at another dead end. Krystian turned around. Why did everything stink of cigarette smoke? He was having trouble breathing....
Krystian opened his eyes.
Anton Federov’s hard, mustached face was just a few inches from his own.
“Wakey, wakey,” the Russian said, smiling.
A wild scream flew out of Krystian’s mouth as he scrambled backward over the side of his bed. “How did you get in here?”
“Oh, we let ourselves
in,” Anton drawled, leaning back on his chair next to the bed. “I hope you don’t mind. By the way, you’re going to need some new locks for your door—make sure you budget for that.”
Krystian looked past Anton’s shoulders and saw a big, blond man in an overcoat standing nonchalantly out in the main room of his apartment, snooping around and looking repulsed. He had seen him before, somewhere—Johan, he thought his name was. One of Anton’s goons.
“W-what are you doing here?” asked Krystian, struggling to regain his wits.
Anton shifted his weight in his chair—Krystian’s gaming chair, how dare he?—and took a drag of his cigarette. “Well, we just wanted to make sure everything was okay. We haven’t heard from you in a while.”
Blood drained from Krystian’s face and he stood there on the other side of his bed, half-dressed in his sweat-soaked clothes from the night before. The bedroom was deathly silent.
“Well?” Anton prompted.
“Well—well, what?” Krystian replied, trying to sound innocent.
“You’re late. Where’s the money?”
“Oh. Yeah. No problem, I’ve got it. It’s coming, I promise.”
Anton glanced around the room at Krystian’s latest purchases. Next to the computer desk, a maxed-out Dell Precision workstation was on the floor with a box fan blowing on it to keep it cool. The workstation was connected to dual 42-inch HD monitors attached to an articulating mounting arm that could be repositioned and locked in place in almost any angle or position. His new, ultra-high end Krell Modulari speakers flanked the desk, connected by cables that ran to both the workstation and an extremely expensive stack of amps in the corner of the living room. Krystian still kept piles of clothes everywhere, but his custom-tailored suits hung neatly on a portable garment rack across from his bed.
Anton turned back to Krystian and smiled a mirthless smile.
Shit, this looks bad, Krystian thought. “I—I... um...”
Anton watched silently, smoking his cigarette.
“You see, it’s all fine, really,” Krystian began. “I’ll get the next payment over to you right away. How much is it behind? It’s, what, forty thousand euros? No problem. Just had a few glitches, that’s all. Technical... glitches.”
Anton finished his smoke and tapped out the butt on the surface of Krystian’s bed sheets.
“Hey, I sleep there!”
Anton stood up and smoothed his suit.
“Ok, forget the bed,” Krystian said in alarm. “Look... really, Anton. I’m sorry the last payments have been late. I’ll get it fixed. No problem.”
The Russian started walking around the end of the bed.
“Okay? Anton, that’s okay, right?”
The distance between Anton and Krystian seemed to collapse in an instant. Anton was up in front of the boy, his face closer, if that was possible, than when Krystian had first woken up. Two massively strong hands grabbed Krystian by his t-shirt and shoved him violently against the wall. Krystian’s body rebounded from the impact and Anton caught him again, this time pinning him with his forearm. The Russian’s expression was unreadable as his right hand went around his back, reaching for a pistol, knife, or some other terrible instrument tucked into his belt.
Krystian screeched. And then he let it all tumble out.
First he explained how he needed to keep an account balance in Armchair Safari so that he could have a powerful enough character to efficiently eliminate the throw-away avatars created from the stolen credit cards. Next had come the idea to write a bot that could enter even more credit card numbers than what Yuri and Anton were expecting. Krystian then elaborated on how he took that overage to propel his character’s strength in Safari to godlike proportions and go on kill expeditions in the main gaming area. Everything was fine until just a week ago, when some stupid assholes somehow managed to find the vault where they stored all of the money in the account balance.
Anton listened patiently, the anvil-like pressure of his arm firmly immobilizing Krystian. When Krystian was finished and had no more left to tell, he was just left hanging there against the wall of his bedroom, sweaty and panting and terrified. The Russian didn’t look happy. Johan was still pacing in the other room too, glaring menacingly.
“I can’t believe you’d be foolish enough to skim off of Yuri’s take,” Anton said finally.
“I’m not!” Krystian insisted. “This ended up being extra. We didn’t even know if we could do it at first. When the bot started working, things just started rolling until these fucker gamers stole it all. I did get half of it back. But I swear, I was going to tell you so we could raise the amount that we were passing on to Yuri! The whole idea was to help make you look good!”
Okay, that last part wasn’t true, but Krystian saw a momentary gleam in Anton’s eye that provided a slim ray of hope. The pressure from Anton’s arm lessened infinitesimally.
The Russian scowled behind his mustache. “So, how much extra money have you managed to accumulate on the side, here?”
Krystian paused. Johan moved menacingly back and forth in the other room.
“Krystian?”
Oh God, I can’t tell him that. Shit, shit.
There was movement, and then Anton slowly pressed the edge of some kind of cold metal against Krystian’s cheekbone. Krystian realized suddenly that it was the barrel of a gun.
FUCK.
“A million and a half!” he blurted in terror. “A million and a half euros!”
Anton froze. Even Johan stopped pacing out front and looked into the bedroom, eyes extra attentive, checking to make sure his eavesdropping had heard properly.
The change that slowly crept over Anton’s face was profound. First, he blinked. His eyelids fluttered several more times, almost like dust had blown into his face. Then the slight scowl he had worn evaporated and was replaced by twitching lips unable to formulate an intelligible sound. Anton drew back slightly, shifting his feet as if he had been unexpectedly stunned from a smack in the face.
Gradually, and with obvious effort, Anton regained control of himself. He leaned forward, pushing his weight into Krystian and inexorably pressing him against the bedroom wall. He furiously worked his lips as if trying to speak but no sound came out for at least thirty seconds. When he was again able to project words it was only in a barely audible hiss.
“Am... I to understand... that you... took”—another ten seconds went as Anton’s lips made random twitches and tremors—“one... million... five hundred thousand... euros? From Yuri?”
Krystian knew he was dead meat.
“N-n-n-no, Anton,” he said finally, desperately defending himself. “It wasn’t Yuri’s money. We kept paying that out, just like the plan. This was just... it wasn’t anyone’s money yet...”
“Who paid for the credit card numbers, Krystian?” growled Anton.
“Y-Yuri did...”
“Then who owns all the money, Krystian?”
Krystian stayed silent, terrified.
“Yuri does, Krystian,” Anton finished for him.
If there was any blood left in Krystian’s face, it quickly drained from it.
Anton stared furiously at the young, slight boy he held pinned against the wall. Krystian waited for the gun barrel to be rammed in between his eyes, wondering what death was really like and if he would see angels.
Then, astonishingly, Anton pulled his arm off of him and took a step backward.
Krystian stood there, motionless, not understanding why he was not being destroyed.
Anton took several deep breaths. Then, amazingly, he put his pistol back into his belt. He spoke evenly, deliberately. “I want you to pull that money out immediately.”
The weight of the world seemed to be crushing on Krystian’s shoulders. “I can’t,” he replied, his voice breaking.
Anton locked an iron gaze on Krystian, his eyes demanding explanation.
“Over half of it is still missing—taken. I can’t get it back if I withdraw that amount that I’v
e already recovered. It will completely neutralize my character and I won’t be able to kill the dicks that stole it. You can’t possibly in good conscience turn your back on 800,000 euros, can you?”
“Then replace it with this bot of yours,” Anton countered. “Work overtime.”
“The credit card numbers are... gone. Deactivated.”
The Russian stiffened.
More panic. “I-I was g-going to tell you that, too. They’ve been turned off. It shouldn’t have happened for a long time—the amounts we’ve been putting in are all small, like we talked about before, and they shouldn’t have shown up on anyone’s radar. We’ve been very careful about it. But a week ago, all the new numbers we started putting in were rejected. So we went backwards and tried some of the older numbers we had used, and those were rejected, too. Somehow, the issuing banks must have identified the batch of card numbers for sale and turned them off. They’re probably issuing new numbers now to the card holders right now. Really, I’m surprised that anyone was able to detect any patterns at all. It couldn’t have been from anything we did. We’ve been very careful. Maybe the person we bought the numbers from screwed up somehow, and left some kind of information that led to identifying what was stolen....”
Anton held up his hand to stop Krystian from speaking. Krystian watched in terror. He had learned a little about Anton’s reputation since they had begun working together. Anton could be charming and polished one moment, then incredibly brutal and violent the next. What was in store today?
Anton walked slowly over to where Krystian was leaning against the wall. Every step made Krystian flinch. Then, Anton spoke in a low, careful voice.
“Can you get back the money you lost? Inside of this game?”
“Yes,” replied Krystian. “Yes. I-I’m working on that right now.”
The Russian was again lost in thought for a moment.
“Tell me, where does all this money actually reside? Is it in a bank somewhere?”
“Well, sure... I suppose,” replied Krystian.
“Do you think you could hack into the bank?”
Krystian let all the air go out of his lungs. “Oh. Oh, Anton, I can’t do that.”
Armchair Safari (A Cybercrime Technothriller) Page 30